April Income- $371.06

Here is a breakdown of my income for April.

Online Income

$312.52

Interest

$48.54

Survey

$5

Mystery Shop

$5

Total

$371.06

Since I can’t work during the semester all of my income is alternative income. I’m really pleased with my online income. I’ve already made this year than all of last year. May should be even better than April. Most of this online income is from my other blog. This blog hasn’t really been monetized yet and I’m debating whether I should. I’ll discuss that in a blog post sometime.

I’m also pleased that my alternative income total is almost as much as my rent of $375. I’ll have to set a goal of making enough to pay my rent with alternative income this month.

The interest amount is high because it includes ING Direct referrals. Since they will be reported as interest on my 1099 at the end of the year I just go ahead and count them as rent now.

Tracking Every Penny and My Non Budget

Over at My Two Dollars last week David wrote a post arguing against what he called “Watching Every Last Penny Syndrome.” Since I track every penny I spend and earn I have to disagree with that post. This is something I started doing after reading “Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence” and I’ve found it very helpful and pretty easy to do. Apparently Trent at The Simple Dollar keeps track of every penny too.

That being said I don’t budget every penny. I just keep track of what I spend and when my spending gets out of line in a certain category I adjust my spending accordingly.  Stephanie at Poorer than You uses a similar system and Nick at Punny Money has his own variation of the system. This system works well for me but it won’t work for everybody. You need to determine what kind of budgeting system works best for you.

March Expenses

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for March:

Household

$378

Utilities

$107.11

Transportation

$151.90

Entertainment

$335.85

Food

$121.96

Student loans

$100

Health Insurance/Medical

$170.22

Total

$1365.04

 

My expenses are too high mainly because of my entertainment expense.  I really need to cut that one back.  My health insurance is paid for three months so I shouldn’t have any medical expense this month. Other categories should be roughly the same. My goal is to get my expenses under $1000 a month not counting what I pay towards my student loans.

March Income

Here is a breakdown of my income for March.

Online Income

$115.69

Survey

$5

Interest

$69.43

Tax Refund

$133.93

Total

$324.05

 

My online income came down a lot but I’m still happy with it.  I’m on track to make a lot more than last year.  My interest income is high because I’m including ING Direct referral bonuses.  April will be another low income month but in May I’ll return to work and start making some decent money.

February Expense

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for February:

Household

$382.10

Utilities

$118.68

Transportation

$623.49

Entertainment

$536.83

Food

$110.06

Education/Student Loans

$120.16

Total

$1891.32

 

My expenses were way too high last month.  I spent $440 on a new clutch for my car which made my transportation expense much higher than normal.  My vacation in Cancun made my entertainment expense abnormally high.  The bad thing about that is I spent almost $100 on entertainment at home.

Those expenses should return to normal this month.  My other expenses should remain in the same ballpark.  I would really like to get my food expense back under $100.  I only went $10 over last month which isn’t bad considering I was on vacation for five days but I would just like to show myself that I have the self-discipline to get my food expense back under budget.  I’m hoping for total expenses of less than $1000 this month.