February Income

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These are my sources of income and my total income for February.

Online Income

$165.56

Ebay

$22.44

Surveys

$5.00

Mystery Shop

$12.00

Total

$205.00

My net income was negative $634.12. I’m able to do this now because I’m living on my student loans. This is the last semester I plan to use my loans for living expenses.

Expenses have been deducted from the totals. The figures here are net figures. My online income is higher than usual because I received my Adsense money this month. It usually takes me 2 or 3 months to reach the Adsense payout amount but I only post it when I actually receive it not when I earn it. None of the Adsense money was from this blog. I don’t have it here and don’t plan to,I’ll provide more details on that in a later post. A small amount of the Adsense was from my blog BankBonuses but the majority was from my website BankBonuses. I’m not sure why the website makes so much more than my blog when the website provides much less information and looks much uglier as well.

I didn’t make much money from surveys or mystery shops last month. This is not a bad amount of income for extra income but as my only income it isn’t too good. I also received my state and federal tax refund. I’m not sure if I should count them as income. Since I only count my net income the refunds probably should count because they were not included in my income previously. This isn’t much money but when I get a job all of this money can go to debt reduction and will help pay my debt off much faster.

Can I Be More Frugal?

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One thing about being poor and frugal is that most posts you see about frugal tips tell you things you are already doing or don’t apply to you. Hower you still come across a few new ideas now and then.

Worldwide Success had a post with 10 simple ideas to save thousands and The Simple Dollar had a post on 10 ways to save money this week. I decided to see how these would relate to my personal financial situation. I’ll list their idea and then my comments on it.
First is Worldwide Success‘s list. The title doesn’t really work for me. It is difficult to save thousand when you live on less than 10k a year.

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One Month Challenge Results

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I kept track of all money spent in February as part of the One Month Challenge. This wasn’t much of a problem for me because I normally track all my spending. That is one thing I picked up from the book “Your Money or Your Life”. Here is what I spent for the month followed by analysis of the categories.

Rent/Household

$442.89

Transportation

$183.57

Utilities

$81.12

Food

$66.92

Entertainment

$24.62

Debt

$40

Total

$839.12

My expenses were pretty reasonable for this month. The rent and household expense category is lower than normal because I used Christmas gift cards to make some household purchases. The transportation expense included the purchase of two new tires so this expense should be lower in March. Utilities should also go down with the arrival of warmer weather. Food will probably be about the same but I’m trying to shift more of this expense from fast food to grocery. Entertainment will go up in March. I have a friend coming in from out of town and I just started dating someone. I like keeping my expenses low but Tight Fisted Miser doesn’t want to become Lonely Old Hermit so sometimes I got to spend some money. Debt expense will likely be the same.

Challenge Mash-Up Results

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Well, two out of three ain’t bad. I had three challenges for the month of February and I met two of them. I didn’t meet my goal of eating on only $30 for the month. My total for the month is probably about $60. I still believe that one can eat reasonably well on $30 for a month but I don’t have the necessary self discipline to do it right now.

On the positive side I did meet the goals of tracking all my expenses and exercising regularly. Tracking all my expenses wasn’t really difficult because I usually do that anyway. Exercising regularly is not a normal habit for me so I felt like it was an accomplishment to stick to my exercise schedule for the month.

Where do I go from here? I will continue to keep track of all my expenses. BFL is a twelve week program and I’m counting February as the first 4 weeks. For the rest of the BFL program I will follow the BFL eating program as well. Despite eating lots of junk food I still managed to lose 5 pounds for the month. Now that the weather is getting nicer I plan to increase my running. With the increased exercise and better eating I should be able to improve my results. I’ll make occassional posts updating my progress. I will post the details of my spending tomorrow.

I’m Frugal,So Why Am I Poor? Part 3

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This is the third and final part of my series examining the question, I’m Frugal So Why Am I Poor?  You can find the first part here, and the second part here. The first reason for still being poor was insufficient income, the second reason was uncontrolled spending in certain areas.

The third reason I’m still poor is that I never had a plan to save. Even if you are frugal and have a decent income if you don’t have a plan to save or invest you will probably end up with nothing. Or at least with less than you would have had otherwise. If you don’t have a plan to invest part of your income you have a good chance of spending it all even if you are frugal. If you don’t spend it all but just leave the money in your checking account or a low-paying savings account you money is not going to grow nearly as much as it should. This is why you should have a plan to save a certain percentage of your income. The savings should come out of your income first. Then you need to invest that money so it can grow.

Just changing these three things should keep me from remaining poor. The sad thing is I’ve pretty much always known these things but just haven’t put them into action. It is now my goal to fix all three of these things this year and start getting ahead financially. I know I would be much better off if I would have started earlier but I just have to do the best I can now.