Expense/Income Tracking

Here is a breakdown of my income for August.

August was another good month for income.  It wasn’t as good as June or July but it was still over $2500.  I’m not sure how long this will last but September is off to a good start and I estimate I should make at least $2000 this month.  Making money from these alternative income and passive income sources has been making me lazy.  I’ve been thinking about getting a job but since I’m making enough money to easily pay my bills I’ve not been too motivated.  A job will be delayed until at least after the Personal Finance Blogger’s Conference. Our offline business is getting close to taking off also. We have received a verbal commitment for business from a company that would provide us with a nice start but it is taking a little while for them to do their part so we can get started.  We are doing ok financially but I’d like to make enough to pay our bills from either a new job or our new business so we could bank all of the alternative income and passive income.

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for August.

My goal for August was to get our expenses under $2000 and we met that goal.  My stretch goal was to get our expenses under $1750 and we would have made that if not for a car repair.  Our car has over 200,000 miles so spending money on repairs/maintenance is an expectation rather than a surprise at this point.  My goal for September will again be $2000 since we might do some traveling.  If we end up not traveling then the goal will be $1750.

Our entertainment bill will be higher in September due to a planned birthday and the possible traveling.  The cable and phone bill will be about the same; I’d like to reduce both of those bills but that won’t happen this month.

All other bills should be lower.  We had to buy some miscellaneous household stuff in August and shouldn’t have to this month making the household expense smaller.  Transportation was still higher than I would like with over $200 spent on gas and $179 to replace the spark plugs and spark plug wires.  Transportation expense should be smaller this month unless another repair pops up or we do some traveling.  My goal for our food expense is $300 a month and we went quite a bit over that this month.  Our pantry is well stocked now so we should be able to spend less on food this month.  There shouldn’t be any doctor’s visits this month so the medical expense will go down as well.

Our expenses are fairly low but being a tight-fisted miser I think there is still quite a bit of room for improvement.

I discontinued tracking my investment income earlier this year because I didn’t feel it was accurately portraying my finances. Now I’ll be tracking our net worth on a monthly basis which should more accurately portray the state of our finances.

Stocks: $11,574.09
IRA: $6,997.85
Cash: $4,552.57

Total Assets: $23,124.51

Liabilites: $0

Net Worth: $23,124.51

It has been a long time since I’ve figured out our net worth. It was nice to see that we are not as broke as I thought. We really should have a lot more in retirement savings by this age though. One of my main goals for the rest of they year will be to increase our retirement savings. I also want us to have at least $5,000 in cash though because I don’t feel comfortable having less than that.

On the plus side we don’t have any debt payments right now. We do have some medical bills from the accident in June but the insurance company should pay those eventually. I also have a lot of law school debt but it is on income-based repayment and with my current low income I don’t have to make any payments. I do expect that my income will increase enough in the next year that I have to start making payments. There is also a good chance that a large part of my loans will eventually be forgiven. Since I can’t be sure how much I’ll have to pay I’m just leaving the law school loan out of my net worth calculations. This should allow me to make a fair comparison of our net worth from month to month.

Here is a breakdown of my online income for July 2011.

Google Adsense – $214.63

Affiliate Income – $217.50

Brokered Ads – $57.58

Direct Ads- $1785.19

Total – $2274.90

July was another great month for income.  Some of that income was from deals made in June that I didn’t get paid for until July.  Direct ad sales have fallen off quite a bit since then but I expected that to happen eventually.  I’d like to make $2000 every month but I’m not at that level yet.  I’ll be doing good to make $1000 this month.  This month I am working on monetizing another website, increasing  affiliate income, and hopefully developing another online income stream.  My next goal is to have a $3000 month by the end of the year.

Here is a breakdown of my income for July.

July was another good month for income. My online income was over $2000 for the second month in a row.  I expect it to settle down and be closer to $1000 this month but I’m working on getting it up to the $2000 level on a consistent basis.  It is nice to not have a job and make this kind of money from alternative and passive income.  Since I’m not working a job though I should be spending more time on increasing these other incomes.  My mystery shop income was artificially high since I received a couple of delayed payments.  I’m cutting back on mystery shopping and my income from it will be much less this month.  I plan on putting a lot more stuff on eBay this month which should result in it being a larger source of income this month.  I’m also working on an offline business.  Since it works on delayed billing it probably won’t have any reportable income this month but we’re hoping it will at least have some accounts receivable by the end of the month.

When I post this report I usually get questions about where I make my money online. I’ll post my online income report later this week which will give more details.