Andy Hough

February Income – $6196.95

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Here is a breakdown of my income for February.

Interest $1.78
Amazon FBA $67.26
Job $2850.96
Bank/Investment Bonus $202.67
Cashback $56.54
Dividends $14.07
Dietbet $35.67
Tax Refunds $2968.00
Total $6196.95

February’s income was great. I doubt I will have a better earning month this year.

My income was almost doubled by the almost $3000 of state and federal tax refunds I received. When you only work part of the year, they withhold way too much from your paycheck.  I suppose I should change my withholding, but I probably won’t bother.

My dividend income increased slightly for the month.  I’m going to keep investing in dividend stocks to keep increasing my dividend income. My investments will be limited the next few months due to needing to bulk up my cash savings to fund my Spring Thailand trip.

I worked full-time at my tax job for all of February. I received two full paychecks which was good. This month will be even better since I’ll have three paydays. Also, I have been authorized to work some overtime hours which will help increase the paydays.

I made a little bit from Amazon. I haven’t felt like sourcing on my days off so I don’t have much for sale right now. This total would have been a lot better if I wouldn’t have had a $200 item returned. You got to take the good with the bad on Amazon.  I also made a little bit from eBay which I forgot to add to this income total.

I made over $200 from a bank account and investment account bonus. I think bank bonuses give me the highest return for my time invested. I should really do more of them.

I won $35.67 from Dietbet by participating in three diet bets. I bet a total of $155 and the bet only lasted a month so that is a really good return on my money. I won’t be doing more of these for a while though because I found it quite difficult to lose the needed weight.  I’d rather be able to eat whatever I want for right now. I’ll worry about losing weight when I am in Thailand. It is much easier for me to lose weight there.

Even with the three paydays this month’s income will be quite a bit lower than February’s income. It will still be a good income month and I should have a good shot at making at least $5000.

How was your month?

February Expenses – $723.24

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Here is a breakdown of my expenses for February.

Household$0
Rent$321.68
Entertainment$17.38
Transportation$29.51
Food$74.81
Travel$0
Phone$23.89
Student Loan$132.58
Health$123.39
Total$723.24

My February expenses were extremely low. I easily managed to get my expenses under my target of $1000 for the month. This month I tried to be extra frugal and had very little unnecessary spending. Having a shorter month helped too.

Rent was low because I’m paying my mom’s utility bill as rent while I’m staying with her. Since January was pretty cold electric was about $100 higher than the previous month. This amount also includes the water and sewer. They all come on one bill from the city. I expect this month’s bill to be about the same.

Transportation was for one tank of gas for my car. I went to Springfield (which is about an hour away) twice during the month. Without those two drives I wouldn’t have needed to put any gas in my car. Since I’m working at home I don’t drive at all most days. Living in a small town, when I do drive everything is close. I might not need to buy gas at all this month. I’m probably going to pay for six more months of car insurance this month so that will make this expense category quite a bit higher this month.

My food expense went down a lot. I cut way back on my meals out. I also had three free meals due to gift cards. I actually spent more on groceries than on meals out. I think that is the first time I’ve done that since starting this blog. There are no free meals this month so this expense will likely increase a bit.

This was the rare month where I didn’t have any travel expense. I’m probably going to buy some travel medical insurance this month which will cost about $260. I’ll also buy a plane ticket from Bangkok to Chiang Mai or elsewhere in Thailand. The plane ticket should cost less than $30. Those two expenses will result in a significant increase in this expense category for the month. Last year, I didn’t have travel medical insurance when I went to Thailand. If I’d had a serious illness or injury that could have cost me a lot of money. I’m playing it safe this year and purchasing the travel insurance. I hope I don’t need it.

Phone was for one month of Google Fi phone service. This is about as cheap as it gets. If you sign up for Google Fi through my referral link we will each get $20 Fi credit after your account has been active for 30 days.

Health was for my March premium on my health insurance. This month I might have a dentist visit which would boost this expense quite a bit. If I’m unable to see a dentist, then this expense will remain exactly the same.

My entertainment expense was for one trip to the movies. Since it was the end of the month and I hadn’t yet spent anything on entertainment I splurged on a large popcorn to go with my matinee ticket.

February was a super low expense month. March will be a higher expense month and I will likely go over my monthly target of $1000 in expenses. It will probably still be a pretty low expense month by most people’s standards though.   How was your month?

I Saved 47.4% of $37k Income in 2018

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I didn’t quite reach a 50% saving rate in 2018. I’m still quite pleased with the rate I was able to achieve. If it weren’t for over $4000 of medical and dental bills plus 2 1/2 months in Thailand where I earned almost nothing I would have easily saved over 50% of my income. I think a 47.4% saving rate is pretty decent for my level of income.

Last year was my first year of what I’m calling my semi-retirement. I worked roughly 7 months and had about 5 months off. I consider the first year of semi-retirement a success since I was able to save a big chunk of my income while having several months off and trying out living in Thailand. My semi-retirement plan is to work my tax job during the tax season and then work a couple of document review projects to boost my income when the projects fit into my travel schedule. I’ll continue the semi-retirement plan until I have enough money to completely retire or find something I like to do that makes sufficient money for me to live and travel. I might write a separate post about semi-retirement later. For now, I want to get back to the actual subject of this post.

