I Graduated Law School

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Graduation
photo credit: jnb photos
I had my graduation ceremony for law school Saturday. It was a busy weekend with my mom coming to town for my graduation on Saturday and then having a Mother’s Day breakfast with my mom and Mother’s Day lunch with GF’s mom. That was after the celebratory dinner for my graduation Saturday night. It might take my body a couple of days to recover from all the food I ate.

Now that things have slowed down somewhat I plan to spend some more time on the blog. I’ll be doing this medical study for about 60 more days and it won’t take much of my time so some of that spare time will be spent working on this blog. I’ll have a new post tomorrow. It will be the long promised interview with Monique Tilford, co-author of the latest edition of Your Money or Your Life.

Delaying My Hike

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My Appalachian Trail hike will be delayed. I’m starting a two month medical study that will pay me $7000. That is too good of money for me to pass up. I still plan to hike once the study is over. Since there won’t be as much time before cold weather sets in I’ll probably just do the part of the trail I haven’t done rather than the whole trail.

The study will usually only take a couple hours a day. That will give me plenty of time to work on my web sites and explore other opportunities to make money.

April Income- $490.30

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Here is a breakdown of my income for March.

Online Income

$379.81

Interest

$57.34

Survey

 $3

Stock Dividends

$42.87

Ebay

$7.28

Total

$490.30

My income was decent for the month considering it was all alternative income. My income should go up slightly or a lot this month as I have at least some medical study income coming and possibly a large amount of medical study income coming. If I do end up hiking my income will probably go down a little while I’m hiking but I plan to concentrate on bringing it back up when I finish the hike.

April Expenses- $825.80

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Here is a breakdown of my expenses for April.

Household

$412.16

Transportation

$12.25

Food

$59.02

Entertainment

$166.72

Education/Debt

$80.00

Phone

$33.99

Medical/Dental

$61.66

Total

$825.80

This was a good month being slightly under a $10,000 a year budget.  My food expense was a little high since this figure is only for lunches and snacks.  I need to cut back on the fast food and junk food.  Entertainment was high since I spent $80 on gambling.

My expenses for this should go down if I go on my hike.  If I don’t hike my expenses will likely go up this month.  I’d like to hike but I have an opportunity to make good money over the next couple months.  If that opportunity does not come through than I will go hiking.  Either way is pretty good.  I should find out tomorrow if I get the money-making opportunity. If so it will start almost immediately, if not I’ll be leaving for my hike on Monday.

April Investment Income- $63.83

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My investment income had another nice increase last month to $63.83 from $58.12 the month before. This was due to the gains in the stock market. My personal stock portfolio is now showing a profit and my IRA is finally starting to gain back some of its losses.

Disclaimer:This is not my actual investment income. To get this figure I first add up my retirement accounts, 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.