Expense/Income Tracking

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for December.

December was a low expense month. A big reason for the low expenses was the use of gift cards purchased in November that were reflected in November’s expenses. The use of a previously purchased movie gift card allowed us to go to the movies a couple of times and still have a $0 entertainment expense for the month. The use of restaurant gift cards allowed me to only have a food expense of $56.36. Most of that total was made up of the $50 a month I contribute towards groceries each month.

The big bills were $500 to my student loan and almost $300 of phone expense.  If you take away those two expenses I would be under my monthly target of $1000 in expenses. The student loan payment was made to reach the max  $2500 student loan interest tax deduction.

The phone expense reflects over $250 spent to purchase a Nexus 5x in order to switch to Google Fi phone service. My Virgin Mobile phone died on me and I decided to try out Google’s phone service. I didn’t want to spend so much on a phone, but the 5x was the cheapest phone they had.  The new phone plan should save me a few bucks a month, but it will take a long time to make up for the cost of the phone.

I expect January to be a low expense month and most of my expenses should be in their normal range. Sometime this week I plan to post a yearly summary of my expenses and income.

How was your month?

Here is a breakdown of my income for November.

My November income was an improvement over October. It still needs to be a lot higher. It should get to an okay level once I start my tax job.

Most of the improvement in income in November came from increased Amazon FBA earnings. Black Friday shoppers and early Christmas shopping in general helped boost my FBA earnings. I’m hoping for a record month of FBA earnings this month.  I’ve sent in a lot of inventory and plan on buying and sending a lot more inventory before Christmas. Even with a record month I doubt I’ll make as much as I really should be making. I do feel like I’m slowly making progress on my FBA business, but I think I should be making a lot more. It would be nice to get my income up to about $5000 a month which I think is possible. I’m just not sure how to do it.  FBA will get put on the back burner once I start my tax job so it will be a while before I’m able to ramp up the FBA business again after this month.

Although the income is less than I like, it is enough to pay my basic bills and keep me going until I start making more money from the tax job.

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for November.

November was a high expense month.  I had a few low expense months in a row so I suppose I was due for a high expense month. The expense isn’t as bad as it would first appear though since a good chunk of my November expenses went towards paying future expenses. Also we had a trip to Las Vegas for four days and Greenville,SC for another three days which increased my expenses a bit.

I signed up for the Chase Sapphire Reserve card and paid a $450 annual fee. Although I hate paying a large annual fee like that I will get much more value from the card than I paid for the annual fee. I’ve already used the card to get $300 credit for flights next year. I’ll get another $300 travel credit next year and I’ll receive a 100,000 point bonus that is worth $1500 in travel expenses. Taking that into account I paid for a lot of next  year’s travel in November.

I also bought a bunch of discounted restaurant gift cards and a couple of movie gift cards. My restaurant expense should be zero this month and probably next month as well. The movie gift cards should cover my movie expense for this month and possibly a bit of January’s expense. My gift card expenditures in November will lead to much lower food and entertainment expense this month and probably next month as well.

All of my other expenses were pretty much in their normal range. I don’t expect any major changes to my expenses other than the ones I already discussed. December should see my expenses return to their normal level.

How was your November?

Here is a breakdown of my income for October.

My October income was an improvement over September which wasn’t much of an accomplishment given how low my income was in September.  On the plus side my income was greater than my expenses. Although I’d prefer to make more I’m okay with this level of income for now since I know I’ll be making a lot more once my tax job starts.

Most of the improvement in income in October came from increased Amazon FBA earnings.  Since there should be a lot more Christmas shoppers online this month I should be able to make more money this month. My week vacation might hamper that a little bit, but I’m going to try to work extra when I get back to get my earnings higher than last month.

I did have a couple of sources of income carry over from September. I made $20 referring people to Decluttr. If you would like to sign up for Decluttr you can get a $10 bonus by clicking through my referral link and using my referral code DXR9HCGXYL. You need to sell Decluttr at least $10 of stuff to qualify for the $10 bonus. I’ll receive a $10 bonus for the first ten qualified referrals as well. I made $75 referring people to an online health study. If you buy your own insurance then you might qualify for the health study. If you use my health insurance study referral link we can both make $25 when you successfully complete the study.

Overall, my earnings weren’t too bad considering I didn’t work a job at all and I spent less than 40 hours a week working on the various things that did make me money.

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for October.

October was a super low expense month. Since my income was also low it is good that I was able to keep my expenses low. I’ve been lucky the last few months to not have any big expenses come up. That lucky streak will end this month. I signed up for the Chase Sapphire Reserve card and will be paying a $450 annual fee. That is a pretty big fee. It is especially big compared to the size of my expenses. I think the fee will be worth it since I’ll receive a sign-up bonus worth over $1000 and will also receive a $300 travel credit this year and next. I think I’ll be able to travel quite a bit next year using the points from this card.

Other than the increase in travel expenses I don’t think any of my other expenses will change much this month. I would like to decrease my food spending just a little. Since we have a week-long trip to Las Vegas and South Carolina coming up next week it might be difficult to keep the food spending down.  I’m okay with that as long as I feel like I get good value for the money spent.

How was your October?