Andy Hough

March 2014 Goal Update 2

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I thought I would post one more update on my goal progress for the month. The next goal update after this will be a post in early April reviewing how I did on my March goals.

My goal of exercising twice a week is still being met. If I had set a goal of exercising three times a week I’d be failing this goal. My exercise hasn’t exactly been intense either. I am meeting the goal I made though. Now that I know I can meet this exercise goal I can set a more difficult exercise goal in future months.

I’m also meeting my goal of posting a post on Bank Bonuses every day. These posts are done in batches and then scheduled ahead of time which makes it fairly easy to meet this goal. The posts are about deals so I don’t have to put much original thought into them. I just write about whatever the deal is that I’m posting about that day.

My goal of selling, donating, or trashing 31 items is not going well. So far I’ve trashed a couple of items and sold a couple of items. I managed to lose money on the items I sold since I underestimated how much shipping would cost. I probably should have donated those items instead. I’ve put a couple different lots of comic books on Craiglist and have gotten very little response. I don’t have much else to sell other than comic books so it doesn’t look like I’m going to meet this goal. I did have one person tell me they would buy the comics on the first if I still had them. If that happens and I count the comics individually rather than as a lot I’d meet the goal. That isn’t what I intended when I made the goal though so I think I’ll count the comics as a lot. I’ll have to figure a better way of selling them after this month.

As you can probably tell by the lack of posting here I am not meeting my goal of writing 300 words a day. I’m way behind on this goal and I don’t think there is any chance of me catching up on it. I do have a three day vacation next week, but I want to spend it recreating rather than writing. And I doubt my girlfriend would appreciate me spending all of our vacation on the computer so the vacation won’t be a time to catch up. I’m going to set a writing goal again later this year. Once I’m not working I won’t have any excuse for not meeting an easy writing goal.

It looks like I’m going to get half of my goals accomplished this month. That is better than getting nothing accomplished, but I know I can do better. We will see if I can improve by the end of the month.

To Fincon or Not to Fincon

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I have been debating whether to attend FinCon or not this year. I went to the 2011 FinCon and enjoyed it, but missed out on a lot of the activities because I was also working the that weekend. I decided to skip the 2012 FinCon because I was too broke for it be sensible to go. FinCon 2013 was in St. Louis which is just a four hour drive away for me. That made the cost of attending pretty cheap so I bought a ticket and planned on attending. I did show up for the first morning, but I just didn’t feel comfortable with the crowds and left at the lunch break and didn’t make it back for the rest of the convention. It was a weird attack of anxiety like I hadn’t experienced since my high school days. I’m sure almost everyone would have been cool and nice if I had stayed and actually talked to people, but I wasn’t up for socializing that weekend and basically wasted my convention ticket.

If I buy a ticket to FinCon 2014 and end up not using it, that would be an even bigger waste of money. The price of a ticket is a bit higher this year and I’ve already missed out on the cheapest ticket prices. Plus, it will cost me more to fly or drive down to New Orleans. I didn’t bother getting a hotel last year. The weather was nice and I knew of nearby places that I would feel safe sleeping in my car so that is what I did. I don’t know New Orleans well enough to be comfortable sleeping in my care there. I’m not sure if there is anywhere close to the convention that I’d be able to safely sleep in my car. It may still be a little warm to sleep in my car as well, since the convention is earlier this year and in a warmer location.

Other than the financial aspect, my reason for being unsure if I want to attend is that I don’t have any plans to change my blog. The convention seems to be about growing your blog and making it into a big business. I don’t really want to turn my blog into a business. I like to write for my blog and don’t want to spend much time doing anything else having to do with the blog. It would be nice to have more readers and more engagement with my posts, but if that means spending hours each week on social media, constantly tweaking my design, experimenting with plugins, and developing an email list than I’d rather just be content with my blog as it is. For those reasons, I’ve decided not to attend FinCon this year. I do reserve the right to change my mind.

February Savings Rate – 48.32%

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I made $4138.30 in February and put $2000 in savings for a savings rate of 48.32%. That is just a bit higher than last month’s savings rate. I’m happy with that savings rate. I’m not putting money into savings quite as aggressively as I did last year. I’m planning to hike and do a bit of traveling this year after I finish my tax job. It doesn’t make any sense to put money into savings and then have to pull it right back out for travel expenses so I’m trying to save a little travel money outside of my savings.

