Earning and Spending in the San Francisco Bay Area - Expert Edition Episode 61

Today,  I'm sharing how I handle my finances as a labor and delivery nurse in the San Francisco Bay Area. I'll walk you through my income details, my spending habits for March, and how I budget carefully in this high-cost living area. Discover how I manage daily expenses and save for big future goals, like helping my daughter save for her first car!

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TRANSCRIPT:

Naseema: [00:00:00] What's up, what's up, what's up, my financially intentional people. This week I wanted to come back and talk a little bit more about. My pay as a labor and delivery nurse in the San Francisco Bay area. But also I told you, I promised you last week after I broke down my paycheck, I told you I was going to go over my spending and I'm going to use the month of March because it's a full month, obviously the last full month.

Yeah, let's go through how I spend my money as a nurse in the San Francisco Bay area. And the reason why I'm doing this is because a lot of people were just like you have to make that amount of money in the San Francisco Bay area. And yes, this is a higher cost of living place. However, you'll see that even though we are higher cost of living.

I think the 2 things that I wanted to point out is that this is 1 of the only places where nurses actually make a decent living or a livable wage. So when I started working at the hospital [00:01:00] that I've worked at the longest now, the union rep told me that their goal was to make it so that every nurse that worked in the hospital would be able to buy a house in the area that the hospital was in.

And to be able to afford a house at that time, housing prices were the median housing prices were about 700, 000. And so their goal was to make it so that the salaries match the affordability. And I feel throughout. The country, we see so many, so much differences in nurses pay, but overall nurses aren't being fairly compensated.

They're not able to be able to be in financially stable positions and they don't have the bonuses that we have here, like safe staffing, mandatory breaks, all of those things. And so when I share my income, it is to. Let people know what's possible so that number one, not everybody is willing to move here, [00:02:00] but you can start looking for positions that are paying you your worth or you can start rallying for these hospitals to pay your worth.

And I think we saw a lot of that with the pandemic. Is that these travel nurses were getting paid more than they had ever gotten paid and finally being like now I feel like it's worth it. But again, I love my job. I love what I do. I can't imagine doing anything else, even though

I did have a whole nother career in healthcare administration. But. I've been doing this so long now and I love it. By the way, I'm sharing my screen. So this is another episode that if you're not checking this out on YouTube, you want to go to the financially intentional YouTube channel and check out the podcast if you want to see the the spreadsheet that I'm sharing.

Actually, this is literally just My Monarch money app is what I use for budgeting. I use a couple of apps for budgeting, but I love Monarch money. I'm currently behind [00:03:00] the scenes working on a budgeting app where it's going to be me walking you through the budgeting process. So this is new for people who aren't familiar with zero based budgeting.

Stay tuned for that. We'll talk more about that later, but just to let you know, there's something coming down the line.

All right, let's get to it. All right, so some caveats March was a month for me where I had 5 paychecks. Just because of the way that the months fall my paychecks. Get paid once a week because I get paid from 2 different hospitals.

And so that'll help you understand why my take home pay in March was a little bit higher than it is on average, because there's a little extra paycheck in there. So cashflow wise, this is the cash flow view in the Monarch money app. And as far as my paychecks, I brought home 17, 153, 000.

From my hospital paychecks. My daughter does get money that goes [00:04:00] directly into her her custodial brokerage account. So she gets a death benefit from a survivor's benefit from her father passing away of 817 a month. 800 of that goes directly into her. Custodial account, 17 of that goes into her allowance account and or through her go Henry app.

With her custodial brokerage, we're going to use that to help her finance her 1st car, help her put her down payment on her 1st house. Saving for her future. She is really accelerating her savings for her future. And most adults I know don't even save 800 a month in two investment accounts. So she is well on her way at 10 years old business income right now.

I'm really not doing anything in my business cause I'm just. Getting my foot back in the door at work and trying to get things situated there. So business income wise I do have some done for you courses that you can buy in the background and [00:05:00] some worksheets they're very low cost things and then a couple hundred dollars from like Facebook or Instagram for posts, but that's pretty much what represents my business income, but more to come.

And I was actually supposed to get paid this month for a brand collaboration. Those are usually a couple thousand dollars. I'm actually waiting for a check for almost 5, 000 from a brand collaboration. So that's where you see my business income going up. But other than that.

It only represents 1. 5 percent of my income So you guys want to be an influencer or think that I am this is what being an influencer looks like And then other income, I actually don't even know what that is. 55. Let's take a look the beautiful thing about this is that we can drill down on it. It's probably just something that's not categorized Oh 50.

