July 2017 Money Report
Welcome to the July 2017 MoneyAhoy.com Money Report. Read on to learn about our money making, money saving, and investing for the month. I also detail how I successfully make over $250/hour blogging (in my spare time), and show you how you how to do the same! This money report is full of tips and tricks to teach you how to start your own business and starting making extra side-income in your free time. Let’s jump right in, but first if you’d like to view any previous monthly money reports go here: monthly money reports. Let’s start with a review of our goals for July 2017 to see how we did:
Actions Plans for July 2017
Here is a quick review of how we did with our goals for the month:
Key: Complete/Some Progress/No Progress
- Publish 6 posts for MoneyAhoy.com
- COMPLETE – we had a total of 16 posts for the month! This is a new record and was driven mostly by my wife’s work to blog about our Ireland family vacation.
- Publish 2 videos on Youtube
- Some Progress – I filmed a ton of stuff on our Ireland vacation to turn into money saving traveling videos. But, I did not take the time to edit these and get them up on YouTube. Hopefully I can crank out a bunch in August :-).
- Exercise at least 15 minutes every day
- COMPLETE – I was able to get in at least 15 minutes of exercise each day. This was helped a lot with our vacation as we did a ton of walking around.
- Get to 3,800 Pinterest followers
- COMPLETE – Pinterest made some changes which made it much more difficult to gain followers. However, we were still able to get above 3,800 followers!
- Make over $1,200 / month in side-income (blog + dividend income)
- COMPLETE – We made $1,875 for the month of July in side-income
We had a really good month in terms of hitting all of our established goals for the month. We tried to keep our goals a bit easier since we knew we would be in Ireland for ~2.5 weeks, and I am happy with our achievements.
Now let’s get onto the money discussion!
July 2017 – Money-Report
Notes on Making Money for July 2017
Our routine income for the month of July was quite a bit lower than normal. This is because my wife did not work for ~2.5 weeks out of the month. If you check out the graph, you can see that we normally run much lower in June/July due to this.
However, side-income for the month was pretty decent at $1,875. This is certainly nothing to write home about compared to our record setting side-income last month of $5,469. But, it is still a welcome addition :-). All things considered, we were below the 6-month running average for total income for the month.
The split for our side-income between MoneyAhoy.com and dividends was:
- $1,017 – dividends
- $858 – MoneyAhoy.com income
For the MoneyAhoy.com income for the month, all this money was made in the month with just a couple of hours of total work spent on the blog. That means I am earning well over $250/hour on the average by running my own blog!! If that sounds awesome to you, maybe you should start a WordPress blog with Bluehost yourself? Check out my article linked there to get started on your money making journey all for less than $4 a month!
Our new income goal for 2017 is to make over $1,000 each and every month of side-income cash (MoneyAhoy.com blog income plus dividends). You can see that we are averaging more than this if we can continue our money-making momentum, but I’d like to try and make $1,000 each and every month (even in the light dividend months) just to prove I can do it. Hitting this monthly goal for July was tough, but dividends came in to save the day!
Here’s a detailed breakdown of the total $1,875 in side-income for the month of July. I have included links as much as I can to help you learn and see how I am incorporating affiliate programs into this blog to generate side-income:
- Monthly Investment Dividends – $1,017 (JNK, SPY )
- How to Create Your Own LLC on-line – $575
- ShareASale.com – an affiliate network that helps you earn commission when you refer products/services.
- Youtube – $95
- SeedingUp Digital Content Marketing– $42
- Advertisements in sidebar – $25
- MyFinance end of post ads – $24
- Amazon Affiliates – $14
- Google Adsense – $7
- Stock Market Investing for Newbies
book – $1
- Sponsored Posts – $0 (see how to get a sponsored post for your blog for more info)
- TOTAL = $1,875
One thing that caused MoneyAhoy.com income to be lower for the month was the lack of sponsored posts. Things can sometimes dry up in the Summer, but this was the first month in a long time where we didn’t have any sponsored posts for the entire month. Thankfully, there was a sizeable dividend for July that helped to improve things.
We are choosing to reinvest all the dividends and MoneyAhoy earnings we make now so we’ll have more money down the road. That’s right – we take all of the stock market investment dividends and reinvest them to put the power of compounding interest to good work. I also use the money made here with the MoneyAhoy.com blog and reinvest it back into the blog (see How to Pay Yourself from your LLC) or invest the profits into the stock market.
