October 2016 Net Worth Update

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penniesIn order to keep track of my financial progress or lack of progress I have decided to calculate my net worth each month.

My net worth as of 10/1/2016 is as follows.

Assets
Cash – $3710.82 (+$397.63)
IRA – $23,877.79 (-$26.52)
Roth IRA – $10,450.23 (+$71.49)
Solo 401k – 988.09 (-$4.45)
Car/Stuff – $4500 (-$100)

Liabilities
Student Loan – $130,181.70 ($518)

Net Worth = $-86,654.77

My net worth decreased by $179.85 since the last update. Since I didn’t  have any luck finding a job last month I wasn’t able to contribute any money to my investments or pay extra on my student loan. Although I did have a small increase in my assets it wasn’t enough to overcome the $600 of monthly interest incurred on my student loan.

I do have a job starting in January so I’ll be able to improve my net worth at that time. I’m hoping I’ll be able to find something in the meantime to increase my income and reverse this net worth slide.

I’ve been using Personal Capital (affiliate link) to help track my net worth. It keeps track of all of my financial accounts and my student loan making it pretty easy to calculate my net worth each month. It is free to sign up. If you would like to sign up I’d appreciate you using my link. All blog income, including affiliate income, goes to paying down my student loan.

Personal Capital

September Income – $828.65

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Here is a breakdown of my income for September.

Mystery Shop $14.50
Interest $1.46
Health Survey $75
User Testing $10
Online Income $90
Amazon FBA $594.16
Decluttr $20
Cash Back $23.53
Total $828.65

My income wasn’t very good in September. I didn’t have any luck finding a job. There was some good news on the job front though. I was officially hired for my seasonal tax job. That job doesn’t start until January so I’ll be looking for other ways to make money until then.

I did have some new sources of income in September. I made $20 referring people to Decluttr. If you would like to sign up for Decluttr you can get a $10 bonus by clicking through my referral link and using my referral code DXR9HCGXYL. You need to sell Decluttr at least $10 of stuff to qualify for the $10 bonus.  I’ll receive a $10 bonus for the first ten qualified referrals as well.  I made $75 referring people to an online health study.  If you buy your own insurance then you might qualify for the health study. If you use my health insurance study referral link we can both make $25 when you successfully complete the study. I also made $10 from User Testing. I might write more about User Testing later.

All of the new sources of income are nice extra sources of income, but none of them have the potential to make significant money. Since it is now Q4 I will try to kick my Amazon business into high gear.  Most FBA sellers make the majority of their income during the Christmas season. If I am able to make the majority of my FBA income these last three months of the year then I’ll consider it a successful year. In addition to FBA I’ll be looking for other ways to make more money. It shouldn’t be too hard to make more money this month than I did in September.

September Expenses – $1145.19

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Here is a breakdown of my expenses for September.

Household $423.84
Entertainment $15.42
Transportation $279.83
Food $141.79
Student Loan $144
Travel $0
Phone $36.79
Health $103.52
Total $1145.19

 
September was another low expense month. Without the extra student loan payment my monthly expenses would have been just over $1000. That is two months in a row of keeping my expenses right around my stretch target of $1000.

My big expense category for the month was transportation. This was due to paying for six months of car insurance. The bill wasn’t actually due until the second half of this month, but I decided to pay it early since I was having such a low expense month. I’m okay with all the other expense categories although I would like to reduce the food expense a little.

October should be another  low expense month. There are no expected large expenses this month. I did have a doctor’s appointment in September I haven’t been billed for yet and I have another appointment this month which could cost me some money. I have met my deductible for the year so these appointments shouldn’t cost me much if anything. Other than transportation October expenses should be pretty similar to September’s expenses.

Being an Above Average Saver is a Pretty Low Bar

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On this blog I write about ways to keep your expenses low. I don’t write about ways to make a big income or make money investing since I don’t have any expertise in those areas. I’ve never accumulated a lot of money since I’ve never made a lot of money and I’ve only made mediocre returns on my investments. Despite those shortcomings it appears that I am an above average saver.

According to this survey, 69% of Americans have less than $1000 saved. That is pretty surprising statistic. Even more surprising 34% have no savings at all and 40% of Americans making $100,000+ a year have less than $1,000 in savings. I’m not sure how it is possible to make six figures and have so little in savings. I’ve never made more than $30,000 a year and I still have more savings than that. According to this study I’m an above average saver. When I’ve had jobs that paid an hourly rate equivalent to $45,000 a year my savings accumulated rapidly. Of course, not everyone is as frugal as me and many have dependents to support as well. Still you would think that they would be able to accumulate more than $1000 in savings.

Part of the reason for the low amount of savings reported in the survey might be due to how the savings question was asked. The survey asked, “How much do you have saved in your savings account.” With interest rates currently being so low many people don’t bother putting their savings in a separate savings account. They just keep their savings in a checking account. Also, taking the question literally survey takers with all their savings in CDs or money market accounts would report $0 savings. I think it is quite likely that the survey under reported the amount of savings for most people. A better survey questions would be, “How much do you have saved outside of retirement accounts?” That would give a more accurate picture of how much people have said.

Even if the survey under reported how much Americans have saved I’m sure that most people need to save more money. I need to save more money myself. It doesn’t make sense for me to save much money right now since I have student loans accumulating 6.8% interest. My strategy is to just keep about $2000 in my savings account in order to maintain a little liquidity and put any excess money towards my student loan.

Are you surprised by the amount of savings reported by the survey?

Decluttr -Sell Old CDs and Other Clutter – $10 Signup and $10 Referral Bonus

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decluttrDecluttr is an online service that allows you to sell your old CDs, DVDs, books, mobile phones,  and electronics. To sell your stuff you just go to the site enter the barcode of the item and get an offer. Once you’ve confirmed your order, pack all of your items – CDs, DVDs, Games, Blu-Rays and Books – into a box. Then you print a free shipping label and drop the box off at your nearest UPS shipping center. After your stuff arrives at Decluttr they will pay you the next day.

I have tried Decluttr myself and it was a pretty easy process and they did pay as they said. I sold about 20-25 CDs for a total of $10 and change. That wasn’t much, but these are CDs that hadn’t been listened to in years and would otherwise have been donated or thrown away. The $10 was just enough of an incentive to motivate me to get rid of the CDs. Now that I have verified that Decluttr works I’m going to get rid of the rest of the CDs in the house.

If you would like to sign up for Decluttr you can get a $10 bonus by clicking through my referral link and using my referral code DXR9HCGXYL. You need to sell Decluttr at least $10 of stuff to qualify for the $10 bonus.  I’ll receive a $10 bonus for the first ten qualified referrals as well.  Once you have signed up and qualified for the $10 sign up bonus you can refer new users and receive $10 per qualified referral for up to ten referrals.  That means you could make $10 for signing up and $100 for referring  your friends. That isn’t a bad deal for getting rid of some extra clutter.