March 2017 Net Worth Update

penniesIn order to keep track of my financial progress or lack of progress I have decided to calculate my net worth a few times a year.

My net worth as of 03/3/2017 is as follows.

Assets
Cash – $11,356
IRA – $25,909
Roth IRA – $10,988
Solo 401k – $1086
Car/Stuff – $3900

Liabilities
Student Loan – $131,908
Credit Card – $2202

Net Worth = $-80,871

My net worth improved by about $5000 last month. I’m quite pleased with that increase. The rising stock market and increased cash savings from my job proved to be a potent combination for increasing my net worth.  Although my assets had a nice increase my liabilities only decreased by about $100. I need to do more work on them. That will be the subject of an upcoming blog post. My net worth not counting my student loan would be $51,037.

This month should also be a good month for my net worth since I will be getting three paychecks from my job. I hope to keep increasing my net worth each month and hopefully one day I’ll get to $0.

I’ve been using Personal Capital (affiliate link) to help track my net worth. It keeps track of all of my financial accounts and my student loan making it pretty easy to calculate my net worth each month. It is free to sign up. If you would like to sign up I’d appreciate you using my link. All blog income, including affiliate income, goes to paying down my student loan.

Personal Capital

February Income – $3685.69

Here is a breakdown of my income for February.

Qapital $5
Interest $4.36
Online Income $320.26
Amazon FBA $593.48
Cash Back $80.05
Job $2682.54
Total $3685.69

My February income was pretty good. Receiving two full paychecks contributed most of the income for the month. I was happy to make almost $600 from FBA since I barely sent any products in during the month. I cut the prices on a lot of my items that I’d had for a while to get some more sales. I’m almost completely sold out of items now. I’ll send in a few more items this month though.

This month will be an even better month for income because I will have three paydays this month. My other sources of income will probably be down this month, but the extra paycheck from my job will easily make up for any shortfall.

Tight Fisted Miser Turns 10

I published my first blog post on Tight Fisted Miser way back on January 28,2007. It is hard to believe I’ve been writing this blog for over ten years now. I’ve been blogging even longer than that. My mostly abandoned Bank Bonuses blog was started back in December 2005. That makes me one of the longest running personal finance bloggers around.

This blog got off to a pretty good start when I first published it. I was able to attract a small amount of readers right away and my audience slowly and steadily grew for the first few years of this blog’s existence. Part of that was probably due to there being a lot fewer blogs around back then. I also wrote better and more frequent blog posts back then. I never kept track of site stats, but I think this blog’s reach peaked sometime in 2011. That was also my most profitable blogging year. I made about $20,000 from my blogs that year. I made just a little over $1000 from my blogs last year. My audience and income have both diminished considerably in the last few years.

The blog is still alive though. One of these days I will get back to blogging regularly and hopefully build the blog back up to where it used to be. It won’t be too soon since I’m working now, and then I’ll be in Europe, and then I’ll be hiking. But after I’m done with all of that I just might get the blog going again. In the meantime I will at least have my monthly income and expenses reports. I started this blog to show that being frugal allows you to have a decent life without earning a lot of money. And I feel like I’m still living proof of that. I hope to keep this blog going for another 10 years. To all who are still reading this blog, thank you for reading.

January Income – $1967.70

Here is a breakdown of my income for January.

Mystery Shop $6.5
Interest $2.77
Online Income $434.95
Amazon FBA $269.6
Cash Back $12.66
Job $1241.22
Total $1967.70

My January income was pretty good, although it was lower than December’s income. This was due to a sharp drop in my Amazon FBA income.  The FBA income went down due to fewer sales after the holiday rush, a lot of returns, and me sending in a lot less inventory since I was busy working. Although I worked the entire month I only received one paycheck so the job income wasn’t as much as it will be this month.  Now that I’m working job income will be the primary source of income and my other sources of income will be neglected until tax season is over. This month and the next two months will be great income months. By the time the job ends I should have a nice amount saved for the rest of the year.

January Expenses – $683.52

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for January.

Household $455.42
Entertainment $40
Transportation $0
Food $100.84
Student Loan $0
Travel $0
Phone $24.79
Health $62.47
Total $683.52

.

January was a  ridiculously low expense month. This was partially due to having gift cards to pay for some of my food and all of my gas. This was one of those rare months where no unusual expenses popped up.  Since my income was low last year my health insurance has gone down to $56.97 a month. My required student loan payment has gone down to $0. All of the income from this blog will still be paid towards my student loans even though I’m not obligated to make any payments this year.

Although February is a shorter month than January I am sure it will be a higher expense month. It is difficult to have two very low expense months in a row. This month I expect to pay more towards travel, transportation,food, and my student loan. Even with those increased expenses I expect to keep my total expenses below $1000.

How was your month?