Andy Hough

Tidying Up My Finances

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Earlier year there was a lot of buzz about tidying up due to Marie Kondo’s show on Netflix. After watching the show I decided to do some tidying up myself. Since I prefer not to own a lot of things and don’t own a lot of things there wasn’t much tidying up for me to do. I did manage to make my sock and underwear drawer look a little nicer.

After tidying up my material possessions I considered what else I could tidy up. I decided it would make sense to tidy up my financial life. Last summer I counted all the different places I had money and it turned out I had money in 16 different places. I also had quite a few credit cards due to opening many accounts for the sign up bonuses. Even though I can use an app like Personal Capital to help keep track of all my different accounts it can still be burdensome to stay on top of that many different accounts.

Over the last few months I have closed many of my smaller financial accounts. These were bank accounts or financial apps that I opened for the bonus and then didn’t both to close since there was no fee for keeping them open. Even though there was no fee to keep the accounts open, it was better for me to close them to preserve my mental bandwidth. Some of the financial apps were opened for small $5 or $10 bonuses. Going forward, I will require a more substantial bonus before I open a new account. Although the small bonuses were easy money I still might have been better off using my time on something potentially more rewarding.

I have also canceled three credit cards. Closing credit cards can hurt your credit score which is why I kept the ones with no annual fee open even after they no longer proved useful. Since I have an excellent credit score I don’t need to worry if my credit score drops 10 or 20 points from closing a card. A drop of that amount wouldn’t affect the credit available to me. I have monitored my credit score since closing the accounts and it doesn’t seem that closing them resulted in a noticeable difference in my score. It has stayed in roughly the same 10 point range all year. I’m not going to stop opening up credit cards for the sign up bonus since the bonuses can be quite lucrative. I will be quicker to close accounts that no longer provide me with any benefit after the bonus is earned. Also, when considering which credit card bonus to sign up for I will give a preference to credit cards that provide useful benefits to me after the bonus is earned.

To make my retirement accounts simpler I moved my Roth IRA to Fidelity. I had already moved my traditional IRA over a couple of years ago. Since Fidelity manages my work 401k having my Roth and traditional IRA with them as well makes it easy to see how I’m doing on saving for retirement. I still have a solo 401k with Etrade that I might transfer to Fidelity as well. When opening my solo 401k I chose Etrade over Fidelity for some reason, but I no longer remember what it was. I need to review Fidelity’s solo 401k offering and see how it compares. There is also a chance that I will just rollover the solo 401k into my work 401k or traditional IRA. Now that I’m over 50 and qualify to make catch up contributions to my work 401k and IRA I haven’t been able to max out those contributions. Thus, it isn’t really necessary to have the solo 401k as well.

Making those changes has simplified my finances quite a bit. Since I plan to continue chasing bank and credit card bonuses my finances will not get much simpler. I think getting the bonuses is worth making my finances slightly more complex. For now, I’m satisfied with the tidiness of my finances.

April Income – $4686.92

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Here is a breakdown of my income for April.

Interest $6.30
Amazon FBA $50.78
Job $4198.82
Class Action $40
Cashback $28.65
Dividends $15.81
Online $346.56
Total $4686.92

April was another great month for income. It wasn’t quite as great as March though. That was to be expected since I didn’t have a big boost from tax refunds in April.

My two negative sources of income from last month turned into positive sources of income for April. Amazon FBA income was still weak. I’ve been having way too many returns this year. When I get back to the U.S. I will work on improving my FBA income. I’m also going to sell some stuff on eBay and perhaps locally.

I had a good month for online income. I almost made enough to cover the expenses I’ve already paid this year.  I got a payout from Google Adsense for the month and received payment for some sponsored posts on one of my other blogs.

I also was paid an affiliate commission during April.  Since it wasn’t received until May it will be included in May’s income. My links for Bluehost (aff link) and  (aff link) Hostgator for web hosting and Namecheap (aff link) for domain names didn’t result in any commissions.

My dividend income decreased slightly for the month.  I’m not adding anything to my dividend portfolio the next couple of months so this income will stay roughly the same

I made $40 from a random class action settlement. I don’t remember ever being notified I was part of the suit. Getting the check in the mail was a nice surprise.

April’s income mostly consisted of job income. It was a good amount considering it was only for two and a half weeks. Due to the lack of job income, this month’s income will be down significantly.

How was your month?

April Expenses – $989.05

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Here is a breakdown of my expenses for April. Since it is a day ahead here in Thailand I can post my expenses for the month before the month has ended back in the U.S.

