September 2014 Money Report
The September 2014 Money Report is here. Check out how I did this month with making money, saving money, and investing!
To view any previous monthly money reports, check here.
Actions Plans for September 2014
Key: Complete/Some Progress/No Progress
- Start my new job and make a great first impression
- Complete! I started on time and I think I’m making a great impression so far.
- Close on our new home in Georgia
- Complete! We closed 9/15/14 on schedule. Our home title came right down to the wire in terms of being ready on time (within 20 minutes!)
- Read the book: Instantly Raise Your Self Confidence
- Complete! This book was so, so – nothing to write home about.
- Read the book: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt
- Complete! Very entertaining, I enjoy Michael Lewis’ writing style quite a bit.
- Read the book: Managing for Success: Practical Advice for Managers
- Complete! This was a great book and will be particularly helpful to me going forward.
- Read the book: The Seven Things Your Team Needs to Hear You Say
- Complete! I liked this book as well – it has already helped me in my new management role.
- Complete! I liked this book as well – it has already helped me in my new management role.
- Read the book: The Art of Influencing Anyone
- Complete! I didn’t really like this book all that much. The examples used were a little confusing and it didn’t gel all that well between sections.
- Read the book: How to Win Friends and Influence People (50 Page Summaries)
- Complete! I had read the full version of the book years ago, but it served as a good refresher. If you’ve never read this before, I recommend picking up the full copy. This 50 page summary doesn’t really do the full book justice.
- Get moved into our new home
- Complete! Our move-in went well and we are 98% of the way unpacked. Nothing expensive was damaged!
- Get our old home in Virginia sold!
- No Progress! We’ve lowered the price on our home by $16,000 and still no buyers! ARGH!!!
I set the goals for September to be very focused on self-improvement. I was able to hit my goals for reading a TON of books! The only area that we failed was selling our old Virginia house. That’s basically out of our control unless we’re willing to drop the house price even further 🙁 Oh well, there’s always next month!
Onto the graphs and the details!
Notes on Making Money for September 2014
You can see with my wife not working for the month of September, our income took a pretty big nose dive. She should start working again part-time some point in October, so hopefully that will boost things back up a bit. It seems that the days of $9K or $10k months will be gone for the foreseeable future. Side hustle income was decent although I still haven’t devoted any time to tutoring (a great money maker for me while in Virginia).
Here are the side-hustle income highlights:
- Monthly Dividends – $353
- Guests Posts – $325
- LegalZoom – $54
- Youtube – $36
- Stock Market Investing for Newbies
book – $21
- Ad in sidebar – $25
- Google Adsense – $15
- TOTAL = $829
Total side income (dividends plus side-hustles) came in around $830! That’s pretty good. I had another “special cause” month with the whole family relocating to Georgia. Hopefully, I can fit in some tutoring going forward for October.
Notes on Money Saving for September 2014
For September, we had a very similar situation compared to last month. Routine expenses were the lowest ever with the kids out of daycare. Selling our old house should help this to drive to another lower level. But, moving into a new house brought on some new one-time expenses. You can see some of the larger ones below:
- New washer and dryer – $1,600
- YMCA membership – $547
- Wife’s birthday – $150
- Exam fees – $25
For the washer and dryer, we were able to use a 10% off Lowes coupon and save ourselves ~$175!
Funny thing about the YMCA membership. I kinda feel a bit like we got bait-and-switched! The annual cost for a family membership is ~$550 (no refunds!). My wife and I discussed it and determined it would be a good idea to join. With the pools being basically open year-around, it was just slightly more expensive than a summer pool membership that we were used to paying.
Not so fast! Not FOUR days after we purchased our membership, they changed the pool hours to only be open during the weekdays!!! No more weekend pool for us! I feel cheated! Anyways, my wife has been making the most of it by attending all kinds of workout classes in the mornings. I guess this means I’ll also need to start using the facilities to ensure we’re getting our money’s worth.
With all of these non-routine expenses again for the month of September, our total savings rate came out at 47%. I’m real happy with that, and we should see further boosts once my wife starts part-time work.
Notes on Investing for September 2014
If you’ll recall from my August Money Report, I decided not to invest for the month as we were retaining cash for our new home closing. For the month of September I invested in the SPDR S&P-500 Index Fund. I bought 51 shares of SPY at a price of ~$196.50 per share for a total of $10,021 invested for the month. SPY is an Electronically Traded Fund (ETF) and pays a quarterly dividend of 0.48% (1.88% annually). Much of the money for this came out of cash in the bank, so that’s why you’ll see our overall savings ~$4,100 for the month.
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
Actions Plans for October 2014
October is going to be a fun month as we’re pretty much settled into our house and I’m starting to learn enough to be dangerous in my new job. Here are my goals for the month:
- Help wife start new part-time job
- Post at least 3 videos on OfficeForNewbies.com
- Post at least 2 videos on MoneyAhoy Youtube Channel
- Conduct at least one tutoring session
- Get our old home in Virginia sold – this one is continuing on from last month!
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. My traffic at MoneyAhoy still really hasn’t recovered to pre-hacked levels 🙁 Such as waste of time!
- 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:
- Bad Way to Save Money – Skip Termite Control
- How to Get a Loan if You Have Bad Credit
- Top Tips to Help Sell Your Home
- The Great September Personal Finance Ebook Giveaway!
- I Live in a Van Down By The River – Basically…
- Back to the Future – Internet
- Free Stock Market Investing Ebook – For the Next 5 Days!
- August 2014 Money Report
What are your money saving, money making, and investing plans for October?
You read a ton! Great job on all of that reading. For October, I’m trying to tighten up the spending belt. Through home projects and other one off items, like new glasses, my savings account has dwindled and I need to beef it back up.
Jon @ Money Smart Guides recently posted…Breaking News!! Schwab To Take On Betterment, Wealthfront
Jon,
Thanks – half of it was listening via text to speech with my old style Kindle 🙂
Good luck on your October savings goals!