Andy Hough

June Income – $805.44

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Here is a breakdown of my income for June.

Online Income $219.67
Interest $0.91
Cash Back $10.41
Amazon FBA $53.65
Uber $153.8
Mystery Shop $15
Unemployment $202
Bank Bonus $150
Total $805.44

June was another terrible income month although it was at least better than May.  My various sources of income just don’t add up to a very significant amount.  They have a long way to go to provide replacement income for a job.

I did have three sources of income this month that I didn’t have last month. The first was a bank bonus of $150. That was pretty easy money. I need to find a new bank bonus to do now. The second was mystery shopping. This income is a month behind so this is from shops I did in May. I did a couple more in June so I’ll have mystery shopping income in July as well. The third source of income was unemployment. This is the first time I have ever filed for unemployment. The process wasn’t too difficult. The pay isn’t great though. I only received one week of unemployment since one week counted as a waiting week and the week after that I was employed again. The one week I did receive was a small check since it was based on my Missouri earnings last year and I made about 40% of my income in Kansas last year. My Uber earnings also reduced my check. I’m glad I don’t have to depend on an unemployment check to pay my bills.

The good news is that I did find employment and work the last two weeks of June. This is a document review job that I have done before. It is project based so my employment and hours fluctuate depending on whether there is a project available for me to work on. I only worked two days this week since my project came to an end. I’ll be starting a new project on Monday that will hopefully last until the third week of July when I’ll have to take some time off for my dental implant surgery. With the paycheck I received today and the one I’ll get next week my July earnings will already be more than my June earnings. I’m hoping I can add a lot more earnings before the month is over.

Student Loan Payoff Progress Report – June 2015

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studentloanpayoff I didn’t make any progress on paying off my student loan this month. Since I’ve been unsuccessful in finding a job and haven’t been making much money from my other endeavors I was only able to make the minimum monthly payment of $183.16. Since my loan accrues $21.26 in interest each day my loan balance has increased a few hundred dollars this month. That isn’t the direction I want my balance to go. I probably made a mistake by taking out the credit card balance transfer loans to pay down my student loan when I didn’t have a job. I felt certain I would have a job soon. Unfortunately, that feeling was wrong.

For now, I think I need to put my goal of paying off my student loan on hold. I need to concentrate on paying my monthly bills and putting any extra towards paying down the balance transfers on my credit cards. If I’m not able to pay them off before the 0% promotional rate ends then I’ll be stuck paying a ton of interest. That is why paying off the credit cards needs to be my priority now. Next month I will be getting three dental implants which will cost me $2700. The money I had set aside to pay for the implants has gone to pay for my medical bills from being hit by a car and another medical problem. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that the driver’s insurance company is going to offer me a fair settlement so it could be quite a while before I’m reimbursed for those medical bills.

In order to make decent progress on paying off the student loans I need to find a job making $60,000 or more. Although I’m confident that I will eventually be able to find a job I seriously doubt that I’ll be able to find a job paying that much. That is waaaay more than I have ever earned before. A more likely scenario is a job that pays around $40,000 and I make the rest of the $60k from other sources such as blogging, Amazon FBA, and Uber. Until I’m able to significantly improve my financial situation I will need to keep the student loan payoff on hold and concentrate on paying off my credit cards.

How I Get Quadruple Savings on Gas

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fuelgaugeYou may have noticed that gas prices have been going up the past few weeks. The best way to prevent the rise in gas prices from impacting your budget is to drive less. If that is not an option for you then perhaps one or all of my ways to get quadruple savings on gas can help you reduce your gas expense.

The first way I save on gas is by buying a discounted gas card. Ebay recently had $100 BP gas cards on sale for $90 which was a great deal. You rarely see a 10% discount on gas cards. There was a purchase limit of three cards. I would have liked to have bought three, but I could only afford one since my cash flow is rather tight right now. Gas gift cards have been on sale for a discount several times in the past few months on eBay. If you don’t want to wait for the cards to be offered at a discount on eBay again you can go to GiftCardGranny.com and find the best current discount on gas cards. Gas cards are usually only offered at about a 2% discount so if you find a better deal you will want to take advantage of it.

The second way I save on gas is by using a rewards credit card to buy the discounted gas card. For the eBay purchase I used my Capital One Venture card which offers 2% cash back. Next month I will be able to get a better deal. My Discover card will be offering 5% cash back on home improvement stores. By buying BP gas cards at my local Lowe’s I’ll earn 5% cash back. Plus, I’ll earn an additional 5% cash back since I’m enrolled in Discover’s double cash back promotion. This will mean giving up the opportunity to save by buying a discounted gas card online but using the credit card in store will be a better deal unless there is a great 10% discount offered again.

