Andy Hough

February 2017 Net Worth Update

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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 02/2/2017 is as follows.

Assets
Cash – $7043
IRA – $24,745
Roth IRA – $10,598
Solo 401k – $1041
Car/Stuff – $4000

Liabilities
Student Loan – $131,813
Credit Card – $2238

Net Worth = $-86,624

My net worth improved slightly since I last calculated it. This was mostly due to a strong month of FBA sales in December.  My net worth should continue to improve over the next couple of months since I’m working full-time at my seasonal tax job. If I were to not count my student loan I would have a positive net worth of $45,189.  I’m going to start tracking my net worth both with and without my student loan to see how much of a negative effect the student loan is having on my net worth.

I now have credit card debt in addition to the student loan debt.  This was actually good debt though. I took a 0% balance transfer with a 2% transaction fee from one of my student loans. This allowed me to take advantage of a credit card deal and also buy more inventory for FBA. I’ve already made a good profit from making the balance transfer. I could pay it off now, but since it is at 0% I’m delaying that in case I find another profitable use for the money.

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

Paris Vacation and Other News

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paris eiffel tower There haven’t been many posts this month since I started my tax job. I know a lot of people work full-time jobs and keep blogs going, but once I’m done with a day of work I don’t feel like doing anything. I procrastinated so long there is no point in doing my net worth post this month because it is almost next month. Starting this week I will have one day off during the week and Sundays off. My plan is to do any blogging on my weekday off. The job is going about as well as could be expected.  The main thing I don’t like about this job is that I have to be there forty hours a week. That is a problem with about any job I would work. Next season I might be able to snag a remote position. I think the job would be a lot more palatable if I were able to work from home. The main reason I’m working this job is to build up a nice cushion of money. I didn’t have any specific plans for using the money other than a hope to travel some this year.

I now have something to spend that money on. Last week I booked a flight for me and my GF to Paris where she will stay ten days and I will stay twenty-three. The Paris trip came about due to there being some super cheap flights from Boston to Paris. I was able to book a round-trip ticket for $324. I booked the flight through the Chase Ultimate Rewards travel portal using my Sapphire Preferred card which gives me 1.5 my points when they are used for travel. That meant I only had to use about $215 worth of points to book the ticket. I was able to book both of our tickets using my credit card points and I still have enough points left for another $1500 of travel. Most of the points came from the very generous credit card sign up bonus. Credit card spending for my FBA business helped boost my points quite a bit as well. We’re using Southwest points to get from Kansas City to Boston.  I now have to come up with a plan to cover our hotel for the trip. My GF and I both just signed up for a credit card that will give us each two free nights. That will take care of four nights so we’ll need to cover six more nights. I’m considering booking a place through AirBnB. Their prices are pretty cheap compared to a hotel and they would be very convenient. There is still plenty of time before I have to decide on that.

In addition to the flight and hotel there will be the cost of seeing the various sights, local transportation, food and other stuff. I’ll try to get deals on that stuff too. Since I got such a good deal on airfare I can probably splurge a little on that stuff and still have a relatively low-budget vacation so I won’t worry about getting deals too much. If any of  you have tips on what we should and shouldn’t do while in Paris I would love to hear them.

Tips And Tricks For Passing The Financial Portion Of The CPA Exam

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If you’re preparing to take the CPA test, you may think that the whole process can be overwhelming. Not only is the test difficult to pass, but you have to study and prepare for four different sections that have equal importance. The entire exam is quite comprehensive, so you have to learn a lot, and learn it well, to pass with flying colors.

Fortunately, you don’t have to kill yourself with all-night study sessions, as we have compiled a list of tips and tricks for you to use. In this article, we’ll focus on the Financial Accounting and Reporting (FAR) section, which goes over maintenance of your client’s finances so you can report them to the government properly. These tips come from CPA tutors, so make sure that you make this part of your CPA study material.

Take FAR First

If you talk to most people who have passed the CPA test, they all recommend that you start with this section because it is the longest and it’s good to get out of the way. Because this part takes the longest to study for, and you have a limited amount of time to take all four sections, you want to utilize your time wisely. This way, you can study as much as you want before you start the clock on your CPA exam.

Don’t Rush Studying

Because FAR is the biggest section of the exam, you have to spend the most time studying it. The concepts are not very difficult, but there is a lot to learn. Don’t try to speed things along or skip over things and hope that you won’t see them on the test. It’s far better to go slow and steady for this section.

Learn the Layout

Before you take the test, it is a great idea to learn what parts will be on it so that you can prepare yourself better. The sections of FAR are conceptual framework, financial statement accountants, specific transactions events and disclosures, and accounting for government and private entities.

Overall, when it comes to CPA tutoring you can check out CPA Exam Guy. They offer several different resource for studying for the CPA exam. You may want to take your time and move forward once you’ve mastered each section. This will ensure that you will be well prepared to pass the entire exam.

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December Income – $2587.59

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Here is a breakdown of my income for December.

Qapital $5
Interest $1.79
Online Income $105.85
Amazon FBA $2453.72
Cash Back $21.23
Total $2587.59

 
My December income was pretty good. Amazon sales go crazy from the last half of November through Christmas and I was able to send in quite a bit of inventory to benefit from those sales. December was my most profitable month on Amazon FBA so far. I hope I’m able to send in more inventory and do even better next holiday season. If I was able to make this much every month from FBA I wouldn’t need any other sources of income. If I was able to make this kind of money from FBA and  earn a full-time job income I’d be doing really great.

FBA income will be way down this month now that the holiday sales are over. Also, I won’t be sending in much inventory this month since my time will be taken up by my job. On the plus side, I will be working full-time this month and will make a decent amount of money. I’ll only get one paycheck  this month so my income will actually be lower this month. It should be a nice amount higher the next three months though. I plan to build up a nice cushion of savings in order to be able to travel and/or do whatever the rest of the year without being overly worried about money.

December Expenses – $1523.68

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Here is a breakdown of my expenses for December.

Household $444.82
Entertainment $0
Transportation $40
Food $56.36
Student Loan $500
Travel $0
Phone $298.88
Health $183.62
Total $1523.68

December was a low expense month. A big reason for the low expenses was the use of gift cards purchased in November that were reflected in November’s expenses. The use of a previously purchased movie gift card allowed us to go to the movies a couple of times and still have a $0 entertainment expense for the month. The use of restaurant gift cards allowed me to only have a food expense of $56.36. Most of that total was made up of the $50 a month I contribute towards groceries each month.

 

The big bills were $500 to my student loan and almost $300 of phone expense.  If you take away those two expenses I would be under my monthly target of $1000 in expenses. The student loan payment was made to reach the max  $2500 student loan interest tax deduction.

The phone expense reflects over $250 spent to purchase a Nexus 5x in order to switch to Google Fi phone service. My Virgin Mobile phone died on me and I decided to try out Google’s phone service. I didn’t want to spend so much on a phone, but the 5x was the cheapest phone they had.  The new phone plan should save me a few bucks a month, but it will take a long time to make up for the cost of the phone.

I expect January to be a low expense month and most of my expenses should be in their normal range. Sometime this week I plan to post a yearly summary of my expenses and income.

How was your month?