November Income – $1004.13

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Here is a breakdown of my income for November.

Online Income

 $428.96
Interest

$2.06

Dividends

$19.76

Cash Back

$42.10

Mystery Shop

 $74.00

Job

 $437.25

Total

$1004.13

November was not a great month for income.  I did have a three day document review job which kept my income from being completely terrible. December will be a much better month for income since I now have a full time job.  I won’t receive two full paychecks this month so January should be even better.

Cash back is a nice extra source of income that mainly comes from Mr. Rebates. The cash back income should go up a little as more people are doing their Christmas shopping.  I’m not worrying too much about my alternative and passive sources of income this month.  I’m focusing on making money from my job since that is currently the easiest way to make money right now.

 

Document Review Job

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I have started working a new document review job.  On a document review job you basically spend all day sitting at a computer looking at electronically scanned documents and tagging whether they are responsive to a particular discovery request and whether the document should be privileged.  My first document review job was the one I did from July to September.  Having experience doing document review from that job and using a particular type of document review software allowed me to land this job.  I’m hoping that it will be easier for me to land future document review jobs in the future as I gain more experience.

Many people don’t like working document review jobs since it can be boring sitting at a computer looking at documents all day.  I actually mostly like doing document review.   I get to work pretty much autonomously and only have a minimal need to interact with other people.  For the most part I’m just looking at the computer all day.  Also, I can listen to music or podcasts on my phone which keeps the work from getting too boring.

The work schedule is another thing I like about the job.  The office is open 12 or more hours a day and as long as you get at least 40 hours in during the week it doesn’t matter what hours you work.  Since I’m not much of a morning person I usually arrive a little later in the morning and leave a little later at night.

The job I’m currently working is allowing people to work as many hours as they want.  There is no overtime for working over 40 hours in a week, but more hours is still more money so I’m working more than 40 hours.  I only managed 42.5 hours this week, but I plan to work more hours for the rest of the project.  Since the job is temporary I might as well make money while I can.  Plus, if I work a few extra hours at work I don’t feel as bad about being lazy when I get home.

I’m not sure how the paydays for this job will fall, but I’m hoping that I’ll get a couple of checks this month so I’ll have a shot at meeting my goal of saving 50% of my income for the year.  Since I’m concentrating on working my job blog posts will continue to be sporadic.  My plan for now is to do my blogging on the weekend and just worry about working my job during the week.

Have you ever had a job that allowed you to work as many hours as you want?  How many hours did you work?

 

November Expenses – $1320.78

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Here is a breakdown of my expenses for November.

Household $486.01
Entertainment

$93.92

Transportation

 $108.12

Food

$131.58
Phone

$26.81
Health

$106.94
Travel

$367.40

Total

 $1320.78

My November expenses were not bad considering I paid for $367.40 of my cruise vacation expenses during the month. My expenses would have been under my stretch goal of $1000 if I didn’t have the cruise vacation expenses.  I haven’t done the math, but I’m pretty sure I’m still on target to meet my goal of having my annual expenses be less than a minimum wage income.

The rest of the cost of the cruise will be paid this month. Since my travel rewards card will pay some of that expense for me the remaining cost of the cruise will not be too much.

Food cost was a little high in November, but it was low in October so those balanced out.  The food total should be around $100 this month.

I’ve started a new job that is a thirty minute commute each way so my transportation cost will go up, everything else should be about the same.  It is unlikely I can get my expenses down to the $1000 level this month, but they should be at least a little less than in November.

 

October Savings Rate – 12.4%

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October was not a great month for saving.  I made $803.19 and saved $100 for 12.4% of my income saved.  This was way below my goal of saving 50% of my income.  It is difficult to save much when my income is that low.   I lowered my SWR to 47.67% from 49.28% the month before.  I’m happy that I made a little progress despite my low savings amount.  Gains on my stock investments and the lower expense level helped me reduce the SWR even with the tiny savings contribution for the month.  It doesn’t look like I’ll be able to continue making progress for November or December though.  My income looks like it will stay small and I have to pay my six month car insurance bill, my car property tax, and the remaining balance of the cruise.

The 4% SWR translates into having 25x your annual expenses in savings or 300 months of expenses in savings. Once I reach that point I will consider myself financially independent.  I have 25.17 months of living expenses saved now. My tax job starts in January, but I’m hoping that I can find a temporary job before then so I can end the year on a good note.

Cruise Recap Part 2

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cruiseship This is the last of three posts about the cruise I took last month.  The firs post was about the cost of the cruise and the second post was about the room and the food on the cruise.  This post will be about the ship activities and the port excursions.

Ship Activities

There was quite a variety of activities available on the ship.   Many of our fellow passengers favorite activity seemed to be drinking and getting drunk.  I’m not much of a drinker and the drink prices on the ship were ridiculously high so I did not partake of that activity. Since the motion of the ship made me queasy drinking probably wouldn’t have been a good idea.

The main activities we attended were the shows.  There were only two nights where they had what I would consider a real show being performed.  Those were the shows with singing and dancing and actual sets.  I did enjoy those shows although they were somewhat short and seemed like a random collection of musical numbers rather than a cohesive show.

The standup comedians were my favorite entertainment on the boat.  They also only performed two out of the five nights.  The other nights had amateur shows.  These were basically the ship’s entertainment staff performing on stage without any set other than some chairs.  These shows were actually fairly entertaining despite the lack of production value.

We were on ship for Halloween night and a lot of people dressed up and there were some great costumes.  There was a Halloween costume contest that was won by a couple of guys dressed up as KISS.  They did have authentic costumes and could have easily passed as actual members of KISS.  The runner up was a group of guys dressed as the Avengers. The man in the Iron Man costume made the costume himself from metal and spent over $800.  The costume looked great, but I don’t know if it was $800 great.  Our costumes were much cheaper.  We went as Pornstache and a prisoner from the show “Orange Is The New Black.”

pornstache

Not many people knew we were portraying people from a TV show, but they did still like the guard and prisoner costumers.  We were smart enough not to use blackface to make the costume more authentic.

Ports and Excursions

The cruise left and returned from New Orleans.  It would have been nice to add a couple days in New Orleans to the beginning or ending of the cruise, but we didn’t really have time for that and it would have increased the cost of the vacation a fair amount.

The ship stopped in the ports of Progreso and Cozumel during the cruise.  In Progreso we had booked a tour of the ruins at Dzibilchaltun before we embarked.  This allowed us to pay less than half than what the tour would have cost if we had booked through the cruise line.  The guided portion of the tour was only about a half hour and after that we had time to further explore the ruins and/or swim in a nearby cenote(sinkhole) for the remainder of the tour time.  Since it was hot we opted for the swimming.  The total time of the tour including transportation to and from the ruins was a little under about 4 hours.  This was just about right since it gave us a little time to explore Progreso before going on the tour and allowed us plenty of time after the tour to get back on the ship.  There isn’t a lot to see in Progreso so I’d recommend booking a tour for that port.

In Cozumel we didn’t have a tour booked and decided to just wing it.  The tour guide in Progreso suggested that we go to Chankanaab.  Admission was $21 each and basically all we got for that was access to the beach.  I wasn’t impressed with that recommendation.  We still had a good time swimming in the ocean and relaxing on the beach, but I think we could have done that for less.  If there is a next time, I’ll either book a tour ahead of time or at least do some prior research.

That wraps up the cruise posts.  Going on a cruise was something I’d wanted to do for a long time and I’m glad I did it.  Although I did enjoy this cruise, if I ever go on another cruise it will need to be an even better deal and go somewhere I haven’t been.