Income/Expenses: February 2017

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 post every month.

General Thoughts on this Month: This month we received a very large tax return, which greatly helped our income (side note - I deducted $1.9k from the return displayed here because it was directly applied to some debt repayment).  So thankfully our income was this month was high. Otherwise it was a pretty standard month. The tax return helped our savings rate be slightly over 30%. I've updated my all-time Savings Rate page here.

All of that said, listed below is a detailed display of all income and expenses for the month of February 2017.  

Passive Income Report: February 2017 (TERRIBLE!)

It is time again for my Monthly Progress Review, the second of the year, and what a terrible one it was.  

In each progress review I will list a summary of all dividends I received, the rental income I received, and any purchases I made from that particular month.

This monthly report covers February 2017.  

I hope you enjoy these posts and that we can learn how to grow our passive income streams and build real long-term wealth together! 

The worst part of this month for me is that I have to report -70.6% YoY growth. What a disaster.  

Part of the cause of this terrible YoY growth (or more appropriately I should say, decline) was portfolio based - transitioning one of my major holdings, MMP at 7% of my total portfolio, down to about 2%, and hence I received a much smaller dividend from this holding.  

I transferred these funds from MMP into the Vanguard REIT Index fund (VGSLX), which is a new holding for me that I am excited about, see my updated portfolio here, but I mention it now only to say that it will help my March passive income report's numbers, but that it made February's very small.  The other factor was that HCP, which usually also pays out in February, decided to payout in March this year as well.  Add to that some real estate expenses and you get negative 70% "growth".  But hey, sometimes months like this happen I guess. Ideally March will be much larger. Still, I hate reporting declines of any kind.  

For some good news I was able to make a bunch of purchases this month, which I will detail below, and is really the only silver lining for me during another very low income, expense-filled February 2017.

Read More to see how I earned my lowest total ever since PID was launched, $179 this month in passive income...