June 2016 Money Report

I have our June 2016 MoneyAhoy.com Monthly Report ready to go.  It was a good month overall with a 65% savings rate.  We also had some new records – check it out now!

To view any previous monthly money reports, check these monthly money reports.  Let’s start with a review of our goals for June 2016 to see how we did:

Actions Plans for June 2016

Here is a quick review of how we did with our goals for the month of June:

Key: Complete/Some Progress/No Progress

• Publish 6 posts for MoneyAhoy.com
  • COMPLETE – We had 7 posts for the month of June. 
• Publish 1 posts for HealthierDay.com
  • No Progress – we didn’t find the time to create any posts for HealthierDay.com in June.
• Create comments on  15 other blogs to build link juice to MoneyAhoy
  • No Progress – I didn’t get to this one either.
• Create comments on 15 other blogs to build link juice to HealthierDay
  • No Progress – Are we noticing a trend here?
• Create 1 YouTube videos for MoneyAhoy/HealtherDay
  • COMPLETE – I somehow found the time to complete this one :-).
• Exercise at least 10 minutes every day
  • COMPLETE – I was able to achieve this one pretty easily in June.
• Put in 4+ hours a week on the new computer game I am developing (more to come on this down the road)
  • COMPLETE – I put a lot of time into this one.  I easily hit this goal.

I was able to complete about half of the monthly goals for June.  We were out of town on vacation for two weeks with no wi-fi anywhere to be found.  I somehow survived, but it made it hard to achieve some of these goals even though I set the bar pretty low for them.  Anyhow, I hope to pick up the pace in July and get back on track.

Here’s how we did money-wise for the month of June:

Notes on Making Money for June 2016

Our total income for the month set a new high record!  This is awesome and due to a couple reasons:

1. My wife worked extra hours for the month so we could save a bit more
2. Side hustle and dividend income combined was also very high and actually made a new high record
3. I received a small bonus from work

For my wife’s extra hours, she actually took a second part-time job and spent several paid-hours training for this.  It’s probably just for the Summer, but it is a good change for her to earn a couple extra bucks.

The total side-income we had for the month was $3,080!!!  This is a new record as well.  This was comprised of $1,740 in dividends and $1,340 in side hustle income (mostly blog related).  My goal all along for 2016 is to try and earn enough with dividends and MoneyAhoy.com income to pay our home mortgage bill each month.  We have achieved this goal for 6 months in a row now, so I am very stoked with this performance.  Here’s a breakdown of our side-hustle and dividend income for June 2016:

• Monthly Dividends – $1,742 (JNK, PEP, INTC, VEA, VWO, VBK, VNQ)
• Creation your LLC on-line in less than 6 minutes – $1,020
• Sponsored Articles – $225
• Youtube – $41
• Sold son’s old trick bike (he won a new one from a school reading contest) – $25
• Ad in sidebar – $25
• Google Adsense – $4
• Stock Market Investing for Newbies book – $0
• HealthierDay.com Adsense/Youtube- <$1
• TOTAL = $3,082

Both long term sidebar ad deals I had for MoneyAhoy fell through, so that stinks as that would have been and extra guaranteed $50 a month :-(.

My plan all along has been to take our dividends and other side-hustle income and reinvest it in stocks to develop a sustainable side income stream for the long term.  You gotta love the power of compound interest!

Notes on Money Saving for June 2016

Our total monthly expenses were on the higher side for June.  Both routine and non-routine expenses ran higher :-(.  There were two main things that drove routine expenses higher:

1. we were on vacation for 2.5 weeks, so we bought a lot of extra groceries as we were vacationing with my wife’s family and friends.  This was maybe an extra $400.
2. we drove >2,000 miles during our vacation, so gas really added up.  We spent ~$200 extra on gas for the month.

To go along with the increased spending, we also had a couple one-time expenses that hit for the month to drive our expenses higher.  I like call these non-routine expenses because they can still be generally planned for.  Here’s a breakdown of the largest non-routine expenses:

• $1,040 – fee to enroll both of our kids in soccer for the 2016-2017 season.  This is the travel team, so I really hope we are getting our money’s worth in terms of improving their skills.  I wasn’t into sports much as a kid, so it’s really hard for me to spend this amount of money on something like this.  I really think it is way to much, but my wife vetoed me on this one 🙂
• $258 – my wife has this skin condition on her forehead that makes it look very tan (I think it’s called melasma).  Anyways, there is this special product treatment that is supposed to correct it within 60-days or your money back.  It seemed like a good deal to us if it works, so she decided to give it a try.
• $170 – The total cost of our wedding anniversary presents that my wife and I gifted to each other.
• $125 – we decided to get a AAA membership for the next year since we were going on a real long driving vacation (2,000+ miles driven) and were worried that we could run into car troubles with the van since it has almost 210,000 miles on it now.  I think it mostly just gives us peace of mind that we won’t be stranded and out hundreds of dollars if we needed a tow.

We also have about $2,500 in our new van account saved up at this point.  With the van now having about 210,000 miles on it, I still think we have a year or two left before we’ll need to get one.  Time will tell 🙂

For the month of June, our overall savings rate was 65%.  So, we did great for the month!

Notes on Investing for June 2016

For the month of June, I bought 170 shares of VEA for a total of ~$6,185.  VEA is a passively managed index fund that tracks the developed markets index (think Europe, Australia, Japan, etc.).  This ETF was “on sale” with all of the recent Brexit craziness going on.  Lucky thing, as this ETF currently pays about a 2.9% annual dividend.  It is important to ensure you do not put all your eggs in one basket from an asset allocation standpoint and only invest in US stocks.  VEA helps me to get international exposure in a simple way.

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 July 2016

Below are my goals for the upcoming month of July.  I struggled a bit to hit the goals in June, so hopefully I will see better results this month.

• Publish 8 posts for MoneyAhoy.com
• Publish 1 posts for HealthierDay.com
• Create comments on  30 other blogs to build link juice to MoneyAhoy
• Create comments on 30 other blogs to build link juice to HealthierDay
• Create 1 YouTube videos for MoneyAhoy/HealtherDay
• Exercise at least 10 minutes every day
• Put in 4+ hours a week on learning how-to and developing new computer games

Other Points of Interest

Here’s a simple screenshot of another computer game I am prototyping in Game Maker Studio.  The graphics are placeholders while I work on coding.  It’s just going to be a simple dungeon crawler.  It really is a lot of fun, and I can definitely see myself doing something like this full time if it could pay the bills 🙂

Here are all the great MoneyAhoy.com posts for June if you happened to miss any:

1. Driverless Cars and Their Impending Collision with the Auto Insurance Industry
2. May 2016 Money Report
3. Who Should Invest in the Stock Market?
4. The Best Way to Invest In The Stock Market
5. Interested in Investing in REITs?
6. Stock Market Investing with IRAs – Traditional and Roth
7. Make the Commitment to Setup an Investing Account Today