Did you notice that monthly dividend graph slowly increasing? That’s because we are continually investing each and every month! If you’d like to learn more about investing, read my FREE book: Stock Market Investing for Newbies.
Notes on Money Saving for July 2017
As you can see, our routine savings for the month of July were great at $2,687. This was well below the 6-month running average and a big improvement over last month. Now that the kids are going back to school, this should also help shave a could hundred bucks off of our monthly expenses.
For non-routine expenses, our biggest charges were all associated (for the most part) with our 2.5 week family vacation to Ireland. Here’s a breakdown of the biggest charges:
- $980 – Meals for a family of four for 2.5 weeks while on vacation.
- $308 – Rental car upgrade. We tried to get the smallest available, but it would not fit our luggage.
- $263 – Entry fees to various exhibits and natural wonders throughout Ireland.
- $182 – Souvenirs for family and friends.
- $134 – Parking for our car at the airport and the rental car.
- $80 – Gas as we toured around Ireland.
We now have a total of $15,787 in our new van fund. We continue to put $1,000 a month away plus any extra that my wife is able to work with her second job. We have been saving for a bit over a year now, so we are getting close. Her van has ~227,000 miles on it right now, and it is still going strong! In just a couple more months, we should be able to have enough set aside for a nice replacement. If we decide to continue holding out longer and continuing to save, we’ll just be able to afford one that is much nicer. Basically, it is just a question of “when to cash in the chips.”
Our overall savings rate for the month was 59%. This is pretty good for the month – not the best ever. I hope to get our savings rate even higher in the months to come now that we are out of vacation season and the kids are back in school.
Notes on Investing for July 2017
For the month of July, I purchased 75 shares of EFA for a total of ~$5,000. EFA is the iShares developed markets exchange traded fund (ETF). This includes stocks from Europe, Australasia, and the Far East. This ETF is currently paying an annual dividend yield of 2.5%.
You won’t find me engaging in any crazy day trading or investing in single stocks like Apple or anything. Investing for the long-term is pretty boring overall, but that’s what long-term investing is supposed to be! If it is too exciting, then you are probably doing it wrong :-).
If you truly want to gain financial independence, then you need to learn more about investing to build your long-term wealth! Investing in the stock market is one way to build up your passive income stream. Check out my FREE stock market investing Ebook to get started on your own stock market investing journey now!
Actions Plans for August 2017
July has come and gone. It was a busy month, and I cannot believe we are already into August 2017! Here’s what I’m targetting for goals in August:
August 2017 Goals
- Publish 6 regular posts for MoneyAhoy.com
- Create at least 2 new posts with affiliate links from ShareASale.com
- Publish 2 videos on Youtube
- Exercise at least 15 minutes every day
- Get to 3,900 Pinterest followers
- Make over $1,200 / month in side-income (blog + dividend income)
Other Points of Interest
Other than our cool family vacation trip to Ireland, not much else was new for the month of July. Here’s a cool video I put together of our time in Dublin – more Irish videos to come as I put them together :-).
Here are all the great MoneyAhoy.com posts for June if you happened to miss any:
- Ireland Frugal Travel – Family Vacation
- Ireland Frugal Travel – Dublin Part 1
- Ireland Frugal Travel – Dublin Part 2
- Ireland Frugal Travel – Dublin to Belfast
- Ireland Frugal Travel – Belfast
- Ireland Frugal Travel – Antrim Coast
- Ireland Frugal Travel – On the way to Galway
- Ireland Frugal Travel – Galway
- Ireland Frugal Travel – Galway to Limerick
- Ireland Frugal Travel – Limerick to Killarney
- Ireland Frugal Travel – Day in Killarney
- Ireland Frugal Travel – Killarney to Cork
- Ireland Frugal Travel – Cork to Wexford
- Ireland Frugal Travel – Wexford to Dublin
- How to Tackle Debt as Newlyweds
- June 2017 Money Report (New record for monthly side-income!)
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I started MoneyAhoy.com just over three years ago without knowing the first thing about blogging. In that amount of time, I’ve made over $36K and my monthly blog income continues to grow and grow – just check out the blue portion of the income chart above! I have also saved over $61K with all the research and tips this blog has helped me to implement! Starting your own blog can truly be a life changing experience!
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