October 2014 Money Report

Welcome to the 2014 October Money Report!  See how my money making, saving, and investing went for the month!

To view any previous monthly money reports, check here.

 

 

Actions Plans for October 2014

Key: Complete/Some Progress/No Progress

• Help wife start new part-time job
  • COMPLETE!  My wife started her new job.  I didn’t really have much to do with it, but I can still mark it done 🙂
• Post at least 3 videos on OfficeForNewbies.com
  • COMPLETE!  I put up three great Excel videos which you can check out here: 
    • How to Sort Data in Excel
    • Generate Random Numbers in Excel
    • Simple Excel Vlookup Tutorial
• Post at least 2 videos on MoneyAhoy Youtube Channel
  • FAILED!  I did not get around to doing this in October 🙁  Hopefully I can catch back up this month!
• Conduct at least one tutoring session
  • FAILED!  I posted my Craigslist ad, but have received no takers so far!  I guess moving to a small town may cut down on my in-person training quite a bit 🙁
• Get our old home in Virginia sold – this one is continuing on from last month!
  • FAILED!  Still have not sold our old house yet – it’s now priced $9K below the Zillow price, so hopefully we will get a bite now!

As you can see, I did not do very well with my monthly goals for October 🙁  Some of the items were outside of my direct control, but I’m not too happy with the performance.  Hopefully I can pick up the slack in November.

Onto the graphs and the details!

Notes on Making Money for October 2014

As you can see, with my wife not pulling in a paycheck again for October our income was down again for the month.  She started working toward the end October, so we should see a nice pop in November.  Dividends are seeing a nice slow trend higher over time which is great!  Side hustle income came in so-so – the days of making gobs of money tutoring seem to be gone in my new location.  I’m going to have to find something else to fill in that role.  Also, my Youtube income went crazy this month!  It’s all thanks to a video I made about winterizing your lawn sprinkler system!

Here are the side-hustle income highlights:

• Monthly Dividends – $163
• Guests Posts – $150
• Youtube – $92
• Ad in sidebar – $25
• LegalZoom – $23
• Stock Market Investing for Newbies book – $11
• Google Adsense – $10
• TOTAL = $448

Total side income (dividends plus side-hustles) came in around $450!  That’s pretty nice considering I didn’t get to perform any tutoring.  As you can see, I had no eBay sales at all for this month (or the previous two), but now that the move is over I am starting to list stuff and expect to see improvements here.

Since tutoring hasn’t worked out in this new area, I can either try to lower my prices or find something else to bring in extra cash.  I plan to look into the local community college to see what kind of rate I could get as an adjunct professor at night.

Notes on Money Saving for October 2014

For October, our expenses were the lowest on record!  And, that is with us still paying two mortgages (jeez I wish our old house would just sell already)!  Once our house sells, our routine expenses should drop by at least $1,000!  Special thanks to Mr. Money Mustache for encouraging downsizing – he really influenced us to push ourselves to find a smaller place!  I am glad we did – we love our new home!

Here are a couple of the higher non-routine expenses that we had for the month:

• Theme park family season passes – $300
• Arts and crafts supplies for wife – $85
• Team lunch – $68

We decided to get family season passes to a nearby theme park.  They had a special deal in October and I think we’ll have a lot of fun family memories there.  Most other non-routine expenses were kept pretty low.

All of the moving related credit card expenses (tracked in earlier reports) finally came due in October.  So, our savings rate for the month was only 8% 🙁  This should be a one time blip as the wife begins work and our expenses smooth out to the new lower normal.

Notes on Investing for October 2014

For the month of October I invested in the Vanguard FTSE Developed Markets ETF.  This fund provides exposure to developed markets in Europe, Australasia, and Japan.  I bought 138 shares of VEA at a price of ~$39.00 per share for a total of $5,382 invested for the month.  VEA is an Electronically Traded Fund (ETF) and pays a quarterly dividend of 0.875% (3.5% annually).

If you are interested in stock market investing but don’t know where to get started, check out my excellent book: Stock Market Investing for Newbies.  It will get investing like a pro in no time!

Actions Plans for November 2014

As you saw above, I did not do very well in hitting my targets for October.  But, November is a new month and I’m ready reach higher!  Here are my monthly goals:

• Post at least 2 videos on OfficeForNewbies.com
• Post at least 3 videos on MoneyAhoy Youtube Channel
• Submit resume to area community college for adjunct professor positions in science/math
• Get our old home in Virginia sold – this one is continuing on from last month!
• Read the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Other Points of Interest

• My websites were hacked right at the end of the month!  This was a huge pain in the ass and really hurt my traffic and revenue.  It also screwed up several of my incoming links – not cool!
• My traffic at MoneyAhoy still really hasn’t recovered to pre-hacked levels 🙁  I hate hackers!
• We are basically fully moved in at this point, so I can start to focus more on money making activities and get back to posting a little more regularly.  Here is a listing of the posts I made for the month of September:

1. Bad Way to Save Money – Skip Termite Control
2. How to Get a Loan if You Have Bad Credit
3. Top Tips to Help Sell Your Home
4. The Great September Personal Finance Ebook Giveaway!
5. I Live in a Van Down By The River – Basically…
6. Back to the Future – Internet
7. Free Stock Market Investing Ebook – For the Next 5 Days!
8. August 2014 Money Report

What are your money saving, money making, and investing plans for November?