August 2016 Money Report
Check out my newest monthly Money Report – the August 2016 version. Here I cover our money making, money saving, and investing performance for the month.
To view any previous monthly money reports, check these monthly money reports. Let’s start with a review of our goals for August 2016 to see how we did:
Actions Plans for August 2016
Here is a quick review of how we did with our goals for the month of August:
Key: Complete/Some Progress/No Progress
- Publish 8 posts for MoneyAhoy.com
- COMPLETE – I had 9 posts for the month of August.
- Publish 1 posts for HealthierDay.com
- COMPLETE – my wife wrote one post on a Mexican Lasagna recipe.
- Create 2 YouTube videos for MoneyAhoy/HealtherDay
- COMPLETE – I created 3 videos overall for MoneyAhoy.
- Exercise at least 10 minutes every day
- COMPLETE – I like to exercise each night while we watch a movie or show, so I’m probably getting 20-30 minutes of exercise a day on average.
- Put in 6+ hours a week on learning how-to and developing new computer games
- COMPLETE – I was able to hit this one pretty easily.
I hit 100% of my August goals along with some help from my wife on the HealthierDay.com front :-)! Maybe I need to come up with some tougher goals for September?? Anyhow, let’s see how things fared in relation to money for the month of August:
August 2016 – Money Report
Notes on Making Money for August 2016
As you can see in the graph above, we had a pretty average month in terms of monthly income. My wife got her hours back up after being our for several weeks during the summer, and it was a pretty average month in terms of side-income. Overall we were slightly below the 6-month moving average, but we saw a good improvement versus July.
We also found out that we’ll be getting a normal cost of living adjustment that will be effective for the month of October, so that’s something to smile about. I expect this to be about 3% plus or minus. We’ll see…
The total side-income we made for the month was $1,194. I knew our overall side-income this would be a lower month overall because there is only one stock we own that pays out a in August. This is our Junk Bonds stock (JNK). Our total side-income was made up of $356 in dividends and $838 in various side hustles which I will detail below. Our goal for all of 2016 is to earn enough each month in side-income to completely cover our mortgage payment. We did it again for the month of August for 8-months in a row hitting the goal! We are not getting rich or anything, but it is really neat to see that we are covering this large expense. Here’s a breakdown of our side-hustle and dividend income for August 2016:
- Monthly Dividends – $356 (JNK)
- Sponsored Posts – $350
- Create an online LLC for Cheap– $333
- Ads in sidebar – $100 (I added another sidebar ad that pays out $25 a month with a 3-month agreement.)
- Youtube – $45
- Google Adsense – $9
- Stock Market Investing for Newbies
book – $1
- HealthierDay.com Adsense/Youtube- <$1
- TOTAL = $1,194
I am still taking every penny of dividends and reinvesting them month-over-month to benefit from the wonders of compounding interest. This is part of the reason why you see the dividend income monthly graph creep up just a little month after month. We plan to stay in our investments for the long term, so it really is neat to watch this sucker take off!
Notes on Money Saving for August 2016
Our total monthly expenses were pretty average for the month. We did have a couple of routine expenses that should phase out a bit as we get into Fall. These are:
- $120 / week – daycare for the kids during the Summer. This will be gone for September 🙂
- ~$200 – water and electricity bills are higher as we water the grass and the AC kicks in for the Summer months.
Our non-routine expenses were pretty average, but we did have a couple large items that we pre-paid for. The largest non-routine expenses for the month were:
- $229 – hotel in Atlanta for a travel soccer tournament for our son.
- $164 – AirBnB reservation we made for our son’s birthday. We plan to head down to Orlando and check out Disney Quest. It’s going to be a way cheaper alternative then heading to Universal Studios to see Harry Potter world, and we are convinced he will have a much cooler time with Disney Quest.
- $151 – We bought two new vacuums as part of our quest for The Best Vacuum Cleaner for the Money. One is for the carpeted areas of the house and one is for the tile/wood floors.
We now have roughly $4,600 saved up in our “new van account” at this point. This is money that we are setting aside so that we can get a “new” used-van for the family maybe this time next year. The plan is to set aside about $1,000 a month for that.
For the month of August, our overall savings rate was 68%. It is hard to do much better than that!! It doesn’t touch our best ever record of 82% savings in December of 2015, but it is certainly a result that I’m very happy with.
Notes on Investing for August 2016
For this month, I bought up 104 shares of JNK for about $3,800 for the month. This is the same exact stock that I purchased for the month of July. It was still a bit under-weighted in our overall portfolio, but that’s been corrected now. JNK is the SPDR Barclay’s Capital High Yield Bond Fund (otherwise known as junk bonds). This is an ETF that is passively managed and is currently paying an annual yield of ~6.07%.
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 September 2016
I have put together some pretty simplistic goals for the month of September (they are actually pretty unchanged from August’s goals). We are going to be super-busy this month, so it will be a challenge to complete everything. I wanted to set goals that would be achievable and realistic, so we will see how I do.
I am also continuing to shift some of my time towards making computer games. More on that just below…
September 2016 Goals
- Publish 6 posts for MoneyAhoy.com
- Publish 1 posts for HealthierDay.com
- Create 1 YouTube videos for MoneyAhoy/HealtherDay
- Exercise at least 10 minutes every day
- Put in 6+ hours a week on learning how-to and developing new computer games
Other Points of Interest
Below is the latest update of the cool little dungeon crawler computer game project I’m working on in Game Maker Studio. It is still MONTHS away from being finished I think, but you can see it’s making progress versus last month.
Raccoon Dungeon
Here are all the great MoneyAhoy.com posts for August if you happened to miss any:
- What Exactly Is a Stock?
- July 2016 Money Report
- How Technology Has Transformed Trading
- How to Save Money and Time When Ordering Take-Out
- Top 3 Reasons You Should Form an LLC For Your Business
- What’s the Difference Between Selling Your House at an Auction vs. Selling It on the Market?
- The Best Vacuum Cleaner for the Money
- 4 Tips For Maximizing Your Shopping Without Breaking the Bank
- The Most Expensive Addictions in the US
