August Income -$2513.12

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Here is a breakdown of my income for August.

Online Income

 $2257.83

Interest

$16.16

Stock Dividends

$12.99

Mystery Shops

$155.02

Cash Back

$55

Ebay

$16.12

Total

$2513.12

August was another good month for income.  It wasn’t as good as June or July but it was still over $2500.  I’m not sure how long this will last but September is off to a good start and I estimate I should make at least $2000 this month.  Making money from these alternative income and passive income sources has been making me lazy.  I’ve been thinking about getting a job but since I’m making enough money to easily pay my bills I’ve not been too motivated.  A job will be delayed until at least after the Personal Finance Blogger’s Conference. Our offline business is getting close to taking off also. We have received a verbal commitment for business from a company that would provide us with a nice start but it is taking a little while for them to do their part so we can get started.  We are doing ok financially but I’d like to make enough to pay our bills from either a new job or our new business so we could bank all of the alternative income and passive income.

August Expenses – $1857.07

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Here is a breakdown of my expenses for August.

Household

$584.29
Entertainment

$65.75

Transportation

 $379.75

Food

$361.35
Cable/Internet

$93.77
Phone

$112.50
Electric

$81.36
Medical/Dental

$178.30

Total

 $1857.07

My goal for August was to get our expenses under $2000 and we met that goal.  My stretch goal was to get our expenses under $1750 and we would have made that if not for a car repair.  Our car has over 200,000 miles so spending money on repairs/maintenance is an expectation rather than a surprise at this point.  My goal for September will again be $2000 since we might do some traveling.  If we end up not traveling then the goal will be $1750.

Our entertainment bill will be higher in September due to a planned birthday and the possible traveling.  The cable and phone bill will be about the same; I’d like to reduce both of those bills but that won’t happen this month.

All other bills should be lower.  We had to buy some miscellaneous household stuff in August and shouldn’t have to this month making the household expense smaller.  Transportation was still higher than I would like with over $200 spent on gas and $179 to replace the spark plugs and spark plug wires.  Transportation expense should be smaller this month unless another repair pops up or we do some traveling.  My goal for our food expense is $300 a month and we went quite a bit over that this month.  Our pantry is well stocked now so we should be able to spend less on food this month.  There shouldn’t be any doctor’s visits this month so the medical expense will go down as well.

Our expenses are fairly low but being a tight-fisted miser I think there is still quite a bit of room for improvement.

Loan to Friend Paid Off

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Those who have been reading this blog for a while may remember that I loaned a friend money last year. I am happy to report that the loan was paid off this week. This was quite a bit later than the original schedule. I could have received the loan payoff this spring but I knew that my friend was struggling financially so I let the payment slide until he was better able to pay it. As a financial transaction the loan wasn’t a success but as a favor to a friend it worked well. He has done plenty of favors for me over the years so I was happy to give him a loan. The funny thing about this loan is that my friend probably makes about three times as much money as me and is single and yet I’m the one loaning him money.

September 2011 Goals

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It has been a little while since I’ve written a goals post. Mainly because I usually didn’t meet my goals. I’ll be setting fairly easy goals for September so I should be able to make them.

Write 100 posts/pages. I have three blogs,write a weekly column,plan to write an ebook, and plan to launch a new blog. In order to do all of that I’ll need to write at least 100 posts/pages.

Walk/run/hike 100 miles. I’m planning on doing some hiking and once the weather cools off I want to start running again so it should be easy to meet this goal.

Save 100% of extra money. Money from blogging and mystery shopping is what I use to pay my bills. Any extra money such as Ebay sales,dividends, and interest will be saved.

My Self Storage Unit Auction Experience

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One of my favorite shows on cable right now is Storage Wars. The show makes bidding and buying storage units look pretty interesting so I decided to check out some storage auctions myself. The first auction I went to was during a weekday and in a lower-income part of town. I would guess there were about 25-30 people there but only about five people who actually bid on anything. Most of the units didn’t look to be worth much. It made me wonder why people would pay to store trash. I’d guess in most cases just a few months rent on the unit would be more than the items stored were worth. Most of these units went for less than $100 and there were a couple that nobody wanted. There was one unit that went for about $1000 but I didn’t see the value. I mainly wanted to spectate at this auction and didn’t buy anything but if there had been a super bargain I would have bid.

The second auction was on a Saturday and fairly close to where we live which is basically a suburb. There were at least a 100 people there. I heard one of the people comment that he had never seen more than twenty people show up to an auction before. It seems that the TV shows are making a lot more people interested in self storage auctions. This auction had much nicer units but they also sold for a lot more. One of the units was packed with Hot Wheels, old metal toy cars, Nascar collectibles, and other collectibles. It went for $2000 and I’m sure the stuff in it was worth more than that but it was more money than I was willing to risk. The only units that were in my price range didn’t look to be worth what people were bidding so I once again didn’t buy anything.

I think there is some money to be made buying self storage units at auction but their recent popularity is probably going to make it harder to find good deals. There are several things that kept me from bidding on any of the units. Many of the units had a lot of stuff that would just need to be thrown in the trash. You can’t just dump it in the storage facility’s trash bin, you have to haul it off. I don’t think my apartment manager would like me throwing a truck load of trash in the dumpster. Also most of the units have big items in them. I’d have to find someone to help me move them and I would need to borrow a truck. And once I had the stuff on the truck I’d have to find somewhere to store them because the stuff wouldn’t fit in our apartment. After I had the stuff moved I would still have to sort through it, figure out which stuff is valuable and where it can be sold. All of that would take a lot of time and effort and I’m doubtful the return would be worth the investment.

I might check out some more auctions just out of curiosity but unless there is a small unit with really valuable stuff going for really cheap I won’t be buying.