Oh, I know why I left it like this. So this is something that You My neighbor, I had given her a donation, her daughter, a donation to go to [00:06:00] a camp, and then it ended up not working out. And so that's why I left it as other income. So there's that. All so that is my income. And then I had a dollar in dividends and capital gains.

Exciting. All right, let's go down to expenses. Let me scroll this up. I, Took a lot of that extra income and put it towards debt. I'm paying down debt Some of that is my minimum payment. Some of that is extra payments that I put towards debt that I have you guys I'll do episodes soon on the amount of debt that I have and what i'm paying off What my plan is around it, like I said, i'm very debt averse like I am trying to get rid of this debt so this extra check in march The extra check I received in March helped me come a long way towards that.

So then we'll go down through my standard expenses. My mortgage is 3, 400 a month, which represents 20 percent of my take on pay. And I love how Monarch has these percentages. Childcare. I know I did a whole episode on [00:07:00] my childcare costs and that I pay 3, 400 a month in childcare.

I do pay 3, 400 a month, but my share after we take out child support and my benefits payment that I get. So I do a flexible spending account, a dependent care flexible spending account at my job, where I put 5000 dollars that's taken out of my paycheck every 2 weeks not 5, weeks, but 5, 000 dollars annually. And it breaks down to, I think 192 a paycheck that goes towards healthcare costs and that.

Just reduces my taxable income. It's like a little tax break if you are paying for childcare. So I advise people who are paying for childcare, make sure that you take advantage of your flexible spending account at work because it'll save you a little bit in taxes as it reduces your taxable income. And I looked at mine today and it says it estimates that it'll save me 1, 500 in taxes.

So there's that I had a true up, meaning that I have an electric, I have, I'm how solar panels for my gas and [00:08:00] electricity. My bill was like, so high. It was 9 51 and usually it's only like 10 dollars, but there was a true up. In California, we're having this crisis where our electric prices are just like, going through the roof and true up is just like, where they take the difference between what you've been paying every month and how much you've been generating and so they make estimates on what you've been generating for your solar panels, and then you pay based on that. And then the true up is really how much you've been generating how much you have saved in electrical costs from your solar panels. And then they're like, this is really how much you should be paying. And so that came out last month.

And so my electrical bill is. Higher than way higher than normal. So there's that insurance. This includes all of my insurances. This includes my car insurance on my Tesla. And that's broken out from a Honda insurance. And I'll show you why. So it includes my life insurance, my car insurance, [00:09:00] just on the Tesla, my umbrella insurance policy and my long term disability policy. So that's under insurance groceries. Everybody is like, how do you keep your grocery budgets? Hello?

Transcribed Honestly I don't know. We don't eat a lot around here. We don't spend a lot of groceries. We don't spend a lot on groceries. There's nothing intentionally that I do. My kids just like really don't eat financial fees. That is 443 and that is from I think I had some. Credit card. Oh, yeah credit card fees.

Annual fees do my Honda odyssey I broke that out as a separate category because you guys know I use that honda odyssey primarily for touro And so I really wanted to see how much I was actually really spending on the car minus all the trophy so I put my honda insurance Over here, so that's [00:10:00] why my insurance falls into this.

And then my car payment minus, minus how much I made on Toro so last month, I only I spent 352 dollars. So minus my payroll payments and my insurance and all the maintenance things that are associated with that subscriptions have a lot of subscriptions and I need to go through this subscription category.

Come in at 317 dollars yeah, that's something that you should actually set a Reminder to do every month or every couple of months is to go through your subscriptions and see if you actually need them For example, I really need to cancel my Apple subscription because I think I'm paying for Apple music Apple TV plus and like all the games and the fitness and I hardly use them.

I do like apple tv plus movies, however And shows however, I haven't even watched them lately So i'll evaluate how much it costs if I break those things out, so I really only use the apple tv plus subscription [00:11:00] I don't use apple music. I use Spotify. So I need to look at that. For my employee wages and contract labor.

That is right now. The only employee that I have is my podcast editor. Hey Fritz. That's what I pay in editing. Housekeeping is a mandatory and that is 300 a month. Typically 150 every two weeks. That's including a tip. Travel and vacation was pretty low this month. Last month it was 274 and that included taking my daughter to great Wolf Lodge for her birthday.