My safe withdrawal rate decreased to 42.89%. That is still a long way from my goal of a 4% SWR, but at least I’m continuing to make progress. I should be able to get my SWR into the thirties this month. The 4% SWR translates into having 25x your annual expenses in savings or 300 months of expenses in savings. Once I reach that point I will consider myself financially independent. I now have 27.97 months of expenses saved compared to 25.91 months of expenses saved last month.

Keeping my expenses down helps my SWR a lot. I use my trailing 12 months of expenses when determining my SWR. Last March was a low expense month so even if I have another low expense March this year I won’t change my my trailing 12 month average much. May and June of last year were high expense months. I’m hoping to replace them with low expense months this year. If I am able to do that I should be able to reduce my SWR quite a bit even if I don’t manage to save much money those months. My current average monthly expenses based on the last 12 months is $1196.77. If I were able to get my average monthly expense down to $1000 then my SWR would only 35.84%. I think it is possible to get my average monthly expenses down to $1000 without impacting my quality of life and will keep working on getting my expenses to that level.

March 2014 Goal Update 1

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This is my first update on my progress – or lack of progress – on the goals I set for myself this month. I set a goal to exercise at least twice a week. That was a pretty easy goal and I did manage to exercise two times this past week. I didn’t exercise more than that though. Since I did at least meet the goal I’m fine with my progress on this goal.

My writing goal for this month was to write 300 words a day and also write a post for Bank Bonuses every day. I did manage to at least get a post done for Bank Bonuses every day. I didn’t manage to write 300 words each day though. I only hit my writing goal three days in the past week. That means I’m 1200 words behind where I should be at this point. This isn’t good, but I think I can make up the missed days and get back on track. This goal was halfway achieved for the last week.

My final goal was to get rid of stuff by selling it, donating it, or throwing it away. I didn’t do any of that this week. This goal was a complete failure. It is still possible to get this goal back on track since it is early in the month. I have dug myself a little bit of a hole though.

This week I am off Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. I plan to have a marathon writing session on Thursday to get myself caught up and hopefully get ahead a little bit. I also plan to put some stuff up for sale and go through my stuff to see if there is anything to donate or trash. If I don’t get caught up this week, my odds of making my goals are pretty long. I still think I can do it. None of my goals are overly difficult. They just require a little time and self discipline to achieve.

February Income – $4138.30

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Here is a breakdown of my income for February.

Online Income

 $444.90
Interest

$3.77

Dividends

$19.77

Cash Back

$37.18

Job

 $2408.49

Tax Return

 $1152.01

Mystery Shop

 $12
Stock Sale $60.18

Total

$4138.30

February was a good month for income since I did receive two paychecks for full-time hours.  It could have been even better since I could have worked about 40 hours of overtime during the month.  Even though the overtime pay would be nice I’m just not motivated to work overtime right now.

My online income continues to do better than I expect. I’m not making anywhere near as much as I used to online, but it is still good money considering how little time I devote to it.

My passive income such as referral income from sites like Mr. Rebates and dividends is pretty small, but it adds up over the year.

The tax return was a nice bonus.  Last year I owed about $1000, including a penalty, when I filed my 2012 return so I upped my withholding in 2013. That combined with my online income being much lower resulted in a big refund this year.  I know you’re not supposed to want a big refund, but I like it better than having to pay.  I’m going to keep my withholding the same this year.  Maybe my online income will increase again and I’ll end up having just enough tax withheld for the year.

I also had a stock sale for a small profit.  I usually don’t count these as income or losses since I just add or subtract them to my savings amount.  This stock purchase was never counted as part of my savings and I purchased the stock with the intention of trying to turn a quick profit from it so I’m counting it as income. I participated in an IPO with LOYAL3  and managed to make a small profit. Not having to pay any trading fees helped.  I also managed to make about $20 in credit card rewards by using my Barclaycard Arrival™ World MasterCard® to make the stock purchase.  I’m not counting that as part of my profit.

*Post contains affiliate links for two products I use and recommend.