Monthly Status Report: April 2018

Wel­come to the new month­ly sta­tus report! Now that I am no longer employed by any­one, I fig­ured it was time to change up the for­mat of the sta­tus reports. I did­n’t want to get rid of them entire­ly as I feel it’s impor­tant to share what tran­si­tion­ing to self-employ­men­t/­Fi­nan­cial Inde­pen­dence looks like.

Also, I super apol­o­gize for pub­lish­ing this two weeks (plus) late. It turns out per­son­al devel­op­ment and com­ing to grips with a new iden­ti­ty takes a lot of time and men­tal effort! I should be back to a more reg­u­lar sched­ule after this. 

I’m going to break out my per­son­al spend­ing still, but it’s going to be on a high­er lev­el than I had been doing con­sid­er­ing I split some expens­es with my boyfriend now.

Oth­er sec­tions include expens­es and income for var­i­ous endeav­ors, like sep­a­rate sec­tions for blog spend­ing, rental expens­es and income, and any oth­er side hus­tles I have.

Dis­claimer: some links may be affil­i­ate links. They help off­set the cost of keep­ing this blog running!

Why do I do a monthly status report?

I find it best to do a month­ly sta­tus report for a few reasons.

• It helps me eval­u­ate how I did the pre­vi­ous month. Did I spend a lot of mon­ey on some­thing? Why? Did I earn a bunch of mon­ey on some­thing? Can I do that again?
• It helps keep me account­able. How can I make an extra pur­chase know­ing I’ll have to explain myself to all of you? Talk about awk­ward when the blog­ger can’t walk the walk and talk the talk.
• I want to prove this crazy thing called finan­cial inde­pen­dence works!
• It pro­vides an exam­ple of real world bud­get­ing and expens­es. Some of the peo­ple I talk to haven’t ever seen a prop­er bud­get or seen one put into action, and part of the pur­pose of this blog is to lead by example!

I use Mint to help me track my spend­ing and keep an eye on my accounts. I also use a real­ly awe­some and super in-depth spread­sheet. So many for­mu­las….. Some peo­ple use Per­son­al Cap­i­tal and oth­ers use You Need a Bud­get (YNAB). What­ev­er tool (or com­bi­na­tion there­of) works best for you and your needs is the best one for you, since every­one and their bud­gets are different.

April 2018 Personal Statement:

Expens­es:

Hous­ing:	$650
Phone:	$45
Food:	$274
Auto:	$149
Pet:	$125
Health/Fitness:	$107
Shop­ping:	$25
Trav­el:	$70
Sup­port:	$50
Fees:	$454
Util­i­ties:	$111
Misc:	$195
Total:	$2,215

Notes: Phone was zero thanks to Google Fi and their gen­er­ous refer­ral pro­gram. If you use my link to sign up for their plans (which I HIGHLY rec­om­mend!), you’ll get $20 and I’ll get $20. Oth­er expens­es were high­er than I want­ed with lit­tle to no income com­ing in, but it went towards nec­es­sary things like a new shelf and contacts.

April 2018 Blog Statement:

Expens­es: $159

Income: $58.64

April 2018 Rental Statement:

Expens­es: $10,302

Income: $1,000

April 2018 Money Makin’ Endeavors Statement:

Expens­es: -

Income:

• Etsy: $7.16

Combine it all together and.…

Expens­es: $12,769

Income: $3,580.38

Net worth: $200,327

Thanks for read­ing! What did your month look like? Did you stick to your budget?