July Income – $1226.91

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Here is a breakdown of my income for July.

Online Income

 $371.75

Interest/Dividends

$32.36

Extra Job

$606.39

Cash Back

$11.59

Bank Bonus

 $10

Mystery Shopping

$189.50

Sell Stuff

$5.32

Total

$1226.91

My overall income was up a bit due to working as an extra.  If I were to deduct the cost of my motel stay and gas expense to get to Atlanta and back though, I would barely make any money from the extra job.  My online income was down once again.  This was the first month in over four years that I didn’t get a payout from Adsense.  I barely missed making the minimum for the Adsense payment and made more than enough in July so I’ll have a larger payment this month.  I also didn’t receive any affiliate income in July, but I made some income that will be paid this month.  I can already tell that August will be a better month than July for online income.

My other sources of passive and alternative income don’t add up to much and that probably won’t change this month.  I did almost no mystery shopping in July since there are very few jobs where I’m currently staying and with the poor MPG of my van it doesn’t make sense to travel very far for a shop.  I might sell more stuff this month.  That depends on whether I’m hired for the job I interviewed for yesterday.  If I get the job I’ll have a significant increase in income.

July Expenses – $1245.87

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Here is a breakdown of my expenses for July.

Household

$44.21
Entertainment

$100.41

Transportation

 $621.66

Food

$112.59
Shoes $21
Travel $263.06
Phone

$26.81
Health

$56.13

Total

 $1245.87

My expenses were down slightly from June. The biggest expense was for transportation, but it was quite a bit lower than last month.  I didn’t spend any money on gas after the 16th.  I did use a lot of gas though to drive to Atlanta and back and to visit my brother in South Carolina.  I’m hoping I can cut down on the miles this month.  I have a trip to Kansas City today so I’m not off to a good start.  My food expense is low because I spent the last half of the month at my mom’s.  I still spent money on meals out and some food though or that expense could have been even lower.  The travel expense was for working so I’m ok with it.  Entertainment was the main category I could have cut back on.  It should be lower this month.  This is probably about the level my expenses will be until I pay off my van.  I’m still going to try to get them a little lower though.

The $100 Weight Loss Challenge

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I set a goal of losing 50 pounds this year and have made almost no progress towards that goal. To provide myself with some more motivation I am launching the $100 weight loss challenge. If you have been reading this blog for a while you may remember the $500 weight loss challenge, which was a complete failure. I think the reasons that I failed at that challenge was because the goal was too big and the end of the challenge was too far off. This allowed me to keep procrastinating until it was too late to meet the challenge.

The $100 challenge will be a short term challenge. My goal is to lose 5 pounds by August 15, 2012 or I’ll pay $100 to the readers. This deadline is soon enough that I should realize I need to start working on it immediately. My current weight is 217.8 pounds. My goal weight will be 212.8 pounds. This should be easily doable.

My weight is down from 220.4 pounds on Sunday. It seems that having a slow carb breakfast is leading to weight loss. It is hard to believe that having bacon and eggs for breakfast would cause me to lose weight but I haven’t otherwise changed my diet or exercise habits. For the challenge I’ll be making a second meal a day slow-carb and doing my version of the kettlebell swings from The 4-Hour Body. I might also try cold showers and ice packs.

To participate in the challenge leave a comment on this post. The first 20 people to leave a comment will receive a $5 Amazon gift card or $5 PayPal cash if I don’t meet my weight loss goal. That is the stick approach. For the carrot I’ll be allowing myself to spend $100 on something for myself guilt-free if I meet the goal.

I won’t have an extra $100 on August 15th unless I earn some more money before then so the challenge should also motivate me to make more money.

The Minimum Effective Dose and Blogging

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I recently read The 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferris and it had several ideas in it that I found interesting. One of them is the minimum effective dose. The book explains that the minimum effective dose is the smallest dose that will produce the desired outcome. Applying the MED to exercise Ferris determines the least necessary to maximize size gain. According to him less than 30 minutes of gym time per week is needed. I’m more concerned with weight loss than size gain so I will test that at a later time.

For weight loss the book tells how a woman was able to lose 100 pounds with 20 minutes of exercise twice a week. The MED for weight loss is just 40 minutes of exercise a week. That seems easily achievable sounds so I’m going to do it and see how it works. She also had a slow carb breakfast. I’ve been doing that since I haven’t been able to stay on a complete slow carb diet, but just having a slow carb breakfast is easy. I’m not sure that will be enough for me and am thinking of switching to two slow carb and one carb meal a day. That will depend on my results with the current setup.

If the MED actually works it would mean I could achieve one of my major goals without too much effort. Since I like the idea of doing the minimum I’m trying to think of how to apply the MED to blogging. I’m not sure if the MED applies to blogging since you can do a lot of work before it ceases to be effective. Currently I’m not even doing the minimum so I need to determine what the minimum is. I’m thinking of setting a goal of writing one post a day. I have three blogs this is a minimal amount of writing for them. I’m still thinking of other ways to apply the MED to blogging. How would you apply the MED to blogging?

June Income – $843.99

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Here is a breakdown of my income for May.

Online Income

 $497.67

Interest

$0.08

Stock Dividends

$55.10

Cash Back

$33.64

Bank Bonus

 $25

Mystery Shopping

$232.50

Total

$843.99

My income continues to decline. My online income is still down and will probably be even lower this month.  I’m hoping it will rebound after this month.  Luckily I have some passive and alternative streams of income to help make up for the reduced online income.   I didn’t sell anything in June and have only sold one thing so far in July.  I need to get busy selling stuff the rest of the month.  My interest income has declined to the point that it doesn’t really deserve it’s own category any more.  I’m scaling back on mystery shopping this month but most shops pay the month after you do them so it will be a month before the decline shows up.  I will have some job income this month but I need to find some more ways to increase my income.  This level of income will not pay my bills and pay off my debts.