Here is a breakdown of my income for September.
|
Job Income |
$2007.36 |
|
Online Income |
$116.8 |
|
Ebay/Half/Selling Stuff |
$79.06 |
|
Interest |
$0.76 |
|
Total |
$2203.98 |
My number of sources of income went down but my job income went up so my income remained roughly the same. This month will probably be about the same as well.
Recently there have been several PF blog posts focusing on the minimum wage and the thought that most PF blogs are out of touch with the minimum wage earner. Since I earn the minimum wage I’m going to share my thoughts on this subject.
I earn the MO minimum wage of $6.50 per hour. I do also receive tips and supplement my income with other sources so overall I make more than the minimum wage. However I didn’t work the first three months of the year and I usually work less than 40 hours so my annual income will be close to that of a full-time minimum wage worker.
I do believe it is possible to get ahead on minimum wage although ideally you would seek a job earning more income as soon as possible. My current job is delivering pizza and my restaurant has never been fully staffed. Every city I’ve lived in there was always plenty of openings at restaurants. It might not be the greatest job but it does allow you to make a bit more than minimum wage and pays the bills until you can find something better.
To get ahead on minimum wage you definitely need to be frugal. If you click on my expense/income tracking category you can see how I’ve been spending my money. By watching my spending I’ve been able to pay off debt and/or increase my savings every month.
Here is what I have done since April:
I also paid a significant tuition bill and had large car repair expenses. I may not be getting rich but I’m definitely making progress. My current goal is to put 50% of my income towards savings or paying down debt. If I can do this on minimum wage than so can others.
I get paid for doing searches through Moola.com. This doesn’t add up to much so don’t expect it to be a significant source of income. I’ve made a little over $20 so far this year. It doesn’t take much time to do the search when I’m online anyway. The search results aren’t as good as Google but they are reasonable. I had a membership with Slashmysearch also but I earned even less with them and they had spammy search results so I decided to use Moola only. Moola also has several games you can play against others to try to win money. If you would like an invitation to Moola I have three available.
My last month’s electric bill was $17.27. This is very cheap but since electric rates vary around the country vary I’m interested in comparing cost for kWh used. I used a total of 118 kWh over 32 days for an average of 3.6 kWh/day. This is about as low as I think I can get my electricity usage but I might be able to get it slightly lower at my new apartment. How much is your bill and how much electricity do you use?
Here is a breakdown of my expenses for September.
|
Household |
$507.31 |
|
Food |
$84.39 |
|
Transportation |
$458.89 |
|
Medical/Dental |
$190.22 |
|
Entertainment |
$73.35 |
|
Debt |
$449.70 |
|
Total |
$1763.86 |
Expenses went up higher than I wanted. I had a car repair and a traffic ticket that inflated my transportation expenses. They should be lower this month although I do have a repair to make. Medical expenses were high because I had my quarterly health insurance bill. This ought to go down this month but I hope to have a dental appointment so it may not go down much. Entertainment was higher than usual because I gambled $60. That is out of my system for now and this month’s entertainment expense should be very low because I have two free gift cards that can be used for movies. Food and household should be about the same. I probably won’t be able to pay as much towards debt this month. That is the one category of my expenses I want to be bigger.