November 2013 – Making Money Report, Money Saving Report, and Investing Report

Welcome to the November 2013 Making Money Report, Money Saving Report, and Investing Report!

I feel like I’m moving in the right direction this month.  Let’s get started!!

To view all previous reports and to find out why I publish these reports, click here

 

 

Actions Plans for November

Key: Complete/Some Progress/No Progress

• Read the book Rich Dad Poor Dad
  • Complete, check out my book review here:  Book Review – Rich Dad Poor Dad
• Fund Roth IRA accounts (total of $11,000)
  • Got this done, now I just need to buy some investments!
• Start and finish first version of side hustle website FrugalCalc.com 
  • Complete and open for business!  No one has purchased it yet, but I still have some marketing work to do here.
• Start and finish first version of side hustle website RichmondThriftSore.com 
  • Also complete!  Need to train my mother-in-law on WordPress so that she can “fill out” the site with info.
• Continue doing my ebay thang – Goal of $50 again for this month 
  • I sold about $19 of stuff for myself (soccer cleats and mug).
  • For that free Xbox 360 deal I spoke of last month, I sold about $128 worth of that stuff.
  • I made this orange, since I didn’t see $50 from revenue of stuff that I sold.
• Post at least 4 additional monetized YouTube videos
  • I posted 20 videos total!  5 new ones in the MoneyAhoy Channel and 15 new ones in the MoneyAhoyFamily Channel
  • I made $2.76 total in November from YouTube 🙂

This month was pretty good for goals!  I slacked a little bit on listing personal stuff on Ebay, but this was mainly because I had a ton of Xbox 360 stuff to sell for a friend.  I also worked my butt off to finish FrugalCalc.com and RichmondThriftStore.com .  I’m pretty pleased with how those two sites came out!

 

Money Making (Income)

Salaries + Bonuses (after taxes) — $9,303.83
Website Income — $18.63

• Google AdSense Ads — $15.87
• YouTube Ads — $2.76
• Amazon —-  $0

Yard Sale Items resold on Ebay — $18.88

Dividend Income — $42.24 (JNK and INTC)

TOTAL MONTHLY INCOME = $ 9,383.58

 

Money Saving (Expenses)

Routine Expenses — $4,641.77

Special Expenses — $149.99

Other Expenses — $215.66

Notes:

• Groceries were higher this month by ~$340 , but I think this is mostly due to having company and Christmas presents (many of ours come from Costco or Wal-mart – too hard to determine breakdown).
• All other routine expenses in line with last month 🙂

Special expenses for the month:

• Doctor Bills (I got sick and son had normal checkup) – $70
• Son’s Birthday presents – $30
• Present for Co-worker – $50
• Other Christmas Presents – $216

 Here’s a graph of total expenses and savings for the month of May 2013 – November 2013.  As you can see, we’ve making great progress!

 

Overall expenses were up a bit, but I think this is just because we had company for Thanksgiving and we bought some Christmas presents.  For the month of November, we hit a savings rate of 57%.  That’s great progress!!!!

My wife and I talked more about the possibility of relocating once I finish my MBA in May 2014.  We came to the understanding that if we do relocate, we’ll look for a house ~$100,000 less than our current one.  This will help us to save even more on our routine expenses and get to financial independence even quicker 🙂

For the coming months, I’ll continue to shift my focus to making money since we feel like our savings rate has hit a short term plateau.

TOTAL MONTHLY EXPENSES = $ 5,007.45 ( $556 more than last month) 

 

Investing

For this month, I decided to further improve my asset allocation by getting some exposure to developed markets (outside the US).  My target allocation for international developed markets is 15%.  I still haven’t gotten the chance to write an intro investing article around asset allocation yet, but I plan to get it worked up soon 🙂

I bought: 99 shares of VEA @ 40.10 (with $5 commission) — $ 3,974.90 (I didn’t transfer quite enough to get that last share to make it a round lot – bummer 🙁 )

• This is the Vanguard FTSE Developed Market ETF
• It pays a quarterly dividend that works out to be ~3.0% APR.
• The dividends are 100% qualified – this means that the dividend is taxed at the lower 15% capital gains rate and is great to hold outside of a tax advantaged investment account.

 TOTAL MONTHLY INVESTING = $ 3,974.90

 

Actions Plans for December

• Read the book The 4-Hour Workweek
• Select and purchase investments for both of our Roth IRA accounts
• Setup Google AdWords account for FrugalCalc.com and run $100 business trial
• Get 4 posts on RichmondThriftSore.com about products offered for sale to help out mother-in-law
• Ebay profit of $50 again for this month (hoping to offload many Pokemon cards and other junk around the house)
• Post at least 5 additional monetized YouTube videos
• Save $350+ on kids daycare by pulling them out during the holidays while we’re on vacation 🙂

 

Other Points of Interest

• Here is a list of the posts I created for the month of November.  I’m happy I got this many with MBA classes kicking into full gear 🙂

1. How to Blow Out (Winterize) Your In Ground Lawn Yard Sprinkler System
2. Make Money by Helping Out Your Family
3. The Key to Money Saving is Patience
4. How to Watch Free Cable TV Online – Part 2
5. How to Restart a Failed Business
6. I’ve Joined the Yakezie Challenge
7. What I’m Thankful for This Year – Top-10 List

• I joined the Yakazie Challenge – I’m really happy to make the commitment and hope to help out other fellow bloggers over the next six months!
• MoneyAhoy.com hit a new milestone just yesterday with more than 200 daily visitors (207 unique to be exact) to the site!  Awesome!!!!  I’m super excited that traffic continues to increase 🙂

Check back next month to see how well we did with our action plans!  What are your money saving, money making, and investing plans for this month?