I’m not actually quitting law school but the idea is somewhat tempting. I can’t say I’m enjoying law school at all. At this point I feel like I have too much time and money invested to quit though. I’m hoping that once I do some actual legal work this summer that I will like it. One more year of law school will be much more bearable if I feel that I have a legal job that I’ll like to look forward to once I finish. Several people have told me that they hated law school but love being a lawyer so I hope that is the case for me as well.
April Income- $371.06
Here is a breakdown of my income for April.
|
Online Income |
$312.52 |
|
Interest |
$48.54 |
|
Survey |
$5 |
|
Mystery Shop |
$5 |
|
Total |
$371.06 |
Since I can’t work during the semester all of my income is alternative income. I’m really pleased with my online income. I’ve already made this year than all of last year. May should be even better than April. Most of this online income is from my other blog. This blog hasn’t really been monetized yet and I’m debating whether I should. I’ll discuss that in a blog post sometime.
I’m also pleased that my alternative income total is almost as much as my rent of $375. I’ll have to set a goal of making enough to pay my rent with alternative income this month.
The interest amount is high because it includes ING Direct referrals. Since they will be reported as interest on my 1099 at the end of the year I just go ahead and count them as rent now.
Don't Forget to Make Money
The simplified formula for personal financial success is to spend less than you earn and invest the rest. Blogs like mine concentrate on the spend less part but don’t say much about the earning part. This makes sense since this is a frugality blog but I think the earning part of the personal finance formula is too often overlooked. I’m certainly guilty of it. It is one of the issues I addressed in my “I’m Frugal So Why Am I Poor” series of posts. Other personal finance bloggers are guilty of it as well. In many cases I think this is because they are already earning a better than average income and assume the spending part is what every one needs to address. If you’re only making $15,000 a year though you need to concentrate on earning more, not just on spending less. At that level if you manage to save 10% of your income it is only $1500. This is better than nothing but you’re not likely to ever become financially independent at that rate. I’m looking forward to finishing the semester so I can start concentrating on earning more money and making financial progress. There are probably plenty of others out there who need to concentrate on earning more as well. I’ve added a “Make Money with TFM” page to get the earning more started.
Making a Challenge Challenging
There are various bloggers out there who have no spending challenges. The typical no spend challenge isn’t very challenging for me though. I don’t have any desire to buy most things that aren’t allowed in a no spend challenge. The only tangible items I’ve bought this year besides food are detergent, toilet paper, and books. These were all necessary and I didn’t spend much money on them. The books were bought used for school and I’ll sell them again when I’m done with them. Entertainment is where I’ve been spending way too much money and I need to challenge myself to spend much less there next month. This will be complicated because I just started dating someone and I put dates in the entertainment category. She doesn’t expect me to spend a lot of money on her but when you first start dating you don’t want to be too cheap. Also my best friend is coming back to town after being out of town for a month and a half. We will be spending some money while hanging out and catching up. My goal for the month is just to spend less than my average monthly entertainment expenditure. This shouldn’t be too hard since my entertainment spending has been very high this year due to a vacation and excessive gambling.
There is also a May Grocery Challenge at Give Me Back My Five Bucks that I’m going to participate in. My goal will be to spend $50 in groceries for the month. This is what I usually budget but I’ve been going way over the past couple months. I’ve also been eating out too much. To make this challenge more challenging I’m not going to eat out unless it is on a date or with family or friends. I will try to keep those occasions reasonably limited. I won’t invite my friend or girlfriend out to eat just because I want to eat a meal out. These conditions should make this challenge challenging to keep.
It is Finals Time
I have completed classes for the semester and am now in the final exam period. I might miss a couple days posting over the next couple weeks because I need to make preparing for my exams a priority. In law school 100% of your grade is based on your final exam. This makes it hard to know how well you’re doing in class until after you take the final. Sometimes you can’t even be sure then, you have to wait until you get your grade. This semester I feel ok about two of my classes and am worried about the other two classes. I’ve already taken one final which I think I did well on. My feelings about how I’ve done on finals have been wrong in the past though, usually the result is worse than I expected. I’ve already been given a second chance at law school so I have to do well now. There won’t be a third chance. Wish me luck.