Expense/Income Tracking

In order to keep track of my financial progress or lack of progress I have decided to calculate my net worth each month.

My net worth as of 10/1/2016 is as follows.

Assets
Cash – $3710.82 (+$397.63)
IRA – $23,877.79 (-$26.52)
Roth IRA – $10,450.23 (+$71.49)
Solo 401k – 988.09 (-$4.45)
Car/Stuff – $4500 (-$100)

Liabilities
Student Loan – $130,181.70 ($518)

Net Worth = $-86,654.77

My net worth decreased by $179.85 since the last update. Since I didn’t  have any luck finding a job last month I wasn’t able to contribute any money to my investments or pay extra on my student loan. Although I did have a small increase in my assets it wasn’t enough to overcome the $600 of monthly interest incurred on my student loan.

I do have a job starting in January so I’ll be able to improve my net worth at that time. I’m hoping I’ll be able to find something in the meantime to increase my income and reverse this net worth slide.

I’ve been using Personal Capital (affiliate link) to help track my net worth. It keeps track of all of my financial accounts and my student loan making it pretty easy to calculate my net worth each month. It is free to sign up. If you would like to sign up I’d appreciate you using my link. All blog income, including affiliate income, goes to paying down my student loan.

Personal Capital

Here is a breakdown of my income for September.

My income wasn’t very good in September. I didn’t have any luck finding a job. There was some good news on the job front though. I was officially hired for my seasonal tax job. That job doesn’t start until January so I’ll be looking for other ways to make money until then.

I did have some new sources of income in 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. I also made $10 from User Testing. I might write more about User Testing later.

All of the new sources of income are nice extra sources of income, but none of them have the potential to make significant money. Since it is now Q4 I will try to kick my Amazon business into high gear.  Most FBA sellers make the majority of their income during the Christmas season. If I am able to make the majority of my FBA income these last three months of the year then I’ll consider it a successful year. In addition to FBA I’ll be looking for other ways to make more money. It shouldn’t be too hard to make more money this month than I did in September.

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for September.

 
September was another low expense month. Without the extra student loan payment my monthly expenses would have been just over $1000. That is two months in a row of keeping my expenses right around my stretch target of $1000.

My big expense category for the month was transportation. This was due to paying for six months of car insurance. The bill wasn’t actually due until the second half of this month, but I decided to pay it early since I was having such a low expense month. I’m okay with all the other expense categories although I would like to reduce the food expense a little.

October should be another  low expense month. There are no expected large expenses this month. I did have a doctor’s appointment in September I haven’t been billed for yet and I have another appointment this month which could cost me some money. I have met my deductible for the year so these appointments shouldn’t cost me much if anything. Other than transportation October expenses should be pretty similar to September’s expenses.

In order to keep track of my financial progress or lack of progress I have decided to calculate my net worth each month.

My net worth as of 9/1/2016 is as follows.

Assets
Cash – $3313.19 (-$1080.23)
IRA – $23,904.31 (+$64.57)
Roth IRA – $10,378.74 (+$58.49)
Solo 401k – 992.54 (NA)
Car/Stuff – $4600 (-$100)

Liabilities
Student Loan – $129,663.70 ($111.47)

Net Worth = $-86,474.92

My net worth increased by $46.84 since the last update. An increase is better than a decrease but my net worth is still less than it was in July. I need some bigger increases. I’ve put in a couple of job applications the past week. I’m hoping one of those comes through so I can increase my income.

Although I paid over $700 on my student loan last month the balance only decreased a little over $100. Since the loan charges over $600 a month interest it is really difficult to make progress on paying down the loan. I need to increase my income dramatically to be able to get ahead on this loan.

I’ve been using Personal Capital (affiliate link) to help track my net worth. It keeps track of all of my financial accounts and my student loan making it pretty easy to calculate my net worth each month. It is free to sign up. If you would like to sign up I’d appreciate you using my link. All blog income, including affiliate income, goes to paying down my student loan.

Personal Capital

Here is a breakdown of my income for August.

My income was pretty good in August considering I didn’t have any job income. I was aiming to make about as much in August as in July and I came within $40 which I consider close enough. The big contributor to my income this month was Amazon FBA.  I sold almost all of the inventory I bought in July from the hardware store that was going out of business. Unfortunately, I didn’t find another great source of inventory like the hardware store in August so next month’s FBA income will be considerably less. When you are doing Retail Arbitrage (RA) you constantly have to be finding new inventory. That is a skill I still need to improve. In the long run I think my FBA business will do better if I focus on wholesale and private label products. I don’t have any wholesale or private label products yet.

My cash back income was a lot less in August. The $1000 in cash back in July was an anomaly. I still made over $100 in cash back in August which is pretty good for extra money. If you sign up for Mr. Rebates you can help me make more cash back and earn cash back for yourself as well.  Later this month I am going to write a post with all the cash back sites I use.

Although I’ve done okay without a job the last couple of months I am looking to get another job in order to increase my income and meet some financial goals.