Andy Hough

November Income – $357.16

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Here is a breakdown of my income for November.

Online Income

$219.37

Interest

$57.36

Stock Dividends

$14.83

Bonuses

$50

Mystery Shop

$8.00

Survey/Cashback

$7.60

Total

$357.16

My November income was pretty poor. It was mostly passive income at least.  It shouldn’t be any problem increasing my income this month. I already know my online income will increase due to scheduled Adsense and affiliate payouts. Dividend income will increase since many of my stocks pay dividends this month.  I will also have job income which should help although I probably won’t be working a lot of hours.

November Expenses – $1098.55

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Here is a breakdown of my expenses for November.

Household

$440.61

Entertainment

$76.98

Transportation

 $118.99

Food

$160.25

Health

$90.66

Phone

$46.06

Debt

 $165.00

Total

$1098.55

I wasn’t too far off my goal of keeping my monthly expenses under $1000. Considering I moved into a new apartment this expense level is reasonable. My food category was pretty high which isn’t surprising since I had at least 30 restaurant meals during the month. That category should be much lower this month.  I might be able to shave a little off my entertainment budget.  My transportation expense will go up because I have to do a lot more driving now that I have a job.  Everything else should stay about the same.

If you are eligible for part of the $500 giveaway I would still like to hear your opinion on how to distribute the money.

Ideas for Giving Away $500

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Those of you who entered in my $500 weight-loss challenge back in May now stand to collect the $500. There were 35 entrants so if I distributed the money equally you would each be paid $14.28. I don’t think that is how I am going to pay the money though. I would like ideas from those who entered on how I should distribute the money.

One idea I have is to have a 12 days of Christmas theme and have 12 different giveaways of about $25-$50. The money would be in the form of cash or gift cards. Or maybe some vintage comic books if there are enough people interested in those. Another idea would be to have one big winner of the entire $500 or a big winner of $330 with $5 going to each of the other entrants so that everyone would win something.

From a logistics standpoint I favor the giveaways with fewer winners to make things easier to keep track of. Let me hear your ideas and then I will make a decision.

November 2009 Goal Review

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I didn’t do very well on my goals this month.

My first goal is to increase my passive income. I made some progress on this. I purchased an established website which should provide a nice boost to my online income. The purchase and transfer of the site should be finished by the end of the month and I’ll provide more details when the purchase is finished.

My second goal is to lose weight. No progress was made on this goal. It is now obvious that I am going to lose the $500 weight loss challenge. Tomorrow’s post will discuss how I will pay the $500.

My third goal is to increase the number of RSS subscribers to 500. No progress was made on this goal as my number of subscribers leveled off this month. With a big push in December I might still be able to meet this goal.

One out of three is not a very good result. It will soon be time to set new goals for next year. I need to come up with better plans for meeting my goals next year.

Buying a House for Four Figures

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If you have been reading this blog long then you probably already know that I am interested in the subject of cheap housing. Thus this Money magazine article about a $6900 home in Detroit caught my attention. The article describes the availability of cheap houses in Detroit and gives tips on how to find a good deal.

Detroit isn’t the only place you can find houses for four figures though. With a little searching I was able to find plenty of cheap houses here in Kansas City as well. A quick browse through the listings shows that none of the houses are in neighborhoods that I would want to live in. That isn’t too surprising considering the price. From just looking at the listings it isn’t easy to tell how much work would need to be done on the houses either although some are in obvious states of disrepair. I suppose these could make decent rental houses but I suspect it would be difficult to find quality tenants in these neighborhoods. I am going to pass on buying any four figure houses here in Kansas City.

Buying a cheap house in small town Missouri is still a possibility. I’ve never seen a house as cheap as four figures there other than mobile homes. The small town seems like a better option to me though because the worst neighborhood still isn’t too bad. I actually looked at some property earlier this month but decided to pass on it due to the extremely junky neighbors. I’m still looking and I’m hoping I will eventually find a place that I like.

On a side note my mom happened to find out that the buyer of the $15,000 small house I wanted to buy is an acquaintance of hers. He did very little work to the house and promptly rented it out. I don’t know what he is renting the house for but considering the extremely low purchase price I have to assume it is making a nice bit of cash flow each month. If only I would have found the house earlier it could have been me making that money. Oh well, I will get mine soon.