December 2017 Money Report
The December 2017 Blogging Income and Money Report is ready for you to jump in and discover! Have a read to learn all about my money making, money saving, and investing for the month of December. In this blogging income report, I will show you how I make $250+/hour blogging in my limited spare time. I also show you how you can start blogging on your own and start making money for yourself!
This report is full of tips and tricks to start your own business and start making extra side-income for yourself. If you would like to check out any previous monthly money reports, go here: monthly money reports. Let’s start with a review of our goals for December 2017 to see how we did:
Actions Plans for December 2017
Here is a quick review of how we did with our goals for the month:
Key: Complete/Some Progress/No Progress
- Publish 3 regular posts for MoneyAhoy.com
- COMPLETE – I was able to hit this pretty simple goal even though I was super busy for December.
- Exercise at least 15 minutes every day
- SOME PROGRESS – I took a bit of a break over the holiday season and skipped a couple exercise days.
- Make over $1,200 / month in side-income (blog + dividend income)
- COMPLETE – I knocked this one out of the park with a total side income for the month of over $7,680!!
For the second month in a row I kept the goals on the easier side since I was not going to have a lot of time to work on the blog. I did pretty well for the limited monthly goals I set for myself, but I do feel a little bad that maybe I set them to be a little too easy. Anyhow, let’s have a look at the money details!
Notes on Making Money for December 2017
December 2017 was a record-breaking month for making money! This was helped by a couple of odd factors:
- I received my final partial check from my old job while I had already started at my new job
- Dividends for the month hit an all-time high
As a result, our total monthly income was nearly $21k! Wouldn’t it be nice if we could hit that much each and every month 🙂
Side-income for the month was way above the 6-month moving average. All-in-all, it totaled $7,687 – this was compromised of:
- $6,328 – dividends
- $1,359 – MoneyAhoy.com income
December has always been the best month for dividends, and this year was no different. As you can see in the graph above, the dividend income set a new high record. MoneyAhoy.com income for the month was pretty average, and a bit below the 6-month running average. But, $1,300+ for just a couple of hours of work is pretty sweet!
For the MoneyAhoy.com income for the month, all this money was made in the month with just a couple of hours of total work spent on the blog. That means I am earning well over $250/hour on the average 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!
Our income goal for 2017 was to make over $1,000 each and every month of side-income money. This would be MoneyAhoy income plus dividend payments. You can see from the total side-income graph that we were able to hit this goal each and every month of 2017. So, it is time to roll up the sleeves and develop a more challenging goal for 2018!
Here’s a detailed breakdown of the total $7,687 in side-income for the month of December. 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:
- Monthly Investment Dividends – $6,328 (JNK, INTC, EFA, EEM, VBK, VTI, VNQ, BND)
- How to Start Your LLC Online Today – $638
- Sponsored Posts – $360(see how to get sponsored posts on your blog for more info)
- Youtube – $115
- ShareASale.com – $100 – an affiliate network that helps you earn commission when you refer products/services.
- MyFinance end of post ads – $84
- SeedingUp Digital Content Marketing– $34
- Advertisements in sidebar – $25
- Amazon Affiliates – $26
- Google Adsense – $7
- Stock Market Investing for Newbies
book – <$1
- TOTAL = $7,687
As you can see, dividends were a home run for the month. They were the highest ever for us. This is mainly because we moved my 401(k) over to an IRA, so I have visibility of the dividends that are paid out each and every month. So, this isn’t exactly money that I can touch until I’m 59-1/2 unless I want to pay a hefty penalty 🙁 But, the whole point of investing for the long run is that you are going to leave the money alone, right?
The plan as always is to to reinvest all the dividends and MoneyAhoy earnings we make now so we’ll have more money down the road. That’s right – we 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 increasing? 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 December 2017
Money saving was pretty good overall for the month of December. Our routine expenses were the lowest on record for more than a year, and our non-routine expenses were under the 6-month moving average. Non-routine expenses were a little higher than one might expect mainly due to Christmas. Here’s a breakdown of the larger non-routine expenses for the month:
- $506 – Christmas presents for friends and family
- $244 – Climate controlled storage unit for our stuff here in Oregon while we hunt for a home
- $108 – Hotel the night before we got on our Christmas cruise
- $99 – Amazon Prime annual renewal
- $90 – Cruise excursion
We now have a total of $21,131 in our new van fund. We continue to put $1,000 a month away plus any extra that my wife is able to work with her second job. We have been saving for a bit over a year now, so we are getting close. Her van has ~238,000 miles on it right now, and it is still going strong! Now that we are in Oregon and close to putting down a payment for a home, this should allow us to take any left over money for a new used van. We are trying to avoid selling any stock to raise cash, and it looks like we’ll be able to hit that goal.
Our overall savings rate for the month was 56%. With all the traveling we did (including a Christmas cruise – more on that below) this was a pretty good savings rate for the month.
Notes on Investing for December 2017
As I have been mentioning for a couple months now, we are moved to Oregon! As a result, we have been trying to save quite a bit of cash to cover the moving expenses, down payment for buying a house, potential new furniture, etc. In lieu of selling stock, we are deciding to take our savings each month and hold it in cash instead of investing it. We will hopefully be able to save up enough so that we do not need to sell any stock and incur short/long term capital gains taxes.
I feel really bad about making this decision to put our stock market investing on hold, but I feel like it would be pretty dumb to buy a bunch of stock to turn around and sell it in a couple of months to raise some cash. I hope to begin investing regularly again by May, 2018 if not before this time. The right thing for most readers will be to save and invest like we have been doing over the past several years :-).
I really believe in long-term investing over time to increase wealth. You won’t find me engaging in any crazy day trading or investing in the latest new-fangled crypto-currency or anything. Investing for the long-term is 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 January 2018
We have done fairly well hitting our goals for the past couple months, so I am going to try and make them a bit more challenging for January. I will still be super busy with my job, moving our stuff across the country, and trying to find a new home. So, I am not going to go crazy with my monthly goals – just enough to make things a bit of a stretch.
January 2018 Goals
- Publish 6 regular posts for MoneyAhoy.com
- Exercise at least 15 minutes every day
- Make over $2,000 / month in side-income (blog + dividend income)
- Read the first one-hundred pages of the book: Wealth by Virtue by Chad Gordon
Other Points of Interest
We went on a Christmas cruise for our winter vacation! We got a pretty good deal (I think anyways) on a 6 day cruise in the Bahamas over Christmas. It ended up costing us about $2,200 for the whole thing. We also won a free excursion valued at $120 while we were on it! I was a lot of fun, and a nice family bonding experience. Being on the cruise did make it hard to write articles and exercise though :-).
I did manage to get in a couple blog posts for December which you can check out here if you happened to miss any:
- Do I Need to Deduct Taxes for My Nanny?
- November 2017 – Blogging Income and Money Report
- How to Minimize You and Your Family’s Financial Stress During Retirement
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:
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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 $45K 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 $71K 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!