Household$39.08
Rent$341.50
Entertainment$35.95
Transportation$66.61
Food$175.95
Travel$73.99
Phone$0
Student Loan$132.58
Health$123.39
Total$989.05

My April expenses were nice and low. I managed to get my expenses under my target of $1000 for the month. For the year, I’m still averaging under $1000 a month. If I were able to keep my monthly average for the entire year under $1000 a month that would be great. That won’t be easy to do since I plan on getting over a $1000 of dental work done this year and there are always unplanned expenses sometime during the year. It will be a good goal to work towards.

Rent was low as usual. I paid $200 to my Mom for rent for the first half of April and paid $141.50 for one month’s rent in Thailand. My rent in Thailand is paid through May 22nd. That should result in an even lower rent total for May unless I rent a more expensive place when I move to Chiang Mai.

Transportation was super cheap. My transportation expenses consisted of two years registration for my car and the safety inspection which was required to renew my registration. I managed to not have any airport taxi or shuttle expenses for the month by planning ahead. My hotels in Shanghai and Bangkok both offered free shuttles to and from the hotel. I had to go from BKK (the international airport in Bangkok) to DMK (the domestic/budget airport in Bangkok) to take my domestic Thailand flight. I managed to do this for free by taking the free shuttle between BKK and DMK. Since I had a morning flight from DMK I arrived the night before to be safe. I stayed at a hotel about 15 minutes walk from DMK saving me from having to pay for a taxi there.

My food expense was high by my standards. I didn’t worry about keeping my food expense low for the month since my food expense is low by most people’s standards even when I’m not especially trying to keep it low. This amount was up a bit this month since I ate out a lot and I bought a few meals for my girlfriend as well. The only food expense I regretted for the month was paying $9.50 for a terrible breakfast buffet at my hotel for my girlfriend and me. I thought the breakfast was included with my room or I never would have had it. Oh well, there are always going to be some money mistakes.

The household expense was for some hangers, shampoo, a toothbrush, and some other small items. I also bought my girlfriend some clothes as a birthday present.

Entertainment was for three movies plus concessions. I was worried that I wasn’t going to be able to see Avengers Endgame here. The week I arrived all of their movies were dubbed in Thai. Luckily, for Avengers they have one showtime a day that is English with Thai subtitles rather than being dubbed in Thai. My entertainment expense will go up in May if there are more movies with English audio that I can see. If not, I’ll have to wait until I get to Chiang Mai to see more movies which will keep this expense low.

Travel was for a VPN subscription and the annual fee for my Chase IHG card. Since I have to use public wifi when I’m traveling I thought it was smart to get a VPN. I managed to get a super cheap deal. Maybe too cheap, since I’ve had some trouble with the VPN getting disconnected. That wasn’t an issue with the VPN I used last year. Paying the annual fee on my IHG card gives me a free night at an IHG hotel so I’ll get more than $49 of value from that later this year.

There was no phone bill this month since I traded in my old phone and the credit I received completely wiped out the bill for the month. My only health expense was for my monthly health insurance premium. I’m still using my same Google Fi phone service here in Thailand. I mostly use wifi, but occasionally have to use my phone’s data so there will be a phone bill for May. I plan to see a dentist once I’m in Chiang Mai so my health expense will go up as well.

Overall, April was a great month for low expenses and I expect May will be as well, other than a possible big dental bill.

My New Thailand Apartment

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My apartment in Uttaradit Thailand.

After four different hotel rooms in four nights I am now settling down as I have rented a room for the next month. I did have some people interested in how to find an apartment in Thailand so I will share that process. This apartment hunt took place in a smaller city in Thailand and I was assisted by my Thai girlfriend so my search won’t be relevant to a lot of visitors to Thailand. I’ll probably move to Chiang Mai next month. My apartment hunt there will be more typical and I’ll share that process too.

This apartment costs 4500 baht a month which is about 141 U.S. dollars. There is also a 500 baht fee for weekly cleaning. This didn’t appear to be optional so adding this fee the price for the month is about $156. There is also a 100 baht per month charge for water and electricity costs 8 baht per unit. Since it is over 100 Fahrenheit every day right now the electric bill might be expensive. Like most apartments in Thailand a deposit of one month’s rent was also required. When I leave next month they will deduct the cleaning, water, and electric charges from the deposit and refund the rest to me. They let me use my credit card to pay for the rent and deposit which made things simpler.

