I am trying to be more financially conservative, of course its always been a bad habit of mine to spend money wastefully, but I’m trying to improve myself. The thing is this year, I’m actually on track to get my mortgage down from $286k at the beginning of the year all the way to $200k! $86k in one year which is far more than I paid down any other year. I’m quite proud of that, but it begs me to wonder… how come I seem to have so much more money this year despite my salary not changing. So I did some investigation.
I keep track of all my spending on Mint and I have my own spreadsheet to keep track of my investments + mortgage + net worth and was shocked to learn that my net worth went from $43,000 in Dec 2014 to $49,000 in Dec 2015. You mean after a whole year making $62,000 net income, my net worth only went up $6k? Thats crazy. Where did all my money go?
Well I had a look and the usual suspect is there: shopping. Mainly its my bad habit of buying useless things and selling them at 50-80% loss. I feel free to share what I spend my money on so here’s what happened last year:
Travel (plane/hotels): $8717
Amazon stuff that I kept: $10000
Ebay stuff that I kept: $10405
Stuff that I bought and sold:
Bose headphones: $270 – sold for $60
Nokia ngage – $40 – sold for $20
Firefox phone – $70 – sold for $30
HP touchpad – $80 – sold for $50
Asus MyPal – $55 – sold for $30
Palm Treo – $13 – sold for free
Cybiko Xtreme – $25 – sold for $30
HP iPaq – $20 – sold for $20
Nokia N8 – $80 – sold for $70
Helios Pantech – $20 – sold for free
Casio BE300 – $65 – sold for $40
Gizmondo – $30 – sold for $20
Pepperpad 3 – $165 – sold for $70
Razer Seiren – $170 – sold for $120
OQO model 2 – $450 – sold for $300
Asus garminfone – $38 – sold for free
HTC status – $62 – sold for $30
HTC Quickfire – $30 – sold for free
BB Torch 2 – $44 – sold for $20
Samsung Q1 – $80 – sold for $70
Motorola Droid 4 – $47 – sold for $30
Motorola Backflip – $50 – sold for $25
NEC Terrain – $85 – sold for $50
Samsung Alias 2 – $50 – sold for free
Motorola Flipout – $50 – sold for $25
HTC mytouch – $41 – sold for free
Dover drive pedal – $200 – sold for $150
Nokia E70 – $120 – sold for $50
Nokia E71 – $35 – sold for free
Olio model one – $500 – sold for $300
Sony Ericsson P990 – $150 – sold for $50
Nokia 5700 – $75 – sold for $40
Nokia N93 – $110 – sold for $60
Hermida Reverb – $180 – sold for $120
Casio Ravine 2 – $45 – sold for $25
Asus R2H – $110 – sold for $80
Sony XEL1 TV – $500 – sold for free because I shipped it in a fragile package and item was broken when it got to the buyer forcing me to refund it
iPod nano – $70 – sold for $50
iRiver – $45 – sold for $30
Viliv S5 – $125 – sold for $100
Keeley Oxblood pedal – $200 – sold for $150
Nokia E71 – $75 – sold for $35
Farcry 4 – $60 – sold for $35
AC Unity – $80 – sold for free
Duke nukem – $50 – sold for $35
Gundam seed destiny – $54 – sold for $15
Stardock 4bay SATA – $330 – sold for free (seriously)
DJI Phantom 3 – $800 – sold for $600
Philips headphone – $300 – sold for $220
Transcend SSD – $65 – sold for $50
Canon Camcorder – $290 – sold for $180
Marshall acton – $250 – sold for $200
Synology DS215j – $200 – sold for $150
Fallout Pipboy – $120 – sold for $110
Yakuza games – $120 – sold for $40
SW Battlefront – $60 – sold for $15
Gechic touch monitor – $360 – sold for $200
Zoom iQ5 – $100 – sold for $50
sony walkman – $100 – sold for $80
Nokia N900 – $150 – sold for $80
Samsung Galaxy Golden – $350 – sold for $200
Klipsch KMC3- $240 – sold for $200
Fiio E10K – $75 – sold for $50
Kickstarter/Indiegogo: $1110
HOA fees: $7200 (mandatory)
Mortgage interest: $9600 (mandatory)
Rent: $9600 (mandatory)
Bug/pest control: $3200 (mandatory)
BitTorrent stock options: $4200
Property tax: $6500 (mandatory)
UPS Shipping: $791
Steam/Nintendo games: $3260
So yeah.. no wonder I had no money in 2015. First off, I bought $24,770 worth of electronics and games. And My 5 trips last year to SF (2 times), Toronto (2 times), and Eastern Europe cost me $8.7k in plane/hotel fees. Furthermore, I lost thousands of dollars by buying and selling items and shipping them at a huge loss. So last year was probably my worst year in spending yet. This year I seemed to have learned my lesson by reining in my spending. I regret not doing it sooner, but I will put up this post so that I can look back on it and learn from it.
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