My savings in 2018 consisted of $6500 to my IRA and $11499 to my work 401k. My income from jobs and net self-employment earnings was $37962. I also contributed $400 to my solo 401k and invested about $2700 in dividend stocks. I’m not counting the solo 401k or stocks in savings since they were offset by some credit card debt.

This year I will likely have a much lower income. My income was significantly boosted last year by working lots of overtime during the tax season. I don’t think there will be nearly as much overtime available to me this year. With the reduced income it will be quite difficult to match my 2018 saving rate this year. I do think I will be able to reduce my expenses a fair bit this year so it might not be impossible for me to save that much. If I get close to saving as much money this year as I did last year I will be happy.

January Income – $1841.89

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Here is a breakdown of my income for January.

Interest $2.64
Amazon FBA $2.55
Job $1784.05
Mystery Shops $27.84
Cashback $16.73
Dividends $8.08
Online Income $0
Total $1841.89

January’s income was decent. The bulk of it came from one partial week of document review pay and my first full paycheck from my tax job.

Online income was actually seriously negative for the month since I paid for three years of web hosting. Rather than post a negative number in my income, I am going to keep putting zeroes for online income until my online income is positive for the year.

My dividend income dipped slightly for the month. This isn’t surprising since most of my stocks pay a dividend in December while only a few paid a dividends in January. I bought a little over $1000 of dividend stocks in January which should result in higher dividend income within the next few months.  I’m going to keep investing in dividend stocks to keep increasing my dividend income. My investments will be limited the next few months due to needing to bulk up my cash savings to fund my Spring Thailand trip.

I worked full-time at my tax job for all of January. I’ll get two full paychecks this month which will be enough to make this month’s income total higher than January’s. March will be my best income month of the year since I’ll have three paydays.

I have been doing some sourcing and shipping to Amazon FBA so that income will go up this month. I plan to send in a bunch of stuff before I leave for Thailand.  That way I’ll continue to have some income while I’m in Thailand as my FBA inventory sells through.

Saving Rate

When I remember I will also be adding my saving rate to my income posts. In January I made $1841.89 and I spent $975.67 for a savings rate of 52.9%.  I put about $250 into my work 401k and the rest went into dividend stocks. In future months I plan to base my saving rate on my income and what I actually put into savings. I only count my retirement accounts and my dividend stocks as savings. Money that I accumulate in my checking/savings account isn’t considered savings until it is invested in a retirement account or dividend stock. In January I actually saved about $1500 in my retirement accounts and dividend stocks which would be an even higher saving rate.  Since some of that was accomplished my drawing down the balance in my checking/savings account I felt it was more accurate to just consider the difference between my income and expenses for the month as savings.

How was your month?

Losing Weight with Bets

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Since returning from Thailand in November I have regained almost 10 pounds of the over 18 pounds I lost while in Thailand. Since returning to the U.S. I have been indulging in fast food, junk food, and Dr Pepper a little lot too often. I have a goal of getting to an under 25 BMI this year. That isn’t going to happen if I’m gaining weight rather than losing weight. I’m sure I’ll lose weight when I return to Thailand, but to reach my goal I need to be losing weight now.

To get myself back on track, I decided I needed a little extra motivation to start losing weight again. I know from prior experience that I can lose weight when I eat better and exercise. I just need to actually do those things. Long time readers may remember that I lost 30 pounds in 6 months a few years ago. That was accomplished by betting $3000 with HealthyWage. The fear of losing $3000 was enough to make me get serious about losing weight. The reward of winning a few hundred dollars for making my goal also provided motivation.

Since betting on myself to lose weight has worked in the past I am now trying it again. HealthyWage has a policy that to make a second wager with them you must be at or below your weight at the end of the first wager. Since I’m still a few pounds away from that, I am using DietBet to help motivate me to lose weight right now. I’ll do a bet with Healthy Wage later this year.

At DietBet I am doing what they call the Kickstarter Challenge, where the goal is to lose 4% of your body weight in 4 weeks. DietBet has smaller bets so I’m participating in 3 different games. They are for a $25 bet, $30 bet, and a $100 bet. The combined total should provide me with enough motivation to lose the weight.

Update: It is now 3 weeks into my DietBets and I still need to lose 4 pounds to win my bets. I lost quite a bit of weight the first week and then got lazy thinking it would be easy to win the bets. After not paying attention to my eating and exercise I gained some of that initial weight loss back. This last week I need to be completely committed to eating properly and exercising regularly. It will be a challenge to lose the remaining weight. If I didn’t have $155 on the line I’d probably give up. With the extra motivation of wanting to avoid losing my money I’ll be trying hard this week. Ideally, after getting in the habit of eating better and exercising regularly this week those activities will continue after the bets are over.

Want to get in on the “dieting for dollars” craze and up your potential for weight loss success? Bet on yourself and start your HealthyWager today. Then lose the weight and get paid, simple as that!

This post contains affiliate links to Healthy Wage and I may be paid a commission for sales at no cost to you. I personally used Healthy Wage and would not recommend them if I didn’t think it’s a great service.