Expense/Income Tracking

February Expenses – $1204.82

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Here is a breakdown of my expenses for February.

Household

$423.51

Entertainment

$31.49

Transportation

 $138.72

Food

$120.50
Dental

$96

Phone

$35.03

Debt

 $30.00

Travel

 $328.67

Total

$1203.92

February’s expenses were a little higher than I would prefer but within reason. If I were to deduct my gambling winnings from my travel costs my travel costs would have been lower and I might have made it under my target of $1000 in total expenses for the month.

January Investment Income – $89.50

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My January investment income dropped slightly to $89.50 from $90.93 the month before. This was a result of the value of my IRA going down and no money being added to my investment portfolio.

It has been suggested that this is perhaps not the best way to measure my investments since it doesn’t completely reflect reality. After taking that into consideration I am going to come up with a new measurement based at least in part on my actual dividend and interest income received. I’ll still be calculating my investment income as I am now as well so that I will have a consistent measure for comparison purposes.

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.

January Income – $1805.92

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Here is a breakdown of my income for January.

Online Income

$407.62

Interest

$51.83

Stock Dividends

$20.33

Job

$971.33

Survey/Cashback

$6.67

Ebay/Selling stuff

$108.14

Bank Bonuses

$240

Total

$1805.92

January was a pretty good month for income. It was nice to see that I made almost as much from my alternative income sources as I did from my job. It will be difficult to match my alternative income total this month although I already know my online income will be up. As long as my income is a few hundred dollars more than my expenses I will be content.

January Expenses – $1148.74

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Here is a breakdown of my expenses for January.

Household

$403.79

Entertainment

$67.32

Transportation

 $138.76

Food

$115.09

Health

$67.66

Phone

$34.63

Debt

 $29.00

Laptop/printer

 $333.15

Total

$1189.40

My expenses were reasonable in January. If it weren’t for the purchase of a new laptop and printer they would have been under my goal of $1000 and I still didn’t miss that target by much.  There won’t be any large purchases in February and I expect my normal expenses to remain about the same so I should easily be under $1000 for expenses this month.

2009 Income – $15277.99

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After adding up all my sources of income in 2009 I came up with a total income of $15,277.99 for the year. This might not seem like much but I’m happy with it. Especially considering I was in school for the first few months of the year and never had a full-time job during the year. My only employment income was from working part-time during the month of December.

My expenses for 2009 were only $12,090.99* giving me a surplus of $3187 for the year. I felt like I was mostly living off my savings in 2009. It was a nice surprise to see I actually made more than I spent. Since I didn’t include the purchase price of my car or the cost of buying My Retirement Blog in my expenses I actually had a small deficit for the year but I’m ok with that.

My income goal for 2010 was originally going to be to make more than in 2009. I plan to spend several months doing a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail which will make achieving that goal difficult. Therefore, I am setting a backup goal of making more than I spend in 2010.

I hope this blog shows that you can live pretty well on a small income. I managed to travel to 6 foreign countries, spend a week hiking on the AT, went to the movies about 50 times, and did lots more last year. Being frugal and living on a relatively small income doesn’t mean you have to stay home and watch TV all the time.

*I found it a strange coincidence that both my total income and total expenses ended in 99 cents.