August 2015 Money Report

It’s time for our August 2015 Money Report!  August was a pretty solid month, so jump right in and see how things went!!

To view any previous monthly money reports, check these monthly money reports.

Actions Plans for August 2015

We will start with a review of my goals for the month of August to see how well I hit them:

Key: Complete/Some Progress/No Progress

• Write 8 posts for MoneyAhoy.
  • Almost There – I hit 7 out of 8 posts for this goal.  Almost there 🙂
• Roll-out our new HealthierDay website related to all things health!
  • Complete – Done!  You can check out HealthierDay.com by clicking here!
• Create at least 2 new posts at HealthierDay.com
  • Complete – We had 6 posts total for the month of August – so we blew this out of the water.  My wife has really taken off and done a great job creating some posts and recipes over there, so I cannot take all the credit 🙂
• Cancel our Kindle Unlimited membership (a post about this is planned soon)
  • Complete – The free books they have on Kindle Unlimited are kinda sucky overall.  There is a lot of garbage 15-20 page “books” and not a lot of high quality stuff.  So, I decided to take a break from Kindle Unlimited and save the $10 a month.

I set the bar pretty low in terms of goals for the month of August since I knew we were launching our new health blog HealthierDay.com.  Even so, we did real well with our August goals for the month.

Now, let’s see how we came out on our finances for the month of August:

 

Notes on Making Money for August 2015

Our total income was pretty nice for the month of August.  As you can see, we are making about the same as a year or more ago when my wife was working full-time!  Our income from MoneyAhoy.com, dividends, and other side stuff has filled in the gap nicely.  So, at this point we are 25% retired!

After seeing a huge pop in dividend income for July, you can see that the August dividend income came back down to reality 🙂  I am waiting to see what October’s dividend income will be since a lot of other stocks will payout on this month.  Compounding interest is starting to work well for me!

MoneyAhoy.com income hit the second highest for 2015.  Not as good as July, but it still was very nice.  Let’s look at the break down:

• Sponsored Posts – $515
• Yard Sale – $309
• Monthly Dividends – $215
• Start and Setup an LLC on-line in Less Than 6 Minutes – $97
• Youtube – $42
• Ad in sidebar – $25
• Google Adsense – $16
• Stock Market Investing for Newbies book – $9
• TOTAL = $1,014

As you can see, the bit of income we received from having a yard sale was nice.  We were able to get rid of some extra junk and make a bit of extra money.  I am a bit peeved because we still have some big ticket items to sell (air compressor, and two kid’s bikes they have outgrown).  Looks like we’ll need to try and sell those on Craigslist.

Total side income (dividends plus side-hustles) came in at $1,014 for the month.  Not too shabby, huh?  I am hoping over the next several months this will grow nicely as my wife and I put in a lot of hard work on the new blog HealthierDay.com.

Notes on Money Saving for August 2015

Our total expenses for the month were the second lowest on record!  I am really pleased with that.  There were a couple items that threw our routine expenses a bit higher for the month:

1. Our monthly grocery bill was ~$300 higher – we hosted a back-to-school neighborhood cookout that ~50 folks attended.  We spent a lot on food 🙂
2. For the first week of the month, we still had to cover childcare before school started back up – $85
3. A couple of back to school expenses (clothes, pencils, etc.) – ~$60

One item that helped saved even more for the month was that we switched our wireless service over to Cricket Wireless.  This is saving us ~$360 a year!

For non-routine expenses, we also hit the second lowest on record!  There were just a couple of expenses that came in:

1. $87 at the dentist for our daughter to get her two front teeth pulled out.  Her adult teeth were coming in behind these and were not pushing them out like normal.
2. $40 – my wife and I had to renew our vehicle registrations for the year.
3. $20 – a toy for our daughter that my wife purchased on their mother-daughter day out

Overall we had a savings rate of 72% for the month!  I am happy with anything above 70% at this point 🙂

Notes on Investing for August 2015

For August I purchased 190 shares of VWO for a little over $6,000. VWO is the Vanguard Emerging Markets ETF.  It pays an annual dividend of ~3.1% and only has a 0.15% expense ratio.

Our cash is being very stubborn about getting below 5%!  This is a good problem to have as we are saving more that I have been investing.  I think I may need to drain some cash out of the Chamberlain Global account or my wife’s account to invest for next 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.  It will get you up to speed with stock market investing very quickly!

Actions Plans for September 2015

Here are my goals for the upcoming month of September:

• Write 8 posts for MoneyAhoy
• Write 4 posts for HealthierDay.com
• Get to below 5% cash through investing funds in savings
• Create two YouTube videos for MoneyAhoy/HealtherDay
• Lose 5 pounds by doing 21 Day Fix with my wife

Other Points of Interest

 

As I have mentioned several times – my wife and I launched the health blog www.HealthierDay.com recently.  It is still a little “under construction,” as we are still building pages, but please go and check it out!

If you missed any of the below posts for August 2015, be sure to check them out:

1. What Could Possibly Go Wrong??
2. Cricket Wireless Review – Should You Switch?
3. Top Tips for First Time Home Buyers
4. July 2015 Money Report
5. Why is having an Emergency Fund so Important?
6. Your Secret Bill-Paying Weapon
7. Should The US Move From Bankruptcy to Trust Deeds?

What are your money saving, money making, and investing plans for September?