October flew by! I had a special post planned for Halloween, but getting the family all costumed took precedence. I’ll try to get it up later this week, so stay tuned for a scary story. In the mean time, here’s our report of what we earned, spent and paid in debt during October.
Debt Repayment
This month we paid $2,276 toward debt.
Income
Our total net income for October was: $4,365 For those who are new here, this is income that will be spent in November since we live on the last month’s income.
Regular Income: $2,969– This is Mr.SixFiguresUnder’s current take-home pay. For more details about his pay see here or here.
Etsy Income: $255 –My Etsy income is down from normal, but that’s been the trend for this time of year as the holidays approach. Many of the things I sell are baby shower-related and people avoid doing baby showers during the holiday season. It actually works out nicely to not be busy with my Etsy business during the holiday season when I’d rather be crafting and creating for my family anyway!
Blog Income: $1,141– I am so thrilled and thankful that even with increased blog expenses, my blog income is growing each month. This month I purchased the Genesis Framework and a new theme from Restored 316 Designs. Up until now, I’ve just tweaked a free WordPress theme, but I’m really excited about what the new theme will allow as far as site design and organization go. I was hoping to have a new blog design up by the end of the month, but the last few weeks have been nuts! Stay tuned!
Spending
Each month we budget down to zero using last month’s income. Our spending in October comes from the income we earned in September. In addition to the debt payments above, here’s how we spent money in October:
Tithing–$437 Earlier this month, I explained the details of why we pay a 10% tithe on our income.
Other Giving– $20 This includes other charitable giving besides tithing.
Mortgage/Rent– $0 We are thