October 2016 Money Report

The MoneyAhoy October 2016 money report is now ready for your reading pleasure!  In the money report I discuss our money making, money saving, and investing performance for the month.  I also give you some helpful pointers on how you can start your own side hustle and start bringing in the cash!

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

Actions Plans for October 2016

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

Key: Complete/Some Progress/No Progress

• Publish 6 posts for MoneyAhoy.com
  • COMPLETE – I had 6 posts for the month!
• Publish 1 posts for HealthierDay.com
  • No Progress – we did not get around to writing a post for HealthierDay this month 🙁
• Create 1 YouTube videos for MoneyAhoy/HealtherDay
  • COMPLETE – I made one video for the month of October: How to – TV Cable Stripping Coax Connector Threaded Install
• Exercise at least 10 minutes every day
  • COMPLETE – I did well with this one and actually started jogging for a few minutes in the morning as well!
• Comment on over 100 blogs with links back to MoneyAhoy.com
  • COMPLETE – This was the time intensive goal I had for this month.  It meant less time to write articles for the blog, but I think it is helping to drive more traffic to this site.

The month of October went pretty well overall.  I wish I had more time to crank out some more articles!  But….  I do feel very good about dedicating more time towards commenting on other blogs.  A good healthy 50/50 mix of time spent writing articles and commenting on other blogs seems to work best.  Over the months, I think I got a bit heavy on producing content vs. marketing through blog comments.  Now, without further ado, let’s get on to the money!

Notes on Making Money for October 2016

October was a good month for income overall.  We had a pretty normal income from our days jobs; however, we had some very nice side-income and dividends.  As a results, we had a total income for the month above the 6-month moving average.  Hard to complain about that, no?

Total-side income for the month was fairly close to last month and came it at $2,146 (only $19 less than last month).  This was comprised of $909 in monthly dividends and $2,137 in various side-hustles.  Check out the detailed breakdown below for more information.  Now, if you are a normal reader then you will recall that my 2016 goal is to make enough in monthly side income to completely cover our monthly mortgage payment (~$850).  I am happy to say that we had a another successful month in this regard!  This marks the tenth month in a row where we hit the goal!  Ten down and two more to go :-).

• Monthly Dividends – $909 (JNK, SPY)
• Various Sponsored Posts – $580
• How to Startup Your Own LLC Online Right Now!– $462
• Youtube – $119
• How to Start Your Own WordPress Blog with Bluehost – $65
• Google Adsense – $10
• Stock Market Investing for Newbies book – $1
• HealthierDay.com Adsense/Youtube- <$1
• Advertisements in sidebar – $0
• TOTAL = $2,146

We continue to reinvest the profits from dividends and MoneyAhoy.com each and every month.  The plan is to let the power of compound interest do its thing month in and month out.  This is why you see the monthly dividend graph slowly increase month over month :-).

Notes on Money Saving for October 2016

Last month was the best month on record for 2016 in terms of savings.  For the month of October, we came in just a little over $100 above this record.  So, it was a very good money saving month!  Routine expenses were pretty much in line with the normal expenses except for a little bit of extra money spent on shoes for the family.

We kept our non-routine expenses pretty well in-check for the month of October as well.  The largest non-routine expenses for the month were:

1. $144 – cosmetic cream for my wife’s forehead (she has melasma – this is supposed to help make it better)
2. $74 – We took my son to Disney Quest for his birthday.  We spent some cash cards, and this was the remaining entry fee I put on my credit card.
3. $38 – AirBnb for the Orlando Disney Quest trip to allow our dogs to stay with us.  Our dog sitter unexpectedly backed out at the last minute

We now have $6,600 saved up in our new van fund.  We are trying to squirrel away $1,000 a month toward this so we will have enough money set aside by the time her van decides to kick the bucket.  I hope we can eventually get something in the 4-7 years gently used category – time will tell.

For the month of October, our overall savings rate was 47%.  Not so great, but this is mainly due to paying some of those higher non-routine expenses that came through on the credit card bill.

Notes on Investing for October 2016

For the month of October, I purchased 102 shares of JNK for about $3,600.  JNK is the Barclay’s High Yield Bond Fund ETF.  This fund is basically a “junk” bond fund that currently pays an annual 6.8% dividend.  These are the riskiest types of bonds to invest in, but they also pay the highest monthly dividend.  They are great to add to a portfolio that is willing to take some risk for the potential of a higher reward.

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 November 2016

I have put together some pretty simplistic goals again for the month of November.  I believe I will be very busy this month as well, and I do not think I will have a ton of time to devote to the blog unfortunately…

November 2016 Goals

• Publish 6 posts for MoneyAhoy.com
• Publish 1 post for HealthierDay.com
• Create 1 YouTube videos for MoneyAhoy
• Exercise at least 15 minutes every day
• Comment on over 100 blogs with links back to MoneyAhoy.com

I also want to shift my time so that it is more devoted to building up residual income versus just creating new content.  So, this means I will be spending more time marketing for MoneyAhoy.com and trying to focus on affiliate opportunities for the long term versus cranking out so many articles each month.  Hopefully this strategy change pays off in the long run :-).

Other Points of Interest

Here are all the great MoneyAhoy.com posts for October if you happened to miss any:

1. Top 5 Budget Busters and How to Fix Them
2. 5 Ways to Save Money on the Latest Electronics
3. Reducing the Financial Stress of Key Life Events
4. How to Be Smart When Planning a Family Reunion
5. Protecting Yourself From Fraud – XTrade Guide
6. September 2016 Money Report

You Can Make Money Online Too!

Are you interested in making a couple thousand extra dollars a month?  I thought so!  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:

1. 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!  I also discuss all the benefits of owning your own LLC for your business versus just skipping ahead to step #2.
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 on how you can 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 growth 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 $20K and my monthly blog income continues to grow and grow.  I have also saved over $50K with all the research and tips this blog has helped me to implement.

If you have ever thought about starting your own business, 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 with just a few hours a week and build it up from there.  The sky is really the limit with your 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 get started!