Andy Hough

April Income – $2747.38

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Here is a breakdown of my income for April.

Online Income $105
Interest $2.53
Cash Back $45.06
Amazon FBA $159.91
Jobs $2434.88
Total $2747.38

 

April was a good month for income. It should have been a little better. I was expecting to receive two full paychecks in April. Unfortunately, I missed three days plus a couple of hours due to being hit by a car. Getting hit by a car is not good for your finances. I should get paid for that time eventually, but it will probably be a while.

My Amazon FBA income was my best yet. It is still a long ways away from being a full-time income though. I’m trying to ramp that income up and hopefully I will be successful.

My other sources didn’t contribute much and that probably won’t change this month. This month will likely have a big drop in income since I no longer have my full-time job. There is a possibility that I’ll be starting a temporary job tomorrow. Since I haven’t heard from the employer yet I’m thinking that job probably isn’t going to happen. If I don’t get the job I plan on driving for Uber to make up some of the job income. In order to keep paying down my student loans I can’t have any poor income months. I plan on working full-time hours at my various endeavors and I’m hoping that results in a full-time income.

 

 

Paying Off My Student Loans

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studentloanpayoff I have decided to pay off my student loans. This is something I’ve been considering since last year. After doing some calculations on a student loan calculator I saw that when my student loans are finally forgiven under the income-based repayment plan I would owe almost six figures in tax on the forgiven amount. Financially, I come out about the same whether I pay the loan off over the next 10 years or pay the minimum allowed under the IBR plan. It makes more sense to pay down the loan now while I’m able to make decent money though. Under the IBR plan the loan would be forgiven when I’m 67 years old and I don’t want to have six figures of tax debt at that age.

At the beginning of April I owed $138,690.66 on my student loan. Hopefully, that is the highest it will ever be. At the end of April the balance was $136,888.70. I managed to pay off about 1.3% of the loan during the month. I’ve added a widget in the sidebar to track my progress. I wish I had started paying the loan down earlier, but it wasn’t until 2013 that I was making enough to pay down the loan. I need to increase my income a lot more to be able to pay off the loan in reasonable period of time. The interest rate on my student loan is 6.875% and I incur over $600 of interest each month. That is over $7000 a year down the drain. That makes it tough to make progress. If I were on the 10 year plan my monthly payment would be approximately $1383. Therefore, I need to pay more than that if I want to have the loan paid off sooner than 10 years. That will be extremely difficult, but I don’t think it is impossible.

My main strategy for paying down the student loan is to pay everything I can towards my student loan. It is a pretty simple strategy. After paying my modest expenses, the rest of my income goes toward the student loan. Since I don’t have a steady income right now I am keeping a cushion of $3000. Once I have a steady source of income again I will reduce that cushion down to $2000. If I hadn’t bought a car in April I would have had an additional $6000 to pay towards the loan. I need the car to make money so that was a necessary expense. I’ll have a post next week on my various strategies to pay down the loan. If you have any tips on how I can pay down the loan quicker I would love to hear them.

Changes Coming…How Can I Improve Tight Fisted Miser?

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Traffic to this blog has been steadily declining the last couple of years and is a little less than half of what it was at its peak. Reader engagement has dropped to almost nothing. My post about getting hit by a car only got a couple of comments. In the past a post like that would have gotten at least a dozen comments. I’d also usually get multiple comments on almost every post. The decline in traffic and comments isn’t entirely unexpected since blogging much less of a priority the past couple of years. I’d like to change that now since it doesn’t make much sense to continue blogging if nobody is going to read my posts.

In 2012 I received a lot of criticism on a post about using the income based repayment plan to repay my student loan. Although I try not to let internet bullies bother me, the insults and disparagements did get to me. That led to fewer posts and to self-censoring my posts to avoid more criticism. I think that might have contributed to the blog’s decline in traffic and comments.

I also recently discovered a widget was redirecting some of my traffic but I don’t think that was having too big of an effect on my traffic and comments. If you have had any trouble accessing this blog please let me know and I will try to fix whatever is causing the trouble.

I do have some ideas for changes to TFM. I’m hoping the changes will actually be improvements. Last year, most of my posts were income, expense, or SWR posts. The income and expense posts will continue since I like them. I’m not sure many readers care about them though. That is why I intend to write more posts on ways to save money or money. There will be at least one post a week with actionable advice on one of those topics. The first post will be up Wednesday. I’m also planning on changing the theme and writing about paying down my student loan. Please let me know if you have any comments or suggestions on how I can improve this blog.

March FIRE Numbers – 34.71Months of Expenses Saved

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My March FIRE (financial independence retire early) numbers improved slightly. I have 34.71 months of expenses saved which is slightly more than the 33.e months of expenses I had saved in February. My goal is to have 300 months of expenses saved.

Although my ultimate goal is to save 300 months of expenses I am setting that goal aside for a while. My months of expenses saved will be going down over the next few months and will likely plateau for a few years. This is because I have decided that I need to pay off my student loans before saving for retirement. I’ll eventually write more about my plan to pay off my student loans. That post may have to wait until I get back from my hike though.

I Got Hit by a Car

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hospitalbedYesterday while walking across the street on my way to work I got hit by a car. Since the accident caused some memory loss I don’t actually remember getting hit. From what I can piece together from what the EMTs and bystanders were saying I was walking in the crosswalk and the driver of a car turning left somehow didn’t see me and hit me. I ended up with a concussion and some road rash which isn’t too bad considering I got hit by a car. Apparently, I bounced off the car and landed on my butt and then my head. If I had landed on my head first the result would have been much, much, worse.

I remember a little more about the accident today then I did yesterday. Right after the accident I remember waking up (I say waking up, but apparently I was conscious long before then) in the ambulance and asking the EMT if I could have my phone to text my girlfriend. He replied, “You’re starting to concern me, buddy. This is the fifth time you asked me that and you have already texted her.” Things were clearer after that. Once I arrived at the ER they took me for a cat scan and then wheeled me back to the ER. They had taken me to the same hospital my GF works out which I had requested so I guess I was thinking somewhat clearly when they asked me which hospital I wanted to go to. My GF was there in the ER when I got back from the cat scan which was nice. The cat scan results were good and they discharged me about 2 1/2 hours after I was admitted. I thought that was kind of quick for a concussion.
head wound

My GF took me home and stayed with me the rest of the day. She had returned to work that day after being on vacation the previous week. I was nice enough to let her get a bonus day of vacation. I’m staying home from work today and tomorrow and going back to work Thursday.

I called the police today and they said that they do have the information of the person who hit me and they do have insurance. I’m hoping that there is no problem getting all my medical bills paid and getting reimbursed for my time off work. For now I’m still planning on going on hike April 21, but I might have to change that plan. I’ll keep you updated on how everything turns out.