March 2016 Money Report

I’ve finished recapping our March monthly money report – I hope you enjoy!  The month was pretty good overall with a couple twists and turns.

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

Actions Plans for March 2016

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

Key: Complete/Some Progress/No Progress

• Read the book Secrets of the Millionaire Mind again (for the fourth time I think :-))
  • COMPLETE – I love this book more and more each time I read through it!
• Publish 8 posts for MoneyAhoy.com
  • COMPLETE – I had 14 posts total for the month of March 🙂
• Publish 2 posts for HealthierDay.com
  • COMPLETE – We had 2 posts for March.
• Create comments on  25 other blogs to build link juice to MoneyAhoy
  • COMPLETE – I commented on 150+ blog, so I knocked this one out of the park!
• Create comments on 25 other blogs to build link juice to HealthierDay
  • COMPLETE – I got around to commenting on ~30 health blogs
• Create 2 YouTube videos for MoneyAhoy/HealtherDay
  • No Progress – I didn’t get any videos up on YouTube.  I failed this one for the second month in a row.
• Exercise at least 10 minutes every day
  • COMPLETE – I was able to ramp things up and get about 10 minutes of exercise a day/

I completed 6 out of 7 goals for the month.  That’s pretty awesome I think!  The only part where I got tripped up is on the YouTube videos.  I need a lot of inspiration to get in there and knock those out normally.  This is because it usually takes me a solid 2-3 hour block to take a video, get it off the camera, edit it, upload to YouTube along with setting up the video tags.  I hope I can get to some videos for the month of April.

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

Notes on Making Money for March 2016

Our normal “routine” income was down quite a bit for the month as my wife worked a couple less hours due to Easter.  On the flip side, our side-hustle income was the highest on record at over $1,500!  Out dividends were also very nice at $1,200 for the month.  So, for overall side income we came in at $2,725!!!!  That’s like having a third job between the two of us :-).  That extra money is very much appreciated and will definitely be rolled back into investments.

As you can see, our total monthly income was a hair below the 6-month moving average.  But, I like to see that the 6-month moving average is working its way up month over month.

Here’s a detail on our side-hustle and dividend income for March:

• Monthly Dividends – $1,201 (JNK, PEP, INTC, VEA, VWO, VBK, VNQ)
• Several Sponsored Posts – $770
• Form an LLC Online for Cheap – $402
• Ad Brokering – $173 (this was acting as middle man to get sponsored posts on several other blogs)
• HealthierDay.com Sponsored Post – $100 (this was the first sponsored post for HealthierDay.com!)
• Youtube – $34
• Ad in sidebar – $25
• Google Adsense – $17
• Stock Market Investing for Newbies book – $2
• HealthierDay.com Adsense/Youtube- <$1
• TOTAL = $2,725

The side-hustle income is nearly enough to cover all of our expenses for the month!  The key about making this sustainable is to reinvest all the earnings back into the business OR take the profit and invest long-term in the stock market to collect dividends.

Notes on Money Saving for March 2016

Routine expenses we not quite as good for March (vs. February) for a couple of main reasons:

• Our home taxes were $375 more!  Long story short, our mortgage company is DUMB and has been undercharging us on property taxes for all of 2015.  They realized this recently, and now we have to pay double each month to catch the escrow back up!  This means we will be paying and extra $375 each month for the next year :-(.
• Gas was ~$121 high over last month because we did a bit of traveling, also prices at the pump have edged up.
• We had our dogs annual checkup ran $254.
• My wife bought some clothes as Easter presents for me and the kids.  She has also been working REALLY hard to exercise and lose weight.  As a result, a lot of her clothes are WAY too big.  That’s a good problem to have, but it means spending a bit more to get clothes that now fit 🙂  This worked out to be about $143 for the month.

We had the best month for non-routine expense in about four months.  We did not have to make any large purchases – just a bunch of odds and ends stuff as follows:

• $69 – Weekly art class for our daughter through the local college.  She loves art, so this seems like a fun investment in her talent.
• $50 – Valentine’s Day presents.
• $48 – I took my technical team out to lunch as a “thank you” and also for Employee Appreciation Day
• $46 – Presents for our daughters B-day.

Our overall savings rate was 65% for the month.  That’s a bit lower than we have been running – this is mainly because expenses edged up while our income edged down.

Notes on Investing for March 2016

For the month of March, I kept things simple and invested in the S&P-500 index ETF.  I bought 52 shares of SPY for a total of $10,640.  This was higher than normal as there was a bit of cash leftover from January and February investing that I rolled into the March investment.  The IRA cap is $5,500, and I had more than this to invest in February mainly.  This is a passively managed index fund ETF that track the S&P-500 performance and currently pays a 2.58% annual dividend.  You cannot really go wrong with investing in SPY IMHO.  A plus is that the dividends that are paid out are ordinary versus qualified.  So, this is great to hold in your non-tax-advantaged investment account.

If you truly want to gain financial independence, then you need to learn more about investing to build your wealth!  Check out my free stock market investing Ebook to get started on your own stock market investing journey now!

Actions Plans for April 2016

Below are my goals for the upcoming month of April – I am keeping the goals pretty standard and hopefully I can knock out those YouTube videos:

• Publish 8 posts for MoneyAhoy.com
• Publish 2 posts for HealthierDay.com
• Create comments on  25 other blogs to build link juice to MoneyAhoy
• Create comments on 25 other blogs to build link juice to HealthierDay
• Create 2 YouTube videos for MoneyAhoy/HealtherDay
• Exercise at least 10 minutes every day

Other Points of Interest

We found out that we owe a metric sh!t ton in taxes for the 2015 tax year :-(.  More on that in a future post.  I expected that we would owe quite a bit, but this is one time when exceeding expectations is a bad thing!  Good luck on your taxes, hopefully you don’t owe as much as we do 🙂

Here are all the great posts for March if you happened to miss any:

1. How to Find Your Perfect Forex Trading Platform
2. How to Protect Your Retirement Savings
3. 4 Tips to Streamline your Business and Generate More Capital
4. Buying a Watch Does NOT Need to Be Expensive
5. 5 Tips to Help Jump Start Your Emergency Fund
6. Is Renting a Luxury Apartment Worth the Extra Cost?
7. Tips on Mastering Your Home Maintenance
8. What is Flex Space – and Does Your Business Need It?
9. What You Need to Know Before Starting a Small Business
10. What You Need to Know Before You Agree to a Structured Settlement
11. The Perfect Gift Does NOT Have to Be Expensive
12. February 2016 Money Report
13. Affordable Ways to Promote Your New Business
14. How to Save Money by Building Your Own Computer