Expense/Income Tracking

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for June.

My expenses were up for June but that is partly because these figures now reflect the entire household’s expenses rather than just mine.  For those who don’t know our household consist of me, my wife, and her daughter.  I don’t have our expenses totally integrated for tracking yet but I estimate this figure is at least 90-95% of our expenses.  This means my past expenses can’t really be compared to my current expenses but I felt that showing the entire household’s expenses was a more accurate way to report.

I moved our dining out expenses from the entertainment category to the food category.  This left us with zero entertainment expenses for June.  We did go to the movies a couple times for free via mystery shopping but other than that we just used free entertainment options.  The food expenses broke down to $170.79 for groceries and $127.56 for dining out.  I guess that is ok but with all the free food we received from mystery shopping I think it could have been lower.  I was happy that our transportation expenses were under $200 which is lower than they have been.  This total was all for gasoline, we didn’t have any repair or other transportation expenses for a change.

I also paid $430 for bar exam software and $133.90 for hotel expenses while taking the bar.  I won’t have those expenses in July and we will have free rent for the month so I expect expenses to go way down. I’m hoping we can get our expenses down to $1500 for July.  We will see how that works and I’ll adjust my August goal as necessary.

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

Google Adsense – $325.57

Affiliate Income – $230.63

Brokered Ads – $54

Direct Ads- $208.03

Total – $818.23

My online income was down about $100 from the month before but I am not complaining.  I’m making a very good amount of income online considering how little work I put into it.  I was happy that my Adsense got back over $300 for the first time in a few months.  I thought I had finally figured out the best placement but it looks like Adsense will barely be over $200 this month so I guess the $300 month was just a fluke.  I would like to increase my affiliate income to be a bigger part of my income.  That is easier said then done though and I don’t want to write a bunch of posts that are just promoting affiliate products.  I have greatly increased my direct ad income this month and it looks like I will be able to maintain that for at least another month.  There is still a lot of year left but it looks like I should not have a problem meeting my goal of being a five figure blogger.

Here is a breakdown of my income for May.

May was an okay month for income.  I can’t complain about the amount of online income I’m making but I need to increase it or find some new sources of passive income or alternative income.  My total income needs to be about $2000 a month to keep ahead of my expenses.  I’m estimating my income will be about the same for June.

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for May.

My expenses in May were down from April but still not quite as low as I would like.  This total is an approximation since my records were wiped out when my computer crashed.  I was able to figure out most of my expenses by looking at my credit card and debit card records but I’m sure I missed a few cash purchases.

May medical expenses were high because I had a large medical bill but now that that is paid off they should be normal for this month.  Transportation expense was also higher than I would prefer.  We spent over $300 on gas.  A lot of that is travel for mystery shopping though so we will be able to deduct it.  Since gas is cheaper and we don’t have any long trips planned this month we should at least be able to get this figure under $300.  All other expenses should be pretty much the same.

I’ve been trying to keep track of the expenses by breaking out my portion of my wife and I’s expenses but I’m going to switch to reporting both our expenses.  This will eliminate having to determine what expenses to include and which ones to leave out.  Now the monthly expense report will need to be compared to other married couple households rather than to a single man household.  I’m going to up my budget target from $1000 a month to $1750.  I think that is reasonable but we will see.

I barely got this one in before the month of May was over. It shouldn’t be too long before I have the May report up. I’ll be trying to procrastinate less in June.

Here is a breakdown of my income for April 2011. .

Google Adsense – $269.63

Affiliate Income – $366.23

Brokered Ads – $52.57

Direct Ads – $254.85

Ehow – $10.55

Ebay – $7.12

Total – $960.95

My online income increased from the month before so I can’t complain. Unfortunately affiliate income has cooled off quite a bit lately and Adsense is down a bit as well and will probably result in lower earnings in May.  I need to start putting more work into my sites so I can keep my income up.