tracking income

December Income- $1309.44

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Here is a breakdown of my income for December.

Online Income

$450.12

Interest

$16.96

Bank/Other Bonuses

$44.10

Surveys/Mystery Shopping

$34

Stock Dividends

$53.10

Cash Back

$26.16

Car Sale

$480

Medical Study

$205

Total

$1309.44

My income was higher than my expenses which is always good.  Without the sale of my car though it would have been pretty close and my expenses will normally be higher than they were last month.  My income will probably go down a little this month. I need to find a way to ramp my alternative income up or get a job. I know a lot of people would be pretty happy with the alternative income I’m generating but since I’m not working I feel like I should be doing better.  I’m wasting a lot of time that could be put towards earning more income or at least doing something productive.

Reviewing My Income and Expenses

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Jacob at Early Retirement Extreme is having a 30 Day Early Retirement Extreme Makeover.   One of the goals of this makeover is cut your expense level to $10,000 or less a year.  I thought I was close to this goal already since I try to keep my monthly expenses at $1000 a month or less and I knew I was below that level a few months this year.  After reviewing my expenses for the year I realize I’m farther away from the $10,000 goal than I thought.  Although I did have some months below the $1000 level I had more months above the $1000 level.  I’m estimating that my total expenses will be about $15,000 for this year and  my total income at about $12,000.  This is not as good as I thought but that is part of the reason why I track my income and expenses; so I can review them and tell how I’m doing.

Looking at my expenses my budget busters are transportation and entertainment.  The transportation category is somewhat misleading because I drove my car delivering pizza most of the year.  Some of that expense should really be a deduction from income.  Still there is plenty of room for improvement in the transportation category and I will be making some major changes there.  Some of the increase in my entertainment expenditure is from having a GF but most of it was just the result of stupid decisions on my part.  This expenditure can easily be reduced just by choosing more free or low-cost options for entertainment.

Since the new year is almost here I’ll go ahead and set a couple goals now.  The first is to have my expenses under $10,000 next year.  The next is to have my income higher than my expenses.  These are reasonable goals and I will be planning specific measures to achieve them.