Expense/Income Tracking

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.

Here is a breakdown of my income for September.

September was a better month for income than it appears. I worked the last two weeks of September at H&R Block but my first paycheck was on October 2nd so it didn’t get included in September’s income. Also, I received my settlement from being hit by a car in April.  Although I share almost everything on my blog I’ve decided to keep the amount of the settlement secret for now. The settlement was less than I was hoping for, but it was a boost to my finances.

October will be a much better month for income.  I get paid by H&R Block every two weeks and this month happens to be a three paycheck month which will help the income total out quite a bit.

I’m pleased with the amount I made from FBA in September. This is the first time I’ve managed to make over $500 in a month. I’m slowly learning and getting better at this business. I’m backing off a bit this month since I’m busy with the day job. With the Christmas shopping season coming soon though, I’m hoping to ramp up the FBA business a lot higher.

This month’s income should be at least quadruple last month’s income.

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for September.

My September expenses were a little high due to my road trip to Virginia and back. In addition to the travel expense of $186.64 the trip increased the total of my food and transportation expenses. The trip probably added about $50 to my food expense. That isn’t too bad of an increase. I used about $135 of gas on the trip. The rest of the transportation charge is from a $100 gas card that I used for one fill up towards the end of the month. For ease of accounting I count the entire card as an expenditure as soon as I use it. This means my October transportation expense should be pretty low.

My food expense should return to normal this month. I don’t think I’ll have any travel expense. The health category is the one that will probably inflate my expenses this month. I still haven’t received a bill for my biopsy in August. My insurance has sent me a statement of what they paid. From that statement I know I’ll owe about $1500 for the biopsy. Medical and dental expenses are killing my budget this year, but they are necessary. I’m hoping I’ll be healthy next year and these expenses will revert to the level of previous years.

Here is a breakdown of my income for August.

August was not a good income month. I haven’t done a good job of building up my alternative income sources. I am slowly building up my Amazon FBA business and I still think that I can get this business making over $1000 a month by the end of the year. I’m getting better at finding products to sell and avoiding products that won’t sell.

This month will be a lot better income month since I’m starting a new full-time job. I will be working at H&R Block the rest of this year in a new position and returning to my usual seasonal tax job next year. That will give me seven months of full-time employment which should allow me to pay down my debts and solidify my finances.

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for August.

My August expenses were reasonable. They were much lower than in July when I had to pay for my dental implant surgery.  They still weren’t under $1000 like I’d prefer due to medical expenses. Since I’ll have medical expenses and my trip expenses this month my expenses won’t be under $1000 this month either.

One good thing about the high expenses the previous month was that they generated a lot of credit card cash back rewards. I used the rewards to eliminate my travel spending for the month and to almost eliminate my entertainment expense for the month. Both of those categories will be higher this month and the travel category will be a lot higher.

My food expense was unusually low in August. I somehow managed to cut way back on my usual fast-food spending. I’ve already spent more on fast-food this month then in all of August so my food expense will be higher as well.

I’ll be lucky if I can keep my expenses below $1500 this month since I spent about $300 on my trip. If I have to pay my biopsy bill this month as well then my expenses will be way over $1500. If it weren’t for medical expenses I’d be very pleased with my level of spending this year. Since the medical expenses are somewhat unavoidable I don’t feel too bad about them. I will just do my best to contain the expenses that are under my control.