Expense/Income Tracking

Here is a breakdown of our expenses for January.

Expenses were lower in January than in December but still not quite as low as I would like. Our health expenses were high because I paid for a six-month health insurance policy upfront and we joined a fitness center.  The other area we can improve on is food.  We didn’t eat out too much but we spent over $300 in groceries.  About $60 was spent on a package of all natural meat.  It is good meat but I’m not sure if it is within our budget.  We are planning out our grocery purchases in advance this month which I hope will save us some money. It might even save us enough to continue to buy all natural meat.  Our other expenses will likely be about the same this month as before.

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

Google Adsense – $327.58

Affiliate Income – $284.11

Brokered Ads – $62.25

Direct Ads- $2894.72

Total – $3568.66

My online income was down just a smidgen from the month before. If my income plateaus at this level I really can’t complain but I’m still working on increasing my income. The purchase of Investorz Blog has already resulted in a couple of advertising deals. I just hope I’m not stealing business from my other sites. Most of my affiliate income comes from Bank Bonuses. There isn’t any reason I shouldn’t be making affiliate income from My Retirement Blog and Investorz Blog as well since they are a good fit for financial affiliates. The reason they aren’t making any affiliate income right now is because I haven’t put many affiliate links on them. I’m going to work on adding those without making the sites spammy. I might even add some more affiliate links here if I can figure out a way to work them into my posts without doing posts just for the purpose of promoting an affiliate product.

My main affiliate on Tight Fisted Miser right now is SwagBucks. I don’t make actual cash from promoting them but I usually earn a $5 Amazon gift card or two each month from them. Swagbucks is a good product to promote because readers can make a little extra money from it and I can make a little extra money from it without having to buy anything. I’ll be looking for more win/win products to promote.

Here is a breakdown of my income for December.

December was another great month for income. My online income is still going strong.  A lot of companies pay dividends in December so that category was higher than normal.  I’m still concentrating on my online income for now but if it falls off I will work on increasing my passive income and alternative income.

Here is a breakdown of our expenses for December.

Expenses in December were higher than in November but that isn’t too surprising since we did have the expense of buying Christmas gifts.  Our medical expenses were also higher than normal but hopefully no doctor visits will be necessary this month and the health expense will return to normal.  My new goal for the food expense was $350 and we came pretty close to that.  It seems to me that our food expense should be lower but it is about this much or more every month and when I review our food expenses nothing seems extravagant so I’m just going to accept that this is a reasonable amount for our food budget.  I was a little surprised that our electric bill was $81.32 because it has been a mild winter but this apartment just doesn’t stay as warm as our old apartment.  We will have higher electric bills this winter than last.  Overall, our expenses weren’t too bad.  Without the Christmas expenses we should be able to get back under our $2000 goal.

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

Google Adsense – $317.92

Affiliate Income – $367.75

Brokered Ads – $58.26

Direct Ads- $2866.85

Total – $3610.78

My online income was down a bit from the previous month but it is still pretty strong.  I’m trying to increase my affiliate income so I’m not so dependent on direct advertising.  I did make a little progress on that in November but I need to put a lot more work into it.  The amount of time I spend to make this income isn’t much, I need to start putting in forty-hour weeks to really increase my online income.  And I also need to develop some more sources of alternative income and invest some of the proceeds of my online income to increase my passive income.