Shopping is like a general category with Amazon expenses and stuff like that. I tried not to put a lot in that category. That was I spent in shopping last month. So little Amazon purchases. Software. This is actually like what I pay in my business software. So 254 for all the [00:12:00] things that I use to run my business. For example what I record the podcast on the actual software is called Riverside. And then to host my podcast, I have fees.

So things like that, those are little fees that kind of add up financial and legal services. 1 95, I paid the IRS from a fee for my 2022 taxes. I'm just now paying my 2022 taxes because when I got my tax bill. It was when I was on maternity leave and so I was not paying it then so I got a an extension to pay And that was the fees and then I had a 60 in fees for updating my trust.

So that was the fees that made up the Let's see 231 financial and legal fees. Dentist fees is basically Naima's, braces. I pay monthly for those I only spent 189 at restaurant and [00:13:00] bars. I didn't really go out last month, but I did order some doordash to work bookkeeping for my business expenses, I pay 170 and I was, going back and doing all my 2023 books for my taxes.

Then for my pets, that is health insurance For my dog plus There's a wellness plan through banfield through pet smart and then his haircut. So that was 161 I give 140 to charity I spent 130 for clothes and most of it was stuff for the baby because You know these kids they grow out of stuff so fast and so Even though she is 10 months.

She still wears a three to six months, but I was getting rid of her three month stuff and all her newborn stuff. So cleaning out and then getting her some new stuff. That was 130 For fitness, it's mostly to pay for [00:14:00] my peloton membership And my tonal membership, so I have those equip that equipment and i'm still paying for my tonal like I got zero interest loan on that so i'm still paying for my tonal plus the membership and then my peloton is paid off But I pay monthly for that just for my internet.

It's 96 a month and then electronics that is my, the electronics are like my apple products that usually when I get a new phone, I go directly to apple and then I just. put it on the monthly no fee kind of thing.

And so that's 76 a month for like our tablets and laptop and all that kind of stuff. So that's the only thing that I usually put on my Apple card. So let's categorize under electronics. And then my phone. Phone bill. My cell phone bill is 66 a month. I have the AT& T first responders thing, which I don't know if I'm going to change because I need to get Naima [00:15:00] a phone with a plan.

So I'm going to see if it's cheaper for me to just do a full family plan or to keep my first responders and have her own plan. I planned on actually going to AT& T and figuring that out today, but that did not happen. Medical costs. I think I paid for some prescriptions. That was 51 for my auto maintenance, 50.

That's actually just my car washes. So I have a limited memberships to a car wash. I use that heavily for my Toro, especially my car needs to be wide. The Tesla needs to be washed right now, but mostly on the Honda, I use that allowance just comes up as 50 because actually I sent that money.

My stepmother gave me money for Naima's birthday to put in there in her GoHenry account. So it should just be really a transfer, but it's not for my money, so it's under her allowance fee. Entertainment and recreation, I spent 48 parking and tolls as of explanatory that was [00:16:00] 35. I try not to keep stuff in a miscellaneous area, but this is Not categorized right actually this stuff needs to go into My software budget which I will fix that and then Gifts, I think I bought something for one of naima's friends for her birthday Some personal stuff.

I just usually take out $20 from the A TMI do do micro investing just to see how it works and I set it up years ago and I just kept it going. So I'll send like $5 a week to stash and like $5 a week to, or a couple dollars a week to Acorns just to see how it works. But. I do most of my investing through my retirement accounts and through my kids investing, but it's interesting just to see how those accounts have grown just with that little bit of money.

And I usually just do that just for market research for my audience. And then 20 a month each goes into the kids Brokerage [00:17:00] accounts. The universal transfer to minors act is like their accounts, their custodial brokerage account. So I do 20 a month there. The baby has one too. But I think I just started automatically funding it maybe in April.

There is that let me know if you have any questions on my expenses but as you'll see like they're not like crazy out of the norm and like I said everybody trips out because I live in northern california or in the san francisco bay area and they figure that everything is super expensive But I think that most of this stuff is on par with the national average, especially my mortgage which is 34 You 3, 400, which is only 20 percent of my take home pay.

And then the general rule of thumb is as long as your mortgage is under 30 percent of your take home pay, you're not house poor. I don't know. What do you think? You think living in San Francisco Bay Area and its expenses is much different from where you live? Super interested in hearing from [00:18:00] you guys and seeing if you have any questions about how I spend.

All right. Peace.

Hey there I’m Naseema

My dream is for everyone to know that financial independence is attainable with a little intentionality. Learn how I can help you finally break the cycle of living paycheck to paycheck.

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