February was another positive month, little thanks to the day job. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to have a steady job where I’m appreciated and benefits are provided at low cost. Even though I’m keeping my expenses down, I’m still relying on my side income to get me through the month.
I also received a rebate check from my Citi Dividend Platinum Select Rewards Card. While they’re not providing the 5% cash back they used to, I am still likely to reach the maximum of $300 a year. Other than this rebate, there isn’t anything particularly interesting in the income categories. March will look good with a bonus and a raise.
Here are the numbers. After the report I have comments about my expenses.
My food expenses have decreased this month, even including my grocery costs. I mentioned earlier that my goal is to limit my monthly spending to $200 between groceries and food. I’m not quite at that point, but I am kind of working on it.
I spent a lot of money in the entertainment category this month. That’s mostly due to the Martin D-15 acoustic guitar I purchased, but I also picked up some coins that interested me from the U.S. Mint.
I picked up the tickets for my flight to California in April, and one round trip ticket is reflected in the vacation category. I don’t think anything else in the report warrants explanation, but feel free to leave a comment if you have a question.
March should be a good month for income and expenses. As I mentioned, tomorrow I’ll be receiving a bonus from the day job, and my raise goes into effect for the pay period beginning Monday. On the other side of the report, I’m not predicting any big expenditures in March, unlike February with the guitar and airline ticket.
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That’s awesome, you have really got your stuff together here with these reports.. congrats …
Very nice report, I like the spreadsheet you are using. One question I had is what caused the large increase in the misc/bus category? Also, is that misc for your business? Initially I thought it was for the bus (public transit) but now I am guessing it is business expenses.
It’s business expenses. The large amount this month is because I received a payment earlier for advertising on moneyblognetwork.com which should be split between all the network bloggers. Rather than recording what I owed to the other bloggers from the payment as a payable, I recorded it all as income. This month I paid that out and recorded those payments as an expense. (I used this method because all income for moneyblognetwork.com will get recorded on my taxes, so I have to offset that with expenses.)
Wow, has your business income (which I assume is all from websites?) overtaken your day job income?
Nice going!
Thanks Mme X! Part of the issue is that my day job income is low for my work… But I don’t plan on giving up the benefits. And it’s all from websites (including but not limited to Consumerism Commentary) but not all from advertising.
There is a lot to be said for good benefits as it can be a financial drain if you work for a company with poor benefits.
Seeing that you are making a healthy income from your websites provides additional encouragement for the rest of us. I’m new to your site so I will have to dig through the archives to see if there is more background behind your websites.
Hats off for making more at your side jobs than your day job. I’m probably looking at only about 5-10% or so from my side job.
Wow, that is incredible!
What program do you use to figure this out – or do you do it all in excel?
zen: Quicken for the data and Excel for formatting the chart.