January 2014 – Making Money Report, Money Saving Report, and Investing Report
Welcome to the January 2014 Making Money Report, Money Saving Report, and Investing Report!
January 2014 came with its own set of successes and failures as you’ll see below 🙂 Overall it was a good month.
To view all previous reports and to find out why I publish these reports, click here
Actions Plans for January 2014
Key: Complete/Some Progress/No Progress
- Read the book The Millionaire Next Door
- Complete – look for the book review soon!
- Sell at least 20 things on Ebay (read my money making New Year’s resolution post here)
- I only sold 18 things, but the value of sales totaled $364, so I’m satisfied 🙂
- Create the outline of a new eBook on investing for beginners
- Complete – I’m halfway through Chapter-2 by now, so I’m pretty far ahead of my target on this one!
- Post at least 5 additional monetized YouTube videos
- I only got 3 videos up total for January. YouTube is giving me grief in monetizing new videos and it’s driving me crazy – hopefully I can figure this out for Feburary.
- Get all of my MBA assignments done on time – work is piling up in the last semester, so I’ve got to devote a fair amount of time to this 🙂
- Complete – Even though this was listed last, it really has been my top priority.
Pretty decent overall for the monthly goals. I hit 3 out of 5 goals, and actually got further ahead writing my stock market investing book for beginners than I had planned, so I’m happy with the progress. I’m going to start posting some of the sub-chapters as posts. So, look for more on that in February and March. Also, side hustle income was outstanding for January – very exciting! Read on to check out the specifics:
Notes on Making Money for January 2014
January was a fantastic month for income! My wife actually got paid three times in January, dividends were good, and said hustle income was its highest ever! Google Adsense revenue dropped to $25, Amazon Affiliate income was ~$2, YouTube income was ~$7, and two sponsored articles netted $400! Ebay sales were strong at $364 for the month (sold a bunch of household clutter)! Total side hustle income was $798 for the month – awesome!!! As you can see, our total monthly income for January 2014 set a new record.
Notes on Money Saving for January 2014
Monthly expenses for January were higher than I would hope mainly due to carry over from our short trip to New York City right after the new year. As a result, we spent several hundred dollars more than normal on eating out, subway tickets, stuff for kids, etc.
There were a couple non-routine expenses as well that impacted things quite a bit for January. The hotel we stayed at for my sister’s wedding was $320, and I had to buy a new car battery and wipers for my car – $170. I expect February to be much lower for expenses across the board, so I’m not too troubled with our saving progress in total.
Because my wife got paid three times in January, our savings rate was an awesome 72% for the month! I can’t complain with that 🙂
Notes on Investing for January 2014
For January, I picked up 111 shares of VWO at a price of $37.40 for a total of $4,151. VWO is the Vanguard FTSE Emerging Market ETF which pays a small quarterly dividend.
I am still working to shift my asset allocation away from cash and into stocks, but it is taking a while. I want to try and dollar cost average vs. just moving the entire lump sum over all at once.
Actions Plans for February 2014
- Get halfway through the book: The Four Pillars of Investing
- Sell at least
2010 things on Ebay ( revising this goal – 20 was too much without dumping stuff at too low of a price) - Finish the rough draft of a new eBook on investing for beginners through chapter #3
- Post at least 5 additional monetized YouTube videos
- Get all of my MBA assignments done on time – I’m in the home stretch as I finish up in April!
Other Points of Interest
- Here is a list of the posts I created for the month of January – check them out if you missed any of them.
- Investment Tips – Don’t Mistake a Low P/E Ratio for a Value Stock
- Asset Allocation Basics (guest post)
- Money Making New Years Resolutions
- Tips for Saving on Homeowners Insurance (sponsored post)
- Investment Tips – Fund a Roth IRA
- Making Money with eBooks vs. Blogs
- Best And Worst Purchase Of 2013
- Investment Tips – Never Lose Money (sponsored post)
- Best Dividend Paying Stocks – Recap January 2014
What are your money saving, money making, and investing plans for February?
Great job! At the very least, your site is paying for itself. I’m a ways off still but seeing posts like this give me hope to keep plugging along.
Sean,
Yeah – as your site gets more popular offers will come your way through email. Just keep plugging away and it will happen 🙂