Expense/Income Tracking

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for July.

My July expenses were a little higher than I would prefer.  The higher expenses were due to my $605 of travel expenses which were mainly from my shortened  hiking trip. Since the travel expenses paid for two nights hotel, a two-day train trip, a one day rental car, a taxi, and several bus fares it is a reasonable number.  Since I didn’t get many miles hiked which was the purpose of the trip the expense was mostly a waste of money. On the bright side the July travel expense is also covering my round-trip airfare from Kansas City to Las Vegas. I’ll be staying three nights and have one free night and should be able to book two more nights at a very low rate. The Vegas vacation will be very cheap as long as I don’t lose too much gambling.

I have a doctor and a dentist appointment this month which will make my health expense higher. The other expenses I expect to stay about the same this month. I think I have a good shot at keeping my expenses under $1000 this month.

In order to keep track of my financial progress or lack of progress I have decided to calculate my net worth each month. This month’s is a little delayed since I was hiking at the beginning of the month.

My net worth as of today (7/1/2016) is as follows.

Assets
Cash – $4808.56  (+$697.42)
IRA – $23,465.98 (+$427.26)
Roth IRA – $9995.31 (-$52.49)
Car/Stuff – $4800 (-$100)

Liabilities
Student Loan – $129,132.42 ($515.16)

Net Worth = $-86,062.57

My net worth improved by $457.03 since the last update. That was mainly due to the increase in cash due to depositing paychecks from my temporary document review job. Surprisingly, I made money from my investment last month even with the sharp stock market drop after Brexit.  My accounts must have been up quite a bit before the stock market drop.

As I’ve stated before this massive student loan makes it difficult for me to get ahead financially. Since it charges over $600 a month interest I start in a pretty big hole each month. I am thinking of starting a private practice in order to hopefully be able to make enough money to qualify to refinance the loan and start paying it down. I don’t have a lot of confidence in my ability to make it own my own so I’m putting that idea off for at least a couple of months.

I’ve been using Personal Capital (aff 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 June.

My income was pretty good in June since I worked at the document review job most of the month and received a paycheck every week. My non-job sources of income didn’t add up to much. Since I won’t be working a job this month I hope I can increase my other sources of income this month. That will be difficult to do because I will be traveling most of the month.

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for June.

My June expenses were overall very reasonable. If it weren’t for some extra spending in the entertainment and food categories I would have made my $1000 monthly expense target.  Of course, there is almost always some expense category that is larger than normal causing me to miss the $1000 target. If I can ever have a month with completely normal expenses I’ll easily make the $1000 goal. I’m going to do some traveling this month which will cause the travel expense category to be larger than normal.

The entertainment  category was unusually high in June. That was because I spent $120 on a $150 movie gift card. Although I accounted for the entire expense in June we will be using the card for months. That should result in very low entertainment expense for the next few months.

Food was high because I went out to eat almost every work day. Now that I’m no longer working and trying to lose weight I will cut way back on eating out and should reduce this expense considerably. However, I do plan on traveling quite a bit this month which will make it challenging to stay out of restaurants and keep my food expenditure at a reasonable level.

I expect my other expense categories to be about the same in July as in June.  I’ll be pretty happy if I’m able to keep July’s expenses at roughly the same level as June.

In order to keep track of my financial progress or lack of progress I have decided to calculate my net worth each month. This month’s is a little delayed since I was hiking at the beginning of the month.

My net worth as of today (6/5/2016) is as follows.

Assets
Cash – $4111.14 (+$82.14)
IRA – $23,038.72 (+$361.07)
Roth IRA – $10,047.80 (+$182.47)
Car/Stuff – $4900 (-$100)

Liabilities
Student Loan – $128,617.26 ($451.38)

Net Worth = $-86,519.60

My net worth improved by $74.30 since the last update. That isn’t much but it is better than the decrease I had the previous month.

As I’ve stated before this massive student loan makes it difficult for me to get ahead financially. I applied to refinance my loans earlier this month and was declined. That isn’t too surprising considering the amount of my debt compared to my income level. At my current income level it is almost impossible to make any progress on my loans. I’m hoping I’ll be able to increase my income considerably by the end of the year and do have an idea of how to accomplish that.

I’ve been using Personal Capital (aff 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.

Personal Capital