Expense/Income Tracking

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for March.

My expenses were very high in March.  Some of that is because we used our tax refund to buy a Wii and take a vacation.  I probably shouldn’t have counted the total cost of those as my expenses since I’m not counting the tax refund as only my income.  Sometimes it is difficult for me to determine what I should count as my share of the household income or expenses but this should be close enough.

Transportation was high because we did a lot of driving for our vacation and mystery shopping and also because I paid for the next six months of insurance.  Entertainment was also high because of the vacation.

I decided to display my phone bill separate from my utilities to give a more detailed breakdown of my expenses.

In April the expense categories of entertainment, travel, and transportation should all drop quite a bit.  I’m sure I’ll still be well over my $1000 goal but expenses should at least be less than income.  I’m thinking expenses should come close to the $1000 level in May.

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

Google Adsense – $256.31

Affiliate Income – $199

Brokered Ads – $48.94

Direct Ads – $159.53

Total – $663.58

My online income was down but I’m not too worried about it.  This money was made with very little effort on my part once I start putting more work into my sites they should start making more money for me.  Online income for March should be about the same.  I’ve been experimenting with different Adsense ads and placement but the experiments so far have only resulted in decreased income rather than increased income.  I believe I have finally made some improvements and Adsense should start going back up.  I’ve been getting pickier about ads.  I need to come up with a consistent policy on them and figure out a balance that will make me money but not put off my readers.

My February investment income rose to $97.32 from $97.23 the month before.  This was due to an increase in the value of the funds and individual stocks I hold in my portfolio since I did not add any money to my investments.  I’m hoping I can get this over $100 in the next few months but I’m not yet sure when I will have additional money to add to my investments.  My cash reserves are lower than I prefer right now and I won’t be adding to my investments until I get my cash back up to what I consider a comfortable level.

This is not my actual investment income. To get this figure I first add up my retirement savings, emergency fund, and any other money I consider permanent savings. What the total of my savings would earn at 6% interest for a month is my monthly investment income. My goal is to get this amount to $1000 a month. If I have $1000 in monthly passive investment income I will be able to retire early. You can see what my actual investment income for the month was by looking at my monthly income report and adding the interest and dividend amounts.

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for February.

My expenses were higher than I like but not as bad as they seem.  The $227.79 of travel expenses and over $100 of the transportation expense were incurred as a result of participating in the medical study in St. Louis.  The travel expenses were for six nights of  hotel rooms and the transportation expense was the cost of gas for getting to St. Louis and back.  It would probably be more accurate to just deduct these expenses from my medical study income later this month but I’m just going to list them as expenses.  My expenses will probably be just slightly less this month but I’m hoping I can get them back to the $1000 level in April.

It is rather late since it is already March but here is a breakdown of my income for January.  I’ll get February’s figures up next week.

It was a pretty good month for income.  Online income would have been over $1000 but I had some expenses.  I did well on mystery shopping and I had some job income as well. Although it is nice to see most of the income is alternative income and passive income. Mystery shopping was down for February and I didn’t have a job so my February income will be lower but it should still be decent.