Expense/Income Tracking

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for March.

My March expenses were a little higher than I would prefer.  The expenses are reasonable considering they included a trip to the Appalachian Trail in Virginia and back that included three hotel stays and over 2,000 miles of driving. I also paid $225 for six months of car insurance. Taking out those expenses my monthly expenses would be pretty close to my $1000 target.

My health expense was a little high since I had to pay for a doctor visit, labs, and medicine. Unfortunately, my health expense is going to be even higher this month. I getting an EGD and colonoscopy which will cost me over $700 out-of-pocket. That expense should get me close to hitting the deductible on my health insurance.  Once I hit the deductible my only health expense for the rest of the year should be my health insurance.

My food expense was once again too high.  I’d be okay with this level of expense if I was eating healthy. Since I’m eating fast food and junk food this level of expense is too high. Part of the reason for spending lots of money on fast food was due to my trip to the AT and back. I still should have spent a lot less than I did though. This month I am not going to have fast food at all unless I’m with someone else or if I’m hiking the AT.

The travel expense was in part for one night at a hotel. The other two nights were free from credit card rewards. The rest of the travel expense was for booking a flight from KC to Newark to get to the AT. The flight was free with Southwest travel credit, but I had to pay the taxes and fees. Also, I paid a $40 annual fee on a credit card which should get me another free hotel night. It won’t really be free since I had to pay the $40 bucks but I’m sure I’ll get more than $40 value out of the hotel stay.

Other than the $700 for the medical procedures March should be a low expense month. It is hard to predict what my expenses will be when hiking the  AT.  My guess is that they will be low.  I’ll be aiming for $1700 in expenses for the month.

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 today (3/2/2016) is as follows.

Assets
Cash – $2885.97
IRA – $21,491.86
Roth IRA – $9501.39
Loan – $450
Car/Stuff – $5000

Liabilities
Credit Card – $522
Student Loan – $126,913.89

Net Worth = $-88,106.67

My net worth improved by about $4000 in February.  The combination of a strong earning month and my stocks rebounding resulted in a nice little boost to my net worth. It is nice to have a net worth in the negative eighty thousands compared rather than the negative ninety thousands.  Well, maybe it isn’t nice, but it is at least an improvement. Maybe I can get my net worth to the negative seventy thousands by the end of the year.

I will finish paying off my credit card balance transfer this week. Then  I will need to decide if I should start paying towards my student loan debt again or if I should fund my IRA first.  I’m not sure if I should be saving for retirement when I have this monster student loan costing me 6.8% interest every month. On the other hand, I’ll already be retirement age or close to it by the time I get the loan paid off which wouldn’t leave me any time to save for retirement.  Should I skip contributing to the IRA until I have the student loan paid off or not?

Here is a breakdown of my income for February.

February was a great income month.  The big source of income was my state and federal tax refunds. I was happily surprised to get such a big refund. I thought I might not even get a refund this year since I had about $5000 of self-employment income in 2015 that I hadn’t yet paid taxes on. I did claim zero exemptions at my jobs in order to make sure that I had enough taxes taken out from my paychecks to cover the taxes on my self-employment income as well. That turned out to be unnecessary. The $5500 I contributed to my IRA and my $2500 student loan interest deduction reduced my AGI enough that my Retirement Savings Contribution Credit was enough to eliminate my federal income taxes. The only taxes I had to pay were my self-employment taxes which were easily covered by my paycheck withholding. The refund was also increased by a large ACA Premium Tax Credit since I took less of the credit than I was owed during the year. I contributed over $19,000 to the federal coffers in the form of student loan interest last year so it was nice to get a little money back from the government.

I was happy that I made over $1000 from Amazon FBA.  My FBA income was almost enough to cover my monthly expenses by itself. I might have even made a little more if I hadn’t worked at the doc review job for seven days at the end of the month. I know a lot of people do FBA on top of holding a regular job. I don’t feel like doing much after working a job all day so FBA gets scaled way back when I’m working.

Cash back continued to be a nice source of income. Most of it was from my Discover card. They had a great 10% cash back Apple Pay promo last year that resulted in a nice bit of cash back for me. I also got cash back from Mr. Rebates (referral link) , Top Cashback (referral link), and Upromise (not a referral link)* during the month.

My other sources of income don’t add up to much and that probably won’t change. Driving for Uber isn’t really worth my time.  I don’t plan on driving for Uber again unless they raise their rates. I did make a little online income this month. This year my online income will likely be in the hundreds rather than the thousands. That would be my lowest online income year since 2007. I might work on trying to increase my blogging income later this year. For now other things take priority.

This month’s income won’t be as high as February since I won’t have a big tax refund.  It should still be a good income month though since I will have job income on top of my other sources of income.

*Top Cashback is currently offering a $20 referral bonus. Leave a comment if you would like me to send you a referral email.

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for February.

My February expenses were about the same as my January expenses. My goal is to keep my monthly expenses under $1000.  Although I usually miss that goal I usually come close. The last time I made my expense goal was February of last year. That is a long streak of not meeting my expense goal that I need to break. If this month doesn’t have any unexpected expenses and I don’t go on my hiking I should be able to break the streak. Of course, most months do have unexpected expenses.

My medical expense was a little higher than normal due to a dentist appointment. I actually had a dentist appointment and a periodontist appointment. There was no charge for the periodontist appointment since it was a continuation of the dental implant process that I paid for last year.

My food expense was way too high due to eating fast food way too often. This month I’m aiming to cut the food expense in half.

The travel expense was the $95 annual fee for my Chase Ink credit card. I’ll be receiving a bonus worth about $725 towards travel from this card making it well worth paying the annual fee.

I’m hoping to take a week-long hiking trip on the Appalachian Trail this month. If I’m able to do that then my expenses will likely go up a bit. I worked at a document review all seven days of last week. The job is scheduled to restart on Thursday and continue through the 11th or possibly the 18th. Since I will probably also have follow-up dentist and doctor appointments later this month I might not have time to take the hiking trip.  I’m willing to delay the hike a little bit to bolster my financial situation, but I definitely want to hike in April. If the trip gets put off too long it might not happen.

Here is a breakdown of my income for January.

My income went down quite a bit in January. This wasn’t totally unexpected since I knew my Amazon FBA income would be down after the Christmas rush. On the plus side I did at least make more than my expenses. In order to get ahead financially I will need to make quite a bit more than this though.

One way I hope to increase my income this month is by driving more for Uber. I’ve already made more this month than I did last month. I won’t be going on my hiking trip since it appears  Shenandoah is going to get a lot of snow. Not going on the hike will give me more time to make money this month. Hopefully, I can get my February income at least to the $2000 mark.