The room isn’t quite as nice as the room I had in Chiang Mai. It doesn’t have a couch, kitchen, or a proper desk area. It also doesn’t have a fitness center. It has a pool, but you are charged for every use making it unlikely I’ll use the pool much. Since I never used the kitchen when in CM not having a kitchen doesn’t matter to me. It does have a small table with plastic chairs that I use when I’m tired of sitting/lying on the bed and when I’m using my laptop. This apartment was chosen mainly for its location. It is about a 20 minute walk away from the Tesco shopping center which in addition to the Tesco supermarket has a movie theater, several restaurants, and various other shops. Overall, I think it is a great deal for the money.

My apartment search for this room took just a few hours. My girlfriend drove me to several places which helped a lot since I wouldn’t have been able to walk everywhere and I wouldn’t have known where to go. Our first stop was a hotel that my GF knew and liked. From the outside it looked pretty nice, but they didn’t have any rooms available for monthly rental. Our second stop was a room in a small complex owned by GF’s cousin. This room was quite basic but acceptable considering the price of about $95 a month. I didn’t choose this room since it was a little far away from the supermarket and restaurants. Plus, I knew I could go up quite a bit in quality for not much more money. The third place we visited was the hotel I stayed at when I was here last year. They had a room available for 4500 baht per month. Since it was fairly close to shopping and restaurants and I knew I liked it after staying there last year we decided to rent this room. Since this was Sunday when we were looking we wouldn’t be able to sign the contract for the room until the next day.

On our way back to the hotel we came across another apartment building. They had lots of rooms available for just $3500 baht per month. The rooms were really old and dark and the building didn’t seem very clean so I passed on this place. After returning to our hotel we thought to ask if the hotel had monthly rooms. It turned out they did and I ended up renting my room from the hotel and cancelling the other room. If I would have asked at the hotel first we wouldn’t have had to do any apartment hunting. I think I would have been just as happy at the other 4500 baht per month hotel. Shopping is slightly closer to this hotel and it does have a pool if I want to use it so I decided this was a slightly better choice.

So I guess my advice for apartment hunting in Thailand is to ask at your hotel first or have your Thai girlfriend help you or both. Joking aside, I hope the apartment hunt information was somewhat helpful and/or interesting.

March Income – $5554.56

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Here is a breakdown of my income for March.

Interest $6.51
Amazon FBA ($58.48)
Job $5719.42
Bank Bonus $125
Cashback $111.30
Dividends $19.21
Online ($368.40)
Total $5554.56

March was another great month for income. Although there were no tax refunds in March, I did have three paydays which gave a significant boost to my income. I also worked a little more overtime and upped my 401k contribution percentage to boost my pay a little.

There were two negative sources of income for the month. I didn’t have any Amazon FBA sales and I had one FBA return resulting in a loss for the month. I’m not doing too well with FBA so far this year. I’m only up about $9. That is not a very good return on my time invested. I should make at least a little from FBA this month. Amazon damaged one of my items and they should reimburse me for the item before the end of the month. I’m also going to send in a small shipment of items to sell.

My big negative income was my online income. I haven’t made any online income this year, but I have had expenses. I paid Bluehost (aff link)for three years of hosting. I considered transferring my hosting back to (aff link) Hostgator (my hosting provider before Bluehost) to get their introductory pricing, but ultimately decided I didn’t want to go through the ordeal of switching hosting providers.

I also transferred a domain name from GoDaddy to Namecheap and renewed the name for a year. Namecheap (aff link) is a little cheaper than GoDaddy and doesn’t charge extra to keep Whois information private so I plan to eventually transfer all my domain names to them.

I will make some online income this month. I will get paid by Adsense and I might get an affiliate commission as well.  Maybe if some people sign up through the hosting or domain name affiliate links in this post I might make it to positive income territory in the next couple of months.

My dividend income increased slightly for the month.  I only added $100 to my dividend portfolio in March since I’m saving for my Thailand trip. I did reinvest some dividends in more stock as well.  Before the year is out I should have enough monthly dividend income to pay my phone bill.

I made $125 from a bank  bonus. There won’t be any more bank bonuses for the next few months since they are difficult for me to manage when I’m out of the country and don’t have a check to direct deposit to qualify for the bonus. Some people make thousands each year from bank bonuses. That might be difficult for me to do since I don’t have the cash flow that they do, but making $1000 might be possible. I’ll pursue more bank bonuses once I return from Thailand.

I did great on cash back for the month. I had $57 of cashback from my Fidelity card automatically deposited into my IRA that I wasn’t even expecting so that was a nice surprise. I also had cash back from another credit card and two shopping portals. All the little sources of cash back add up to a helpful  bit of income.

April’s income will be quite a bit less since I’ll only have two paychecks and the second one won’t be for a full pay period. Income should still be quite a bit more than expenses so I can’t complain.

How was your month?