December 2015 Money Report
The final monthly money report for 2015 is here – December 2015! We had a real rough patch in December with expenses, but we still did nicely for the month in other areas.
To view any previous monthly money reports, check these monthly money reports.
Actions Plans for December 2015
Let kick things off in December with a review of the monthly goals I had set for myself:
Key: Complete/Some Progress/No Progress
- Publish 8 posts for MoneyAhoy
- Some Progress – I just had 6 posts for the month of December. A bit of holiday laziness kicked in here and I didn’t hit the goal 🙁
- Publish 2 posts for HealthierDay.com
- Some Progress – we just had one post here for December (and my wife did 99% of it :-)) – 5 Tips for a Healthier Year
- Create comments on 30 other blogs (average 1 a day) to build link juice
- Complete – this was an easy one. I am still struggling to get my domain authority higher!
- Create 4 YouTube videos for MoneyAhoy/HealtherDay
- Complete – I had two MoneyAhoy videos and three Terraria videos:
- Create free version of my stock market investing book: Stock Market Investing for Newbies
– make it available at SmashWords.com
- Complete – my Stock Market Investing for Newbies book is now completely free in eBook format. Get it now here: free Stock Market Investing Ebook!
- Exercise at least 5 minutes every day
- Complete – I didn’t let the holidays get me too unfit 🙂 I was able to exercise and meet the goal.
I did pretty good with the goals and kept out of the red by at least accomplishing a bit from each category. My main work going forward will be to kick-up my posting rate a bit as well as trying to build domain authority for MoneyAhoy through getting more links.
Now, let’s move onto the money!
Notes on Making Money for December 2015
We made a lot of money in December. I cashed in my purchased vacation (equal to one week’s pay), my wife worked a good amount for the month. It was our third highest gross income on record. Dividend income was also very good for the month at ~$1,470. This was the second highest month for dividends on record.
Side income for this blog dropped off a bit below the 6-month moving average. BUT, the total monthly side-income (including dividends and side-hustle income) was over $1,900!!!
Here’s a rundown on our side income for the month of December:
- Monthly Dividends – $1,471
- Sponsored Posts – $150
- Forming your own company – $133
- eBay sales – $67
- Youtube – $54
- Ad in sidebar – $25
- Google Adsense – $22
- Stock Market Investing for Newbies
- HealthierDay.com Adsense/Youtube- <$1
- TOTAL = $1,923
Compounding interest with the dividends I receive each month continues to do its magic as I re-invest it into new stock purchases. I love watching the 6-month moving average (black line) bend upwards higher and higher!
Notes on Money Saving for December 2015
Our month saving for the month was torpedoed as you will see below!! We continue to work on getting our normal/routine expenses lower. These were pretty good for the month (and below the 6-month moving average), so that is a good thing. Let’s see where the huge jump in non-routine (other) expenses came from:
- $1,850 – This was 65% of the hit. My wife was in the emergency room at the end of 2014 and had other medical expenses at the beginning of 2015. There was some hospital/insurance disagreement on the bill that took the next 11 months to resolve. Everything got squared away and we had this nice fat bill to pay 🙂
- $710 – Overall our records are not the cleanest here, but it looks like in total we spent a bit over $700 on Christmas presents in December for our kids, each-other, and friends/family. That’s pretty darn good I think and probably half of how much we spent for 2014! As a fun fact, our daughter’s favorite Christmas present only costs 50 cents from a yard sale.
- $209 – Bought a place ticket to head up north to see my sister’s graduation from PT school. This is something I definitely did not want to miss.
- $90 – I took off two weeks around the holidays and the kids were out of school. We couple small video game purchase, movies, and Star Wars and we ran up a $90 tab on entertainment.
January 2016 should be another rough month for non-routine expenses as we have another $1,500+ medial bill from December 2015 for our son’s recent ear surgery to improve his hearing.
Everything said, our savings rate was 82% for the month. This is because we had a ton of extra income for the month that was above and beyond the norm. Very nice!!
Notes on Investing for December 2015
For December, we picked up 266 shares of VWO for a about $7,900 for the month. VWO is the Vanguard Emerging Market Stock Index Fund ETF. This is an ETF that is passively managed that tracks emerging markets such as Brazil, Russia, India, China, etc. It pays an annual dividend of around ~3.7%.
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 January 2016
Below are my goals for the upcoming month of January – I am keeping the goals pretty standard/basic for this month:
- Publish 8 posts for MoneyAhoy.com
- Publish 2 posts for HealthierDay.com
- Create comments on 30 other blogs (average 1 a day) to build link juice
- Go through and create internal links for 10 old posts on MoneyAhoy.com
- Create 4 YouTube videos for MoneyAhoy/HealtherDay
- Exercise at least 5 minutes every day
Other Points of Interest
Don’t miss your chance to win $250 cash! The contest closes 1/25/16 at 11:59pm. Enter now for your chance to win here: MoneyAhoy.com $250 January Free Cash Giveaway!
If you missed any of our great posts for December 2015, be sure to check them out:
- Is Moving for Cheaper Rent Always Worth It?
- Toilet Paper vs Kleenex – Which is Cheaper to Blow Your Nose?
- November 2015 Money Report
- Online Gaming – Is It a Viable Way to Make Money?
- How to Change the Battery in Your Watch
What are your money saving, money making, and investing plans for 2016?
Yay for link building! This is an extremely detailed monthly goals check up. I was just thinking about how best to post my monthly goals and now everything I thought of seems underwhelming. But I love it! I have to re-read because I skimmed the first time. Thanks for the post!
Mrs Lewis recently posted…When living apart from your spouse makes financial sense
Mrs Lewis,
Feel free to steal my monthly write-up goal layout shamelessly 🙂 Good luck and thanks for stopping by!
Hey Derek,
Cool report. As requested, I have added you to the The Ultimate List of Blogger Incomes!
Alexander @ Cash Flow Diaries recently posted…I Have A Dream…To Be Financially Free One Day!
Great – thanks Alexander! I’m going to go check it out now to see where I fall in the list.
Wow, almost $1,500 in dividends is incredible! That amount is almost as impressive as your 82% monthly savings rate.
You’re killing it over here, fantastic job!
Blake @ The Dividend Pig recently posted…2015 End of Year Dividend Income & Net Worth Report
Thanks Blake 🙂
Nice work on the savings rate, thats super impressive. Based on the shockingly simple math from Mr. Money Mustache you should be retired pretty soon 🙂
Thomas,
Yes – just a couple more years and we should be fully financially independent!
This is great. I’m thinking about doing this on my website too. I’m just a month old so thank you for this idea! Great job on your earnings by the way.
Thanks for stopping by J. Let me know if you need any help :-).