Expense/Income Tracking

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for May.

My May expenses were once again fairly low although I did miss my goal of $1000 or less in spending for the month. If It wouldn’t have been for some medical bills and medicine I would have made the $1000 goal. The $1000 spending goal probably won’t be achievable for the next couple of months since more bills will be coming due.

Usually my only health expenses is $83.13 for my health insurance. This month I also had to pay $159.19 for a doctor visit and lab fees, and $28.51 for some medicine. These medical bills were not related to my accident. I also paid some medical bills related to the accident, but I’m not including them here since I expect to eventually get reimbursed for those bills. I’ll have another medical visit this month that is unrelated to the accident so this month so depending on when the bill is due my medical expenses will be higher than normal again.

Travel and entertainment expenses were low because I was able to erase most of them using my credit card rewards. Office Max had a deal in May that allowed me to rack up quite a bit in rewards. It isn’t likely that there will be that good of a deal this month which means the travel and entertainment expense will be higher. I don’t plan on traveling this month so that expense might still be $0. Entertainment expense should still be fairly low since I do have some free gift cards to use up.

My transportation expense was fairly low since my only expense was $58.53 for gas. This total was helped by a free $20 gas card an insurance company gave for getting an auto insurance quote from them. Some of this gas was used driving for Uber or going on mystery shops which I’ll be able to deduct the mileage for those on my taxes. Once you factor in the mileage deduction my transportation cost for the month will be even lower.

I did make some extra student loan payments in May as well, but I’m not reporting them here since they throw off the average. You can see my progress on paying off my student loan in the right sidebar.

Other than the exceptions I have already noted my June expenses should be about the same.

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for April.

My April expenses were not too bad considering I bought a car and took a vacation to Niagara Falls. If it weren’t for the six month insurance expense of $198.66 and the car registration expense of $60.50 I would have made my $1000 target.

The reported monthly total doesn’t reflect all of my personal expenses for this month. I left out the purchase price of my car since it would throw off my expense average. Also, since the car is an asset it doesn’t make sense to immediately count the entire cost as an expense. My friend JK at MyFrugalMiser has a good way of dealing with the car expense. He expenses the car depreciation monthly according to the amount of miles driven. Although this is a reasonable way of tracking the car depreciation expense I will not be doing this. Mainly, because I don’t want to bother tracking my mileage. Also, because a lot of miles will be business miles and it doesn’t seem accurate to count the depreciation as a personal expense when it is also part of the business mileage expense.

The monthly total also doesn’t reflect the extra $2383 I paid towards my student loan since including that amount in my monthly total would throw off my monthly expense average. Although, I won’t report the extra amount paid on my student loan in my monthly total I will always report it in my expense post and possibly elsewhere.

For some reason my monthly phone bill declined from the usual $26.81 to $26.30. That decline will be short-lived. I bought a new phone last month because my old one wouldn’t run the Uber app I needed to drive for Uber or the Amazon Seller app which is extremely helpful to have for my FBA business. Since I upgraded my phone I lost my grandfathered $25 a month rate on Virgin Mobile and will now have to pay a $35 a month rate. That is still a pretty good deal and I plan to write off the extra $10 a month as a business expense.

Even though we took a three night vacation in Niagara Falls my travel expense for the month was only 80 cents. That is in part because some of the vacation expense was paid in the previous month and a lot of the travel was free or almost free. For the amount of the vacation expense I did have to pay during the month I was able to get reimbursed for most of it by my travel rewards credit card.

This month my expenses should be about the same other than the car expenses. I might also have increased medical expenses since I’m guessing some of my medical bills will become due. Other than that it should be another low expense month.

Here is a breakdown of my income for April.

April was a good month for income. It should have been a little better. I was expecting to receive two full paychecks in April. Unfortunately, I missed three days plus a couple of hours due to being hit by a car. Getting hit by a car is not good for your finances. I should get paid for that time eventually, but it will probably be a while.

My Amazon FBA income was my best yet. It is still a long ways away from being a full-time income though. I’m trying to ramp that income up and hopefully I will be successful.

My other sources didn’t contribute much and that probably won’t change this month. This month will likely have a big drop in income since I no longer have my full-time job. There is a possibility that I’ll be starting a temporary job tomorrow. Since I haven’t heard from the employer yet I’m thinking that job probably isn’t going to happen. If I don’t get the job I plan on driving for Uber to make up some of the job income. In order to keep paying down my student loans I can’t have any poor income months. I plan on working full-time hours at my various endeavors and I’m hoping that results in a full-time income.

My March FIRE (financial independence retire early) numbers improved slightly. I have 34.71 months of expenses saved which is slightly more than the 33.e months of expenses I had saved in February. My goal is to have 300 months of expenses saved.

Although my ultimate goal is to save 300 months of expenses I am setting that goal aside for a while. My months of expenses saved will be going down over the next few months and will likely plateau for a few years. This is because I have decided that I need to pay off my student loans before saving for retirement. I’ll eventually write more about my plan to pay off my student loans. That post may have to wait until I get back from my hike though.

Here is a breakdown of my income for March.

March was a great month for income.  The tax refund of over $2000 was the biggest boost to income. My job income was pretty good too since I had two full paychecks. I also received a $100 referral bonus from Motif which was a nice bonus. If you want to sign up for Motif to get a $100 bonus of your own I have a referral link at the top of the left sidebar.  You read my Motif bonus post if you want some more information before you sign up.

Online income was pretty low, but at least I made a profit. It is hard to predict when I’m going to have a good or bad month for online income. There doesn’t seem to be any correlation between the effort I put into this and my other blogs and the income I receive at the end of the month. Since I haven’t been doing much on my blogs while working my tax job I am happy with any online income that still comes in.

My Amazon FBA income of $12.43 was disappointing. I sold about $2000 of stuff on Amazon in March. Most of it was sold for about what I paid or a loss though. The $12.43 profit isn’t much of a return on the time and money I invested in FBA. I spent about five hours (I’m guessing since I didn’t track this at all) on FBA so my FBA hourly wage was crappy in March. It isn’t quite as bad as it seems since I did also earn credit card cashback and/or airline miles and/or Staples rewards on my purchases. This summer I’d like to make FBA my main source of income so I’ve got to get a lot better at FBA if that is going to happen.

I usually have a referral link to Mr. Rebates in this post to get some more referrals. And this post does too! This month I also have a Top Cashback referral link since you currently can get a $10 bonus for signing up and I’ll get a $10 bonus for referring you as well. They usually only offer a $10 bonus to the member who makes the referral so this deal is obviously a better deal for you.

April income will be a lot less than March since I won’t have a $2000 tax refund. I will still have two full paychecks in April so it should still be a solid month for income.