Finance Review: July 2024

Oops, a little late, I was in 4 time zones over the last two weeks so I’m a little out of it.

Spendings Report: $ 6,521

See that -3%? Yeah. I spent my entire salary this month and then some.

Believe it or not, this wasn’t terrible. I bought a new laptop worth about $3000, and an extra flight plus luggage space that’s about $300, so the leisure/vacation money came out to be $3200. The laptop went under living expenses because I cannot live without one. I got a refurbished 14″ Macbook Pro with 16GB RAM and 500GB of memory, loving it so far. My last Macbook lasted me 7 years so I’m hoping this one will get the same or even better mileage 🙂

Some of the leisure costs are multi-use items; a climbing harness, a 10-time gym pass, liquid chalk, and this AMAZING travel backpack I got. I don’t get any commissions if you buy through the link, I just love it that much. I’ve gone through four different security checks with it and it was by far the least annoying to open and close. The add-ons you can get for it are just amazing at keeping you organized and making unpacking such a quick process. It could be done in under 5 minutes or less once you get to your hotel or hostel, speaking from personal experience. Another pro: it looks normal enough you can use it as an everyday commuter bag, so versatile!

The transport category was painfully large. Y’all, public transit in Canadian cities is at best mediocre. It takes 50min to get an Uber from where I live to where my friend lives

Net Worth Update: pleasantly surprised!

Good month for the market*! And also for my pension payment to come in hehe. For foreigners working in China, you can have the option to receive your pension as a cash lumpsum instead of having it go into the Chinese pension scheme, so that’s what I chose. It’s about a month’s salary for me. In my mind, this basically made my summer vacation free #girlmath 🙂

In actuality, because I spent my entire salary then got the pension lumpsum, it ended up being net zero and all the increase in my net worth came purely from the ETFs. It’s wild because the increase was more than my monthly pay. I was so surprised, I triple checked all my accounts and calculations to confirm my fingers didn’t slip anywhere.

*I heard some news from friends that the market dropped over the couple months? I was planning on doing that anyways as part of my usual schedule, but it’s a nice little cherry on top. Don’t let the news influence your plans, if it was a good one you should stick to it and don’t try to time things!