April Expenses-$1581.53
Here is a breakdown of my expenses for April.
|
Rent/Household |
$441.27 |
|
Utilities |
$94.28 |
|
Transportation |
$184 |
|
Entertainment |
$454.50 |
|
Food |
$133.48 |
|
Student Loans/Education |
$274.00 |
|
Total |
$1581.53 |
Expenses were way too high for April. My goal is to keep my expenses under $1000 not counting optional debt repayment. If my entertainment expenses wouldn’t have been ridiculously high I would have been on budget. Most of the entertainment expenses was in the first week of April and I’ve now gotten that back under control. I now have a girlfriend and my best friend is coming back to town this month after being gone for a month and a half so I’ll still have considerable entertainment expense for May but it should be much lower than April.
I plan to make significant cuts in my food and student loan expense also. I plan to cut back on the fast food and the junk food to lower my food expense. I’ve decided to not pay ahead on my student loan for now which will reduce that expense.
Household, Utilities, and Transportation expense should all remain roughly the same. April’s transportation expense included a payment for six months of liability insurance. My gas expense actually went down even though gas prices were higher because I drove less. This month I’m going to start working three hours away from my apartment and commuting back most weekends. That will cause my gas expense to rise but I hope the total transportation expense will not be more than in April.
April Income- $371.06
Here is a breakdown of my income for April.
|
Online Income |
$312.52 |
|
Interest |
$48.54 |
|
Survey |
$5 |
|
Mystery Shop |
$5 |
|
Total |
$371.06 |
Since I can’t work during the semester all of my income is alternative income. I’m really pleased with my online income. I’ve already made this year than all of last year. May should be even better than April. Most of this online income is from my other blog. This blog hasn’t really been monetized yet and I’m debating whether I should. I’ll discuss that in a blog post sometime.
I’m also pleased that my alternative income total is almost as much as my rent of $375. I’ll have to set a goal of making enough to pay my rent with alternative income this month.
The interest amount is high because it includes ING Direct referrals. Since they will be reported as interest on my 1099 at the end of the year I just go ahead and count them as rent now.
Tracking Every Penny and My Non Budget
Over at My Two Dollars last week David wrote a post arguing against what he called “Watching Every Last Penny Syndrome.” Since I track every penny I spend and earn I have to disagree with that post. This is something I started doing after reading “Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence
That being said I don’t budget every penny. I just keep track of what I spend and when my spending gets out of line in a certain category I adjust my spending accordingly. Stephanie at Poorer than You uses a similar system and Nick at Punny Money has his own variation of the system. This system works well for me but it won’t work for everybody. You need to determine what kind of budgeting system works best for you.
March Expenses
Here is a breakdown of my expenses for March:
|
Household |
$378 |
|
Utilities |
$107.11 |
|
Transportation |
$151.90 |
|
Entertainment |
$335.85 |
|
Food |
$121.96 |
|
Student loans |
$100 |
|
Health Insurance/Medical |
$170.22 |
|
Total |
$1365.04 |
My expenses are too high mainly because of my entertainment expense. I really need to cut that one back. My health insurance is paid for three months so I shouldn’t have any medical expense this month. Other categories should be roughly the same. My goal is to get my expenses under $1000 a month not counting what I pay towards my student loans.
March Income
Here is a breakdown of my income for March.
|
Online Income |
$115.69 |
|
Survey |
$5 |
|
Interest |
$69.43 |
|
Tax Refund |
$133.93 |
|
Total |
$324.05 |
My online income came down a lot but I’m still happy with it. I’m on track to make a lot more than last year. My interest income is high because I’m including ING Direct referral bonuses. April will be another low income month but in May I’ll return to work and start making some decent money.
February Expense
Here is a breakdown of my expenses for February:
|
Household |
$382.10 |
|
Utilities |
$118.68 |
|
Transportation |
$623.49 |
|
Entertainment |
$536.83 |
|
Food |
$110.06 |
|
Education/Student Loans |
$120.16 |
|
Total |
$1891.32 |
My expenses were way too high last month. I spent $440 on a new clutch for my car which made my transportation expense much higher than normal. My vacation in Cancun made my entertainment expense abnormally high. The bad thing about that is I spent almost $100 on entertainment at home.
Those expenses should return to normal this month. My other expenses should remain in the same ballpark. I would really like to get my food expense back under $100. I only went $10 over last month which isn’t bad considering I was on vacation for five days but I would just like to show myself that I have the self-discipline to get my food expense back under budget. I’m hoping for total expenses of less than $1000 this month.
February Blogging Wage: $29.38 p/h
I decided to keep track of my hours spent blogging last month so I could determine my hourly wage for blogging. The resulting figure is very misleading. I spent 21 hours on blogging in February. That figure includes actual time writing posts and working on the blog. It doesn’t include time spent reading other blogs or corresponding with other bloggers. If that time was included my hours would easily double. The total hours is also lower than normal due to February being a short month and my spending little time on the blog while on vacation.
My blogs made $617.40 last month. That is by far my best month and won’t likely be repeated. My income being abnormally high and my hours being lower than normal result in an hourly wage that is much higher than normal. I’d guess my usual blogging wage is closer to minimum wage but last month was the first month I kept track of my time spent so I can’t be sure.
If I could make that wage every month I wouldn’t look for a job I’d just spend more time blogging. That wouldn’t really work since some of the income realized this month covered several months of sales. Also doubling my hours blogging wouldn’t result in a doubling of income. The return for hours spent blogging would rapidly decline as my hours increased. It is nice to make that much for the month though and it makes a goal of earning a living online seem possible.
February Income
Here is a summary of my income for February:
|
Online Income |
$617.14 |
|
Surveys |
$5 |
|
Interest |
$36.87 |
|
Cash Back |
$8.60 |
|
Total |
$667.61 |
My online income was by far my best ever. This won’t be duplicated soon though because I was paid for two year long link placements which likely won’t be repeated. Also I received my Adsense payment which usually takes me a few months to hit the minimum payout. It could have been even higher but the referrals I received from Prosper and Lending Club I invested in loans and will count them as income as payments are made.
The interest income includes ING Direct referrals or it would be much smaller. I’ll probably have quite a few of them this month as well. I’ll have to find some more ways to increase my income.
2007 Online Income
My net online income for 2007 was $883.84 out of a gross income of $1025.38. Which comes out to roughly $73.65 a month. I’ve got a long way to go if I want to be able to live off my online income. Although I do also make money from other alternative sources such as paid surveys and bank bonuses.
Most of my income was generated by my other blog Bank Bonuses. I’ve yet to fully monetize this blog. I don’t want to put Adsense on here and I want to keep any ads unobtrusive. But I do want to make more money so I’ve got to come up some other ways to generate income from this blog.
January Income
Here is a breakdown of my income for January.
|
Job Income |
$1104.36 |
|
Online Income |
$191.62 |
|
Surveys |
$5 |
|
Interest |
$14.92 |
|
Total |
$1315.90 |
My income was down quite a bit because I only worked half a month due to returning to law school. I did manage to increase my online income a bit. Since I don’t count any money made as income until I actually receive it there will be quite a bit more money that was earned in January that will be reflected on February’s income. In fact I’ve already made more this month than in January. With no job income I need to keep increasing my other methods of income.
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