Expense/Income Tracking

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.

Here is a breakdown of my income for July.

July was a good income month. This was due to my document review job that I worked the end of June and the first two and half weeks of July.  I had to take some time off of that job for my dental implant surgery. This job is project based and I may return to it after my Portland trip and hiking trip if they have another project for me to work on.

I would prefer to make the majority of my income from my alternative income sources, but I haven’t been very successful at doing that yet. I didn’t have any Uber income last month since it didn’t make since to make low pay at Uber when I could work more hours at my document review job which pays roughly double what I make from Uber.

My Amazon FBA income is starting to pick up.  Although my profit wasn’t that high this was actually my highest income month from FBA. My profit was low because I bought a label printer, labels, a barcode scanner, and upgraded to a profession account. Although these expenses brought my profit down for July I believe they will result in higher profits in the coming months. I sold at least one item every day last week and I have a lot more inventory for sale than I’ve ever had before. This should result in August being a new high FBA income month. I have a long ways to go before this replaces my job income, but I do believe it is possible.

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for July.

My July expense were rather high. This was due for paying for my dental implant surgery which was an expected expense. Other than that my expenses were fairly typical and were just slightly over my $1000 a month target.

I will still have to have at least one more oral surgery since I need three implants and they only placed one. I’m hoping the other two will be placed at the same time. I have already paid for all three implants so I shouldn’t have any more dental expenses for a while. Unfortunately, I will have another medical expense in September or October. I was scheduled to have a biopsy in June, but the doctor wasn’t available on the scheduled date and canceled the appointment. I decided not to reschedule the biopsy, but I’ve since been persuaded that it would be wise to have it done and I’m thinking I’ll be able to schedule it for sometime in September.

Entertainment expenses came in at $0 which is the first time I think I’ve ever had that happen. We went to the movies a couple of times using free gift cards.  The main reason this category is $0 though is because the local casinos have been generous in supplying us with free slot play and free meal credit. This provided us with free entertainment and even made us a little money as well.  The casinos will eventually figure out that we’re only playing the free money and not using our own money. Until then we will get all we can out of their comps.

My health expense should return to normal this month. We are traveling to Portland for four days later this month and at the end of the month I will begin an extended hiking trip. The airfare for both of these trips has already been paid so these trips shouldn’t add too much expense to the travel category. Other than those exceptions my expenses this month should be about the same as last month.