Expense/Income Tracking

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for December.

My December expenses were pretty low and almost at my $1000 target.  This was a rare month that didn’t have any unexpected or annual/semi-annual expenses.  My transportation expenses were low since the only gas I bought was with a gas gift card that was included in November’s expenses.  My only transportation expense for the month was $8.87 for an oil change. The oil change was super cheap since I had a coupon due to being a Shop Your Way member. Food expenses were down because I didn’t eat out as often due to attending several Christmas gatherings.

The only extra expense for the month was $81.11 to pay off the remainder of my biopsy bill. Hopefully, my expenses will be low this month as well.  I plan to have both a doctor appointment and dentist appointment this month which could result in some increased expenses. My transportation expense will go up since that is the only way it can go after being so low in December. All of my other expenses should be about the same.

Here is a breakdown of my income for November.

November was not a good income month. With the end of my job my income fell dramatically. Most of my spending in November came  from my last October paycheck which was paid just two days before the end of the month. Now that I’ve spent that I’ll have to make more money this month or draw down my savings. I’ve earmarked all of the money I got from my settlement for paying down my 0% credit card balances which were used to pay down my student loan. There will be no use of the settlement money for paying basic living expenses.

My FBA income should go up this month with all of the Christmas shopping. My sales increased quite a bit the last week of November and are continuing to do well this month. FBA income probably won’t be enough to cover my living expenses though. Uber is the most likely option for making more money. If I put in the hours driving for Uber I will make more money. My other income sources will likely remain the same and don’t really add a significant amount to my income.

I actually had some online income last month for the first time since July. Since I also paid for three years of hosting and for help transferring my sites to a new host I still lost money online last month. The days of making $1000 a month or more from my blogs are gone. It appears they won’t be coming back either. At least not from the same methods that made me money before. I’ve made some efforts to make money on my blogs from affiliates, but they haven’t had any results yet. I’m more interested in making money from FBA so I won’t be spending too much time trying to resurrect the blog income.

If I can’t get my income back up to a decent level this month I will have to start looking for another job. I’d much prefer to work for myself, but a job may be necessary to pay my bills.

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for November.

My November expenses were high due to paying $1500 towards my biopsy bill. If you take those payments away my expenses were almost at my $1000 target. My food expenses were a little high since I ate fast food way too much. All the other expense categories were okay.  My health expense should be back to normal this month and I expect all of my other expense categories will be about the same.

Here is a breakdown of my income for October.

October was a great month for income. This was due to receiving three full paychecks during the month since the month had five Fridays.  Unfortunately, that job is over and I most likely won’t be working another job until tax season starts in January. I’ll need to significantly increase my Uber and FBA income to make up for the loss of the job income.

I didn’t have any Uber income last month since I was working full-time and didn’t want to spend my off hours driving for Uber. My FBA income fell significantly from the previous month since I didn’t put much time into it.  I also spent some of my FBA profits on an ungating service which will allow me to sell in a couple more Amazon categories. That should lead to increased profits. I’d like to get to $1000 monthly profit this month. That amount of profit is reasonably achievable. It is just a question of whether I will have enough cash flow to be able to buy enough stuff to sell to reach that level of profit.

This month’s income will be much less, but I’m hoping my income will at least exceed my expenses.

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for October.

My October expenses were a little high due to a couple of big expenses. One expense was my car insurance bill. This bill was expected. Paying $199.85 for six months of car insurance breaks down $33.30 a month which isn’t a bad deal. Luckily, I didn’t have any other transportation expenses in October so the transportation category of expenses was still a reasonable total.

The other big expense was the purchase of a new laptop.  This was an unexpected expense. I knew my laptop was getting old but I was hoping to get another year or two out of it. Unfortunately, it now gets stuck in a loop of trying to load Windows when I turn it on. This is probably fixable and I’ll eventually get this fixed so I can get things off of the laptop. Since that laptop was running very slowly and didn’t have much life left I decided to go ahead and purchase a new laptop. Even though I got a bargain basement model it is a lot faster than my old laptop. I’m happy I decided to purchase the new laptop.

My other expenses were pretty much normal. This month will see a large increase in the health category since I’ll be paying down my biopsy bill. There might be a large transportation expense as well. My expenses definitely won’t be below my $1000 target this month, but hopefully I can get things set up so that I’ll have very low expenses to start the next year.