Andy Hough

September 2016 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 each month.

My net worth as of 9/1/2016 is as follows.

Assets
Cash – $3313.19 (-$1080.23)
IRA – $23,904.31 (+$64.57)
Roth IRA – $10,378.74 (+$58.49)
Solo 401k – 992.54 (NA)
Car/Stuff – $4600 (-$100)

Liabilities
Student Loan – $129,663.70 ($111.47)

Net Worth = $-86,474.92

My net worth increased by $46.84 since the last update. An increase is better than a decrease but my net worth is still less than it was in July. I need some bigger increases. I’ve put in a couple of job applications the past week. I’m hoping one of those comes through so I can increase my income.

Although I paid over $700 on my student loan last month the balance only decreased a little over $100. Since the loan charges over $600 a month interest it is really difficult to make progress on paying down the loan. I need to increase my income dramatically to be able to get ahead on this loan.

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

August Income – $1824.38

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Here is a breakdown of my income for August.

Job $0
Interest $1.52
Online Income $143.40
Amazon FBA $1551.92
Uber $7.61
Cash Back $119.93
Total $1824.38

My income was pretty good in August considering I didn’t have any job income. I was aiming to make about as much in August as in July and I came within $40 which I consider close enough. The big contributor to my income this month was Amazon FBA.  I sold almost all of the inventory I bought in July from the hardware store that was going out of business. Unfortunately, I didn’t find another great source of inventory like the hardware store in August so next month’s FBA income will be considerably less. When you are doing Retail Arbitrage (RA) you constantly have to be finding new inventory. That is a skill I still need to improve. In the long run I think my FBA business will do better if I focus on wholesale and private label products. I don’t have any wholesale or private label products yet.

My cash back income was a lot less in August. The $1000 in cash back in July was an anomaly. I still made over $100 in cash back in August which is pretty good for extra money. If you sign up for Mr. Rebates you can help me make more cash back and earn cash back for yourself as well.  Later this month I am going to write a post with all the cash back sites I use.

Although I’ve done okay without a job the last couple of months I am looking to get another job in order to increase my income and meet some financial goals.

August Expenses – $1673.22

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Here is a breakdown of my expenses for August.

Household $403.21
Entertainment $6.49
Transportation $77.70
Food $184.14
Student Loan $749.40
Travel $89.14
Phone $36.79
Health $126.35
Total $1673.22

My August expenses were nice and low. I’m quite happy with the total expenses for the month. If you deduct the $749.40 I paid towards my student loan then my total expenses for the month were under $1000 which is my stretch goal for every month. The extra paid towards my student loan in August came from my online income. I have committed to using all income earned from my blogs to pay down my student loan.  If you buy something or sign up for a service through one of the affiliate links on this site the money I earn in commission will go towards my student loan. It had been a few months since I had made an extra payment which resulted in the large payment in August. I need to start making the payments every month I have online income so it isn’t such a hit to my checking account when I make the extra payment.

The only expense category I wasn’t happy with in August was the food category. I spent way too much money on food in August. Some of that was due to my Vegas trip where I paid over $16 for a Shake Shack (overrated) meal. Even without the trip my food spending would have been way too high. I’m aiming to cut that expense in half this month.

Other than that I expect my expenses in September to be pretty similar to August.

Saving with Spare Change Apps

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spare change appsThere have been a number of spare change apps come out in the last couple of years. Apps such as Acorns, Digit, and Qapital all have the goal of automatically saving your spare change. You have probably read a review of some of these apps on other personal finance blogs. Almost all of the reviews I’ve read seem to think these apps are a great idea. I’m going to give the other bloggers the benefit of the doubt and assume they are not just giving  the apps a good review due to being an affiliate of the apps.  To be clear, I don’t have any problem with bloggers being affiliates for the apps. I’m an affiliate myself, I just think in some cases it might keep the bloggers from mentioning the cons of the apps. I do think  there are positives to the spare change apps, but there are some significant negatives as well.

One of the main things I didn’t like about these apps when I first learned about them is that they took random amounts of money out of your account and put it into savings. I like to have more control over my money and want to know exactly how much is going from my checking account to the app account. The Acorns app has a $1 monthly fee. That might not seem like much, but when you’re saving such small amounts that could easily equate to a 5% fee or more. Digit and Qapital don’t have monthly fees which make them a better option in my opinion.

My biggest complaint about these apps is that the amounts put into savings are too small. I used Qapital for about a month and a half and it put $36 into the app savings account. Such a small amount of savings is not going to add up very quickly. It would be a lot easier to just set up an automatic transfer from checking to savings of $100 a month or whatever amount you can afford. Personally, I just send money to my IRA or 401k whenever I have some spare money and I haven’t had a problem maxing out my IRA. If instead of sending the money to a no interest savings account the apps sent the money directly to my IRA or to pay my student loan I would find these apps much more appealing. Since that would prevent the app from making money on their savings accounts I don’t see this kind of change taking place.

