Expense/Income Tracking

October Expenses – $1432.16

by

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for October.

Household

$378.33

Entertainment

$285.37

Transportation

 $468.93

Food

$100.25
Medical/Dental

$57.44

Utilities

$97.52
Debt $30
Bar Expenses $14.32

Total

$1432.16

My expenses for October were a little higher than I prefer.  This was due to my entertainment and transportation expenses being high.  The entertainment expense was high mainly due to out trip to Omaha and should be much smaller this month.  The transportation expenses was high due to the trip to Omaha and my trips to St. Louis for the medical study and I had to pay for six months of insurance.   I will be able to deduct the mileage to St. Louis and some driving I did for mystery shops so this expense isn’t as bad as it looks.  Transportation expense should be down substantially this month.

I came pretty close to hitting my target of $100 a month for food.  This amount is roughly half for groceries and half for eating out.  I plan to adjust this down to $75 a month with most of that amount going towards groceries.  Dinner dates with my wife are included in the entertainment category  and I get several opportunities a month to eat for free from mystery shopping so cutting back to $25 a month for eating out shouldn’t be hard.

I plan to pay more on my debt this month and the other expense categories should remain about the same.

September Investment Income – $93.78

by

My September investment income rose slightly to $93.78 from $91.96 the month before. The rise was from stock market gains as I did not add to my portfolio. You can tell I have been procrastinating a lot lately since it is almost November and I’m just now getting my September investment income posted.

Disclaimer: 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.

Online Income Report – September 2010

by

Here is a breakdown of my online income for September 2010.

Google Adsense – $372.50

Affiliate Income – $375

Direct Ads – $615.23

Text Links – $48

Total – $1410.73

I was quite pleased with my online income last month.  It was the most I have made in a month.  The Adsense was way up because I had an article that appeared on Yahoo Finance which brought me lots of very clicky traffic.  Adsense will be down this month unless something like that happens again.  My affiliate income should be up this month though partially because of the extra traffic from the Yahoo article and partly because of luck.  The direct ads will be down because I’ve been turning down some ad offers to help protect my page rank.  I do have over $100 in recurring monthly ads so I will still make at least that much.  Overall, my online income will be down but I’m hoping that I can hit the $1000 mark for the fourth month in a row.

This is my gross online income.  The online income I report in my monthly income posts is minus my hosting and domain expenses and some other basic expenses so it will always be smaller.

I’m working on adding some more sources of revenue and my plan is to get my monthly income consistently over $1500 and hopefully more.

September Income – $3153.38

by

Here is a breakdown of my income for September.

Online Income

$1402.16

Interest

$12.88

Stock Dividends

$95.61

Mystery Shops

$259.24

Bank Bonuses

$10

Survey/Cashback

$27.24

Medical Study

$800

Job

$546.25

Total

$3153.38

It was a good month for income.  My online income not only totaled more than $1000 for the third month in a row, it also reached a new high.  I don’t think I’ll match that high again this month but I should have a good shot at breaking $1000 again.  I was pleased that even without the job income I made over $2500.  My mix of passive and alternative income is working well for me.

My overall income is going to be down this month.  I will not have any job income this month.  I am screening for another medical study but even if I do get in it will pay less than the one last month.  Stock dividends will also be less because most of my stocks don’t have scheduled dividends in October.   The March, June, September, December distribution schedule is the most common among my stocks.

I was also quite pleased with my mystery shopping income.  I have cut back on the amount of shops I do the past couple months but since I’m getting better paying shops my income is still about the same.  I don’t include reimbursements in my mystery shop income but I don’t subtract expenses from it either.

We will see what this month brings.  My income should still be more than my expenses.  It would be great if I could consistently get my income above the $2000 level.

September Expenses – $1864.21

by

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for September.

Household

$345.58

Entertainment

$170.05

Transportation

 $141.83

Food

$99
Medical/Dental

$57.44

Utilities

$86.63
Debt $30
Bar App Fees $933.68

Total

$1864.21

My expenses were reasonable last month.  I made my goal of keeping my expenses under $1000 not counting bar application fees.  Most of the reduction in expenses was in the transportation category because I cut back on long drives for mystery shopping and didn’t have to drive to St. Louis for a clinical trial like the month before.  Transportation will be expensive again this month because I’ll likely be doing a study in St. Louis and have a trip to Omaha scheduled.

I was also happy that I kept my food expense below $100 for the month.  That will be difficult to do this month with all the traveling but it is achievable.

Entertainment expenses were too high.  Much of it was for a birthday dinner for my stepdaughter.  That won’t happen again this month but we have a trip planned so this expense will probably still be high.

Other expenses, except for the bar application fees, should remain about the same.