February 2016 Money Report

The February monthly money report is now ready for your reading enjoyment.  It was a great month overall – read on to find out why!

To view any previous monthly money reports, check these monthly money reports.  Let’s start with a review of our goals for February 2016 to see how we did:

Actions Plans for February 2016

Here is a review of how we did with our goals for the month of February:

Key: Complete/Some Progress/No Progress

• Publish 8 posts for MoneyAhoy.com
  • COMPLETE – I knocked this one out of the park with 13 total posts for the month.
• Publish 2 posts for HealthierDay.com
  • Some Progress – My wife just had one post on HealthierDay, so we got halfway there :-).
• Create comments on  30 other blogs (average 1 a day) to build link juice
  • COMPLETE – I hit a grand slam here as well.  I think I commented on over 100 different blogs.
• Go through and create internal links for 20 old posts on MoneyAhoy.com
  • COMPLETE – This went faster than I would have guessed.
• Create 2 YouTube videos for MoneyAhoy/HealtherDay
  • No Progress – I didn’t get around to publishing any videos this month.  We filmed one for HealthierDay, but I still need to edit it.
• Exercise at least 5 minutes every day
  • COMPLETE – This one is just a habit now.  

We did just OK for our February goals.  I should have pushed myself harder to get the YouTube videos filmed, edited, and upload.  Oh well – you win some and you lose some!

Let’s get onto the good stuff now – the money!

Notes on Making Money for February 2016

We had our highest total monthly income on record this month!  This is mainly due to a couple of key factors:

• I was paid my 2015 bonus in February
• My wife worked a bunch of extra hours for the month
• MoneyAhoy.com income did very well

As you can see, our 6-month moving average for total monthly income also is slowly nudging higher.  Very encouraging!

Here’s a detail on our side-hustle and dividend income for February:

• Sponsored Posts – $835
• Monthly Dividends – $295
• Create a LLC for Your Business – $188
• Youtube – $27
• Ad in sidebar – $25
• Google Adsense – $18
• Amazon Affiliates – $5
• Stock Market Investing for Newbies book – $1
• HealthierDay.com Adsense/Youtube- <$1
• TOTAL = $1,393

We had almost $1,400 for February side-hustle/dividend income.  This is enough to cover almost half of our monthly expenses!  Very cool – we are getting closer and closer to being financially independent each and every month.  We are continuing to take as much money as we can and invest/re-invest it into the stock market to help our net worth grow even more quickly.

Notes on Money Saving for February 2016

We did a fairly decent job with keeping our expenses low for the month of February.  As you can see in the graph above, our routine expenses were below the 6-month moving average.  Nothing really fun to write about here.

For non-routine expenses, they were lower than the 6-month moving average but still a bit higher than normal.  We had a couple items worth mentioning:

• ~$500 – We took a family extended weekend trip to Atlanta to visit the Aquarium and stay in a nice hotel with a killer pool.  We used Hotwire.com to get the hotel for about 50% off the normal advertised rate.  I love Hotwire.com as you get really great 4-star hotels for usually less than $100 a night in major cities.  After the hotel, parking, aquarium admission, restaurants, etc. we spent about $500 total.
• $411 – We reserved a tent camping site for a week in Kentucky for Summer vacation.
• $120 – We bought a one-year subscription to a kids on-line math game called Prodigy.  It is kind of like Pokemon, but with math problems you have to correctly answer to attack.  The math problems get progressively more difficult as your character levels up.  Our kids love it, and it’s educational, so I think it’s a good buy :-).
• $60 – Dentist to get wife’s filling re-done.

Our overall savings rate was 81% for the month.  That’s awesome and has us on the path to financial independence in no time!

Notes on Investing for February 2016

For the month of February, we funded my wife’s IRA account with the maximum allowable $5,500.  For the month, I bought 78 shares of VNQ in her IRA for about $6,200.  This was funded through the $5,500 of new money plus about $750 of dividends that accumulated in 2015.  VNQ is the Vanguard Real Estate Investment Trust ETF fund.  This is a ETF that invests in real estate assets that produce income (mostly commercial real estate leases and the like).  This is a passively managed ETF and currently pays a 3.93% annual dividend.  We like to invest in this REIT ETF in my wife’s IRA because the dividends that are paid out are ordinary versus qualified.  This means there would be higher taxes to pay if we kept this in just our normal investment account.

If all this is gobbly-gook to you, then you need to learn more about investing to build your wealth!  Check out my free stock market investing Ebook to get started on your own stock market investing journey now!

Actions Plans for March 2016

Below are my goals for the upcoming month of March:

• Read the book Secrets of the Millionaire Mind again (for the fourth time I think :-))
• Publish 8 posts for MoneyAhoy.com
• Publish 2 posts for HealthierDay.com
• Create comments on  25 other blogs to build link juice to MoneyAhoy
• Create comments on 25 other blogs to build link juice to HealthierDay
• Create 2 YouTube videos for MoneyAhoy/HealtherDay
• Exercise at least 10 minutes every day

Other Points of Interest

I started a new FlipBoard magazine for personal finance which you can find here: FlipBoard Personal Finance Magazine.

Besides that, there isn’t much out of the ordinary going on for the month of March, so I will just leave a listing of the great posts that came out in February 2016 – be sure to check them out:

 

1. What a Forex Trader Needs to Know About Leverage (Forex Leverage)
2. How Much Does A Minor Car Accident Cost?
3. How Can I Learn to Trade Forex?
4. January 2016 Money Report
5. Healthy and Cheap Valentine’s Day Options for Kids
6. Valentine’s Day Flower Buying Guide
7. When Do You Really Need a Tax Attorney?
8. Is Binary Options Trading A Scam?
9. How to Find the Right Stocks and Sectors
10. Understanding the Advantages and the Risks of Secured Credit Cards
11. Alternative Investments for Millennials
12. Protect Your Inheritance – Hire a Lawyer to Contest a Will
13. When Getting a Home Warranty Makes Sense