November Expenses – $2584.55

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for November.

Household $421.24
Entertainment $81.95
Transportation $102.70
Food $169.88
Student Loan $183.86
Travel $5
Phone $36.79
Health $1583.13
Total $2584.55

 

My November expenses were high due to paying $1500 towards my biopsy bill. If you take those payments away my expenses were almost at my $1000 target. My food expenses were a little high since I ate fast food way too much. All the other expense categories were okay.  My health expense should be back to normal this month and I expect all of my other expense categories will be about the same.

I Won’t Be Living in a Van in Florida this Winter

van interiorI was planning to be writing a post this month about my plan to spend this winter living in a van in Florida. Unfortunately, that plan has fallen through.

The plan started when I was offered the opportunity to work my tax job remotely this tax season. Since this  gave me the option to work basically anywhere with an internet connection I decided I would like to live somewhere warmer than Kansas City for the winter months.  I’ve also wanted to give van living another try. That led to me deciding to live in Florida in a van for the winter.  The weather would have been great for living in the van. My expenses would have been low and my job would have paid the same which would have allowed me to save money/pay down loans at a good rate. This plan has now been scrapped since I was informed there won’t be any remote tax positions this year after all leaving me without a job.  Luckily, this notice didn’t come any later since I had just that morning looked at a van that I was seriously considering buying. Procrastination worked in my favor this time.

Now I need to figure out what I’ll do instead. I’ve thought of several options but I’m not sure which -if any- of the options I will take. The first option is to just stay here in Kansas City and drive for Uber and keep working at my FBA business. This would be the easiest option.  One drawback is that although Uber and FBA should make me enough money to pay my expenses I don’t think I’ll make enough money from them to make much progress on paying down my loans or saving money. Another drawback is that I’d still be in KC for the winter and I’d really like to get out of the cold weather.

Another option is to go to Florida (or maybe Texas) anyway and figure out how to make money once I’m there. Since I don’t have certainty of the tax job income I wouldn’t buy a van. I’d make a bed in my car and live out of my car. There is enough room in my HHR to sleep comfortably, but it would be pretty cramped to live out of. One good thing about this option is that if it didn’t work out I could come back to KC and I wouldn’t be out much money.

A third option would be to live in Guatemala for the winter. I know from experience that I could rent a room for about $100 a month and would be able to live very cheaply there. The airfare there and back would negate quite a bit of the savings though.  Also, I wouldn’t have a reliable way to make money there.  Perhaps, the biggest drawback to this option is that I would be committed to staying for the winter. If I changed my mind it would be quite expensive to change my plane ticket.

One more option would be to stay in Kansas City and find another job. This would be the most practical option. I don’t like this option much though. I’d really like to get out of KC for a while this winter and I’m doubtful that I could find a job that I like ok and pays well.

I’m sure there are more options than what I’ve listed here. Let me know what you think of these options and if you have any other options to share I’d love to hear them.

October Income – $4078.20

Here is a breakdown of my income for October.

Online Income $0
Interest $4.15
Other Bonus $32.52
Amazon FBA $275.41
Job $3716.12
CC Bonus  $50
Total $4078.20

 

October was a great month for income. This was due to receiving three full paychecks during the month since the month had five Fridays.  Unfortunately, that job is over and I most likely won’t be working another job until tax season starts in January. I’ll need to significantly increase my Uber and FBA income to make up for the loss of the job income.

I didn’t have any Uber income last month since I was working full-time and didn’t want to spend my off hours driving for Uber. My FBA income fell significantly from the previous month since I didn’t put much time into it.  I also spent some of my FBA profits on an ungating service which will allow me to sell in a couple more Amazon categories. That should lead to increased profits. I’d like to get to $1000 monthly profit this month. That amount of profit is reasonably achievable. It is just a question of whether I will have enough cash flow to be able to buy enough stuff to sell to reach that level of profit.

This month’s income will be much less, but I’m hoping my income will at least exceed my expenses.

October Expenses – $1319.76

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for October.

Household $628.18
Entertainment $31.93
Transportation $199.85
Food $127.51
Student Loan $183.86
Travel $0
Phone $36.79
Health $111.64
Total $1319.76

 

My October expenses were a little high due to a couple of big expenses. One expense was my car insurance bill. This bill was expected. Paying $199.85 for six months of car insurance breaks down $33.30 a month which isn’t a bad deal. Luckily, I didn’t have any other transportation expenses in October so the transportation category of expenses was still a reasonable total.

The other big expense was the purchase of a new laptop.  This was an unexpected expense. I knew my laptop was getting old but I was hoping to get another year or two out of it. Unfortunately, it now gets stuck in a loop of trying to load Windows when I turn it on. This is probably fixable and I’ll eventually get this fixed so I can get things off of the laptop. Since that laptop was running very slowly and didn’t have much life left I decided to go ahead and purchase a new laptop. Even though I got a bargain basement model it is a lot faster than my old laptop. I’m happy I decided to purchase the new laptop.

My other expenses were pretty much normal. This month will see a large increase in the health category since I’ll be paying down my biopsy bill. There might be a large transportation expense as well. My expenses definitely won’t be below my $1000 target this month, but hopefully I can get things set up so that I’ll have very low expenses to start the next year.

Almost Free Vegas Vacation, Broken Laptop, and Other Stuff

fremontstreetI haven’t been posting much lately. My excuse is that I’ve been working and my laptop died. My job finished Friday and I bought a new laptop yesterday so I don’t have those excuses anymore.

My excuse for not posting from October 31 – November 4th is that I’ll be in Las Vegas on vacation at that time and posting on the blog won’t be a priority for me. I do plan on taking my laptop so there is a slight possibility I’ll write a post during that time.

This will be our second vacation in Las Vegas this year. The last vacation was crazy cheap and this vacation will be even cheaper. It should be almost free. My GF is traveling to Las Vegas to attend a conference for her job which makes her hotel, airfare, and food free. I’ll be using some of the Southwest credit I received in August for volunteering to be bumped to get my Vegas airfare free. I’ll be staying with my GF in her hotel room. Luckily, her job is only booking one employee to a room, allowing me to share the room. My only cost for the vacation will be food and any gambling I do. The food shouldn’t be too big of an expense. In-n-Out burger is pretty cheap :). The gambling could get expensive if I allow myself to get carried away.  Although, I’ve lost the last couple of times I visited Vegas I didn’t lose too much.  The gambling loss was much less than what I would have paid for airfare if I didn’t have free credits. Anyway, I’ll budget the amount of gambling I do so my losses aren’t too big. If I get really lucky I could win enough to make the vacation profitable. That is unlikely, but it has happened before.

My friend Jon, at MyFrugalMiser will be flying in to Vegas on the day we’re flying out. We plan to meet at the airport for a short visit before we have to leave for KC. When I return from Vegas I should have some exciting (well, it is exciting to me at least) news to share. In the meantime, I plan on posting several times this week and reviving the blog a little.