Expense/Income Tracking

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.

Here is a breakdown of my income for April.

April was an okay month for income. Considering all my income was alternative income or passive income I can’t complain. I doubt I’ll make as much in online income this month. The advertising offers aren’t coming in like they used to and I’m not having much luck lately making affiliate commissions. April’s mystery shop income was mostly the result of work done in March. Since I didn’t do that much work in April my May mystery shopping income will decline. I need to come up with another source of income this month or my May income will be too low. My savings have declined quite a bit this year and I need to start building them back up. I’m going to continue with my alternative and passive sources of income but I plan to take a job after I sit for the bar. I need some steady income for a while.

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for April.

My expenses in April were way too high.  Our car needed both a new starter and a new timing belt which caused the extremely high transportation expense.  There were also considerable gas costs from my wife driving from Missouri to Pennsylvania and back to pick me up from the trail.  If I had known the timing belt in the car was going to break I wouldn’t have gone on the hike but luckily we have enough money in savings to cover these expenses.  I also spent $170 on a new phone which I included in the household expenses.  For the month of May I am going to avoid any big expenses I can and hope my expenses will be closer to the $1000 level than the $2000 level.