I realize that some people suck  at saving  money or have just never started saving money and they might find it easier to use one of these apps. Even though it is super easy to transfer money from your checking account to your IRA I know a lot of people will find it to be too much of a bother. For those people, these spare change apps could be a good deal. I think the apps might also be good for parents who are trying to teach their teens to save.

If you are already in control of your personal finances and have already developed a savings habit then I don’t think you should bother with these apps.  You could use one of these apps to save money in addition to the money you regularly save. Personally, I don’t think it is worth my time to save money with these apps since it is another account  I need to monitor and will use up more of my limited time and mental bandwidth. Since I already save (or pay down debt with) a large percentage of my income it is doubtful the apps will result in any extra money saved for me.

All of that being said I do have a Qapital referral link for those that are interested. If you sign up through the referral link and make a deposit towards your goal we will both make $5.  If you would like a referral link via email you can leave a comment or send me an email and I’ll send you a referral link.

Do you think spare change apps actually help people save money?

 

How I’m Getting 3 Hotel Nights in Las Vegas for $47.51

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Welcome_to_fabulous_las_vegas_signThis week I’ll be in Las Vegas from Tuesday to Friday. This trip was planned about a month ago. I had some airfare credit on  Southwest from volunteering to be bumped last year that was about to expire and decided to use it for a trip to Vegas. With my airfare covered a hotel room was the only major expense I needed to pay. I originally only planned to stay two nights in Vegas. Then I found out my mom had also planned a trip to Vegas with a couple of my aunts and they would be arriving the day after I left. Therefore, I decided to stay another night which will allow me to have lunch with my mom and my aunts at the airport when they arrive. I felt it was worth paying for an extra day in Vegas in order to get to meet them. I also get the value of another day to do stuff in Vegas and as I explain in this post the extra day isn’t going to cost me much.

I had several options to choose from to get cheap or even free hotel rooms in Vegas.  I have Starpoints that I could have used to book a free room at a Four Points. I decided not to use the Starpoints since hotel rooms are already cheap in Vegas I could get a lot better value from my Starpoints using them elsewhere.

I also could have used some of my Chase Ultimate Rewards to book three hotel nights. I decided not to use my Ultimate Rewards for a couple of reasons. One is that when booking through the Chase site your Ultimate Rewards only cover the base hotel cost and taxes, they don’t cover resort fees. I’d still have to pay the resort fees out of pocket. I could write a rant post about resort fees, but I’ll save that for another day. Another reason for not using my Ultimate Rewards is that although I can use them to pay for a hotel without paying anything out of pocket it isn’t really free to use them.  Ultimate Rewards can be redeemed for cash so using them to pay for a hotel basically costs you the amount you could have gotten by redeeming the points for cash. For example, if it cost me 2800 UR points to book a hotel which I could have redeemed for $28 in cash then I’m basically paying $28 for the hotel. When you add the foregone cash to the resort fees then the hotel night from using my UR points wasn’t really free. Using the UR points would still have been an okay deal, but I had a better option.

Wyndham Rewards currently has a promotion awarding you with $100 in Wyndham gift cards when you stay two times with them during the promotion period.  I stayed at a Wyndham property once during my April hike and once during my July hike and satisfied the terms of the promotion. The $100 in Wyndham gift cards is awarded as four $25 gift cards and only one gift card can be used per each hotel stay. Also, the cards have to be used by October 31, 2016.   That makes it a little difficult to take advantage of all the gift cards since you need four different stays to use up the gift cards.

I mostly solved that problem by booking one night at three different hotels. Wyndham has a lot of properties in Vegas making it easy to stay at three different hotels. It will be a little bit of a hassle to have to check in three different times, but these are small properties so I don’t anticipate a long check-in line like you sometimes have at the mega hotels. My first night I’m staying at a property that doesn’t have a resort fee and I’ll only be paying $7 and change for my room. The other two nights I’m staying at properties that have casinos and I’ll be paying $20 and change each night for my room. I could have saved a little more money by staying at non-casino properties. However, the casino properties had much better locations for my purposes so it was worth paying a little extra. After all, $20 a night is still pretty cheap.

My only other expenses will be bus, food, and gambling.  The bus will be pretty cheap. I’m going to get a 24 hour pass for $8 the first day and I might get another 24 hour pass for the last day. The max I think I’ll spend on the bus is $16. Food will be cheap since I like cheap food. I don’t consider food a travel expense since I eat out all the time when I’m at home too.  I’ll be sure to eat at In n Out at least once and I’d like to try Shake Shack while I’m there too.  I also have a couple of free buffets from playing My Vegas Slots.  If I’m not too unlucky gambling the entire trip should cost me less than $100 out-of-pocket.  Although I’m far from a master at travel hacking, I hope this shows how it is possible to travel without spending a lot of money.