The third way I save on gas is by going through an online portal to buy my discounted gas cards. Top Cashback and Mr. Rebates usually offer an additional 1% cash back on eBay purchases. They also offer cash back at Raise and some other online gift card sellers. If you are not yet a member of Top Cashback or Mr. Rebates please consider signing up through my referral links. Mr. Rebates will give you a $5 bonus for signing up.

The fourth way I save money on gas is by being a member of the BP Driver Rewards program. Other gas station chains offer similar programs. I use the BP Rewards program because it is the best deal in my area and the BP stations have competitive gas prices. Currently, the program offers 25 cents off per gallon when you spend $100 on fuel. The rewards are valid for up to 20 gallons of fuel which isn’t a problem for me since my tank doesn’t hold 20 gallons.

All of the savings add up to a nice discount. For my last gas card purchase I paid $90 for a $100 card. I earned 2% cash back on the $90 for another $1.80 in savings. I earned 1.1% cash back by going through the TopCashback portal for another 99 cents in savings. The result is that I ending up spending a net total of $87.21 for a $100 gift card. Since I bought a $100 gift card the percentage off math is pretty simple. 100 – 87.21 results in a 12.79% discount. On my last fill-up I received 7 cents off a gallon which was a 1.9% discount based on the gas price at that time. Adding the discounts together I received 14.69% off my gas. It isn’t always possible to receive that much of a discount. For the next few months I will be saving in excess of 10% on gas though and it should always be possible to save at least 5%. Over the course of a year these savings can add up to a fairly significant amount.

May Income – $413.30

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Here is a breakdown of my income for May.

Online Income $25.36
Interest $0.79
Cash Back $7.20
Amazon FBA $164.02
Uber $201.97
Sell Stuff $13.96
Total $413.30

May was a terrible month for income. I was supposed to start a temporary document review job in May, but the start date was delayed three separate times. I’m still not sure when (or even if the job) will start. I was way too lazy in May. I kept off working Uber more or doing other things to make money since I thought I would be starting my document review job soon and making good money from that. Since I’m not sure that I’ll have any job income this month I need to start driving for Uber a lot more and start selling a lot more stuff. It is doubtful those two things will be enough to replace my job income, but I should be able to make a lot more money than I did in May. My savings took a hit in May and I can’t continue to let that happen.

One tiny bright spot was my FBA earnings.  This month’s profit was about $5 higher than last month’s making for my new best profit month ever. Unfortunately, this month will most likely not be a good month for FBA income. Since I didn’t make much money last month my Amazon payments mostly went to paying my personal living expenses rather than being used to buy more inventory. I have very little inventory left to sell on FBA. Unless I can find some really cheap inventory to sell or my job starts I won’t be able to buy any new inventory this month and the FBA income will dwindle.

I do have a lot of stuff around the house I can sell on eBay,Craigslist or Facebook. I need to concentrate on doing that this month rather than buying new things to sell. I should be able to make at least a few hundred dollars from selling stuff if I get most of it listed online for sale.

May Expenses – $1161.28

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Here is a breakdown of my expenses for May.

Household $452.83
Entertainment $20.16
Transportation $58.53
Food $138.29
Student Loan $183.86
Travel $0.00
Phone $36.78
Health $270.83
Total $1161.28

 

My May expenses were once again fairly low although I did miss my goal of $1000 or less in spending for the month. If It wouldn’t have been for some medical bills and medicine I would have made the $1000 goal. The $1000 spending goal probably won’t be achievable for the next couple of months since more bills will be coming due.

Usually my only health expenses is $83.13 for my health insurance. This month I also had to pay $159.19 for a doctor visit and lab fees, and $28.51 for some medicine. These medical bills were not related to my accident. I also paid some medical bills related to the accident, but I’m not including them here since I expect to eventually get reimbursed for those bills. I’ll have another medical visit this month that is unrelated to the accident so this month so depending on when the bill is due my medical expenses will be higher than normal again.

Travel and entertainment expenses were low because I was able to erase most of them using my credit card rewards. Office Max had a deal in May that allowed me to rack up quite a bit in rewards. It isn’t likely that there will be that good of a deal this month which means the travel and entertainment expense will be higher. I don’t plan on traveling this month so that expense might still be $0. Entertainment expense should still be fairly low since I do have some free gift cards to use up.

My transportation expense was fairly low since my only expense was $58.53 for gas. This total was helped by a free $20 gas card an insurance company gave for getting an auto insurance quote from them. Some of this gas was used driving for Uber or going on mystery shops which I’ll be able to deduct the mileage for those on my taxes. Once you factor in the mileage deduction my transportation cost for the month will be even lower.

I did make some extra student loan payments in May as well, but I’m not reporting them here since they throw off the average. You can see my progress on paying off my student loan in the right sidebar.

Other than the exceptions I have already noted my June expenses should be about the same.