Income/Expenses: July 2016

One of my favorite posts of the month! It's very personal and helps keep me extremely accountable!

I think it takes a little bit of guts to share your income and expenses openly with the world. But that said, I think there is value for both of us in reading this post. I will do a similar article every month.

Listed below is a detailed display of all income and expenses for the month of July 2016. Much more normal than June, but still great progress.  See what you think!

This month was much more of a typical month for our family than June.  With this being my second Income/Expenses post, I also think the above table does a better job detailing the data, especially on the expenses side, than June's report did. Finally, I also added a new category at the end: % Expenses Covered by Passive Income.  The GOAL IS TO GET THIS BABY TO 100%! 

Here's what happened this month:

Income:
1) Income was relatively in line with what I expected.  I earned $5.54 from this blog, which was very exciting, but was probably the hardest five dollars I've ever worked for! I'm very curious to know how others monetize their blogs, outside of adsense, which is all I am using currently.  Any advice in this area would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!!

2) I'll continue to explain the 'lending club sales' category; like I stated in June's report, I am unwinding my Lending Club investment as quickly as I can.  So whenever I get "cash available to withdraw" from that account, I transfer it and count it as 'income.'  This number will eventually get smaller and smaller and run out, but I can only get small amounts back as the loans are repaid.  Nonetheless, it's great to receive!

3) Dividends were very low, as the "1, 4, 7, and 10" months have very few companies paying in my portfolio currently. I boosted this category significantly with two covered call sales.  Rental Income, however, was excellent this month. There is a detailed explanation of these dividends, etc. in my July Passive Income Report here. Overall, not a bad month at all for Passive Income.

4) It was great to sell two covered calls and increase my income by around $120.  Highly doubt these options will be called away, but I'm ok if they do at the strike prices I set.  HCP is getting close currently, but I expect a big drop in the next few weeks.

Expenses:
1) Expenses were mostly in check this month, with only several high items.  We celebrated the birth of our second kid, finally, with a Ruth's Chris date night that was quite the bill!  Even with $100 worth of gift cards, our bill still came to $87.  So that is where most of the 'restaurants' expense came from this month.  Ruth's Chris is hands down my favorite restaurant.

2) We loaded up on diapers and wipes for the kiddos as well so we experienced a high 'kids' category this month.  Nothing we can do there!

3) The 'everything else' category is always the one that seems to balloon out of control, but this month we did very well keeping that number reasonable.  Anything under $100 currently and I'll take it! We'll continue to tighten this up in the next few months I imagine.

In summary, I managed to have a positive difference of ~$2,600 this month.  Very cool! Unfortunately I still have family debt and some credit card debt (details here, in Goals), so I definitely didn't "feel" the extra yet.  It went straight to paying down those items. Eventually though!

With this month's savings added to my Savings Rate page, I am now averaging 40.1% saved since Passive Income Dude was launched.  

What do you think? I'd love to hear your thoughts below.

Thanks for reading!

Passive Income Dude