April 2017 Money Report
The April 2017 MoneyAhoy Money Report is ready for your reading enjoyment! Read on to learn more about how I successfully make over $250/hour blogging in my spare time. I also discuss out money making, money saving, and investing performance for the month. The money report is chock full of helpful tips on how you can start your own business and start making extra money! Let’s jump right in, but first if you’d like to view any previous monthly money reports go here: monthly money reports. Let’s start with a review of our goals for April 2017 to see how we did:
Actions Plans for April 2017
Here is a quick review of how we did with our goals for the month of April:
Key: Complete/Some Progress/No Progress
- Publish 10 posts for MoneyAhoy.com
- COMPLETE – I had 13 total posts for the month. That has to be some kind of record 🙂
- Publish 1 post for HealthierDay.com
- No Progress – 🙁
- Create 2 YouTube videos for MoneyAhoy
- COMPLETE – I made two videos for the month: What is a Stock? and What is a Bond?
- Exercise at least 15 minutes every day
- COMPLETE – there were a couple of days where we were on vacation and I slept in, but I’m not counting those!
- Gain over 250 Pinterest followers (get to 3,750 followers)
- No Progress – I didn’t make time to harvest more followers much this month.
- Make over $1,000 / month in side-income (blog + dividend income)
- COMPLETE – I did very will with this one and made $2,600+ in side income for the month.
I did OK in terms of goals for the month. Getting Pinterest traffic is a lot harder than many folks make it out to be – at least for me! I am happy with how we did for the month, but I am feeling a little guilty we haven’t had much material over at HealthierDay.com for a long while now…
Now let’s get onto the money discussion!
Notes on Making Money for April 2017
We had a pretty average month for total income in April. This is mainly because my wife did not work many hours due to Spring Break with the kids and vacations. Monthly income was boosted a bit by my monthly salary going up and some nice results with side income.
Total side-income for April was a very respectable $2,648. This did not set any new records, but it is still really nice to have all that extra money for the month! As you can see in the graph above, this was the second highest month ever for MoneyAhoy.com earnings! It shows that hard work really does begin to pay off if you stick with something :-). The split between MoneyAhoy.com income and dividends was:
- $1,735 – MoneyAhoy.com income
- $913 – dividends
For the MoneyAhoy.com income for the month, all this money was made in the month with less than 6-hours of total work spent on the blog. That means I am earning over $250/hour by running my own blog!! If that sounds awesome to you, maybe you should start a WordPress blog with Bluehost yourself? Check out my article linked there to get started on your money making journey all for less than $4 a month!
My new income goal for 2017 is to make over $1,000 each month of side-income (MoneyAhoy.com blog income plus dividends). You can see that we are averaging more than this if we can continue our money-making momentum, but I’d like to try and make $1,000 each and every month just to prove I can do it. Hitting this monthly goal was pretty easy for the month of April as monthly dividends were just at the goal even if MoneyAhoy.com were to just make a little bit.
Here’s a detailed breakdown of the total $2,648 in side-income for the month of April. I have included links as much as I can to help you learn and see how I am incorporating affiliate programs into this blog to generate side-income:
- Sponsored Posts – $925
- Monthly Investment Dividends – $913 (JNK, HYG, SPY)
- Create an LLC with LegalZoom – $622
- Youtube – $63
- MyFinance end of post ads – $54
- SeedingUp Digital Content Marketing– $47
- Advertisements in sidebar – $25
- Amazon Affiliates – $17
- Google Adsense – $6
- Stock Market Investing for Newbies
book – $0
- Start a WordPress Blog – $0
- TOTAL = $2,648
I take all of the stock market investment dividends and reinvest them to put the power of compounding interest to good work. I also use the money made here with the MoneyAhoy.com blog and reinvest it back into the blog (see How to Pay Yourself from your LLC) or invest the profits into the stock market.
Did you notice that monthly dividend graph slowly go up higher and higher? That’s because we are continually investing each and every month! If you’d like to learn more about investing, read my free book: Stock Market Investing for Newbies.
Notes on Money Saving for April 2017
We did not save quite as much for the month of April as I would have hoped. There were a couple of routine and non-routine expenses that kicked in that dragged our savings rate down quite a bit. We also hard a LARGE tax bill to pay for our 2016 taxes :-(.
The routine expenses that dragged us down included spending more on going out to eat during our spring break vacation to Universal Studios and pre-paying to register for the kid’s summer daycare.
Non-routine expenses were also quite a bit higher for the month. This was mostly due again to our trip to Universal Studios and prepaying for several summer related things. Some of the top expenses for the month were:
- $597 – purchased airplane tickets to visit my sister in Pennsylvania.
- $255 – registered the kids for basketball camp over the Summer.
- $155 – we renewed our AAA membership. We thought this made sense since our cars are kinda older now.
- $106 – this is how much two Harry Potter wands cost at Universal Studios. Kids had fun with them, but I doubt they really got $50 of fun out of them…
- $98 – I got my wife a FitBit Charge 2. I spent a bit less because we cashed in a couple of Amazon gift cards.
- $80 – This was the fee to get the kids passports through the post office.
We now have a total of $12,600 in our new van fund. We continue to put $1,000 a month away so that we will have enough to replace my wife’s van when the time comes. We have been saving for a year now, so we are getting close. In just a couple more months, we should be able to have enough set aside for a pretty decent one. If we decide to continue holding out longer and continuing to save, we’ll just be able to afford one that is much nicer. Basically, it is just a question of “when to cash in the chips.”
Our overall savings rate for the month was just 30%. This was because we had to pay over $4,000 in taxes to the IRS :-(! I’m glad that is behind us now.
Notes on Investing for April 2017
For the month of April, I did a large reallocation of all of our investments to get back to our target asset allocation. As a result, I sold off a lot of junk bonds and moved more money to other funds such as emerging markets (EEM), developed international markets (EFA), real estate investment trusts (VNQ), and small cap growth (VBK).
You won’t find me engaging in any sexy day trading or investing in single stocks like Snapchat or anything. It’s pretty boring overall, but that’s what long-term investing is supposed to be! If it is too exciting, then you are probably doing it wrong :-).
If you truly want to gain financial independence, then you need to learn more about investing to build your long-term wealth! Investing in the stock market is one way to build up your passive income stream. Check out my free stock market investing Ebook to get started on your own stock market investing journey now!
Actions Plans for May 2017
I know that I am going to be super busy with my job for the month of May, so I will try to keep the goals a little light for the month so that they are something I have a realistic chance of achieving. Here’s what I am thinking:
May 2017 Goals
- Publish 8 posts for MoneyAhoy.com
- Publish 1 post for HealthierDay.com
- Create 2 YouTube videos for MoneyAhoy
- Exercise at least 15 minutes every day
- Get to 3,500 Pinterest followers
- Make over $1,200 / month in side-income (blog + dividend income)
Other Points of Interest
MoneyAhoy.com turned four years old in April! I cannot believe it’s been so long 🙂 Anyhow, you can read a bit more about the past four years for progress here: MoneyAhoy.com is Four Years Old!
Here are all the great MoneyAhoy.com posts for April if you happened to miss any:
- The Best PPI Claim Company Can Get Your Money Back
- How to Get a 1800 Toll Free Phone Number in Less Than 5 Minutes
- Everything You Need To Know About Filing For Bankruptcy
- Bitcoin’s Utility Is Expanding
- Spring Cleaning: The Real Value of Decluttering
- How to Choose a Life Insurance Plan
- Smart Rent Collection Options
- 6 Tips From Accounting Professionals to Make Tax Time Less of a Headache
- How to Create A Solid Digital Marketing Strategy for Your Business
- March 2017 Money Report
- How to Save Big on Your Car Insurance
- MoneyAhoy.com is Four Years Old!
- Ready to Start Those Summer Projects?
You Can Make Money Online Too!
Are you interested in making over $250/hour by running a simple blog?!? I thought you might be! I truly believe that anyone can make money online if they are willing to put in the a bit of time and effort to make it a success. There are just a couple of simple things you need to do to start on your journey toward online success:
- Start your own online business – You can start your own business online in just a matter of minutes. Check out my guide on how to start and setup your own LLC online. I show you how, in less than 6 minutes, to form your own business as an LLC! This article will teach you all the benefits of owning your own LLC for your business versus just skipping ahead to step #2.
- Start your own Blog – The next step is to start your own blog. Whether you will be blogging or running some other type of online business, you will need to setup a blog for your business. I show you step by step how to start a WordPress blog on your own with Bluehost! If you have never run a blog before or don’t fancy yourself a writer, don’t worry. It is really simple, and the learning curve is very friendly.
I started MoneyAhoy.com just over three years ago without knowing the first thing about blogging. In that amount of time, I’ve made over $28K and my monthly blog income continues to grow and grow – just check out the blue portion of the income chart above! I have also saved over $55K with all the research and tips this blog has helped me to implement! Starting your own blog can truly be a life changing experience!
If you have ever thought about starting your own business or blog, then now is the time to get started! Don’t wait until you have everything figured out, or you will never start :-). You can get started with your online business or blog with just a few hours a week and build it up from there. The sky is really the limit with your business and/or blog income. With a little bit of elbow grease, you’ll be on your way to making thousands of dollars a month in no time! Click here to form your own LLC and click here to start your own blog and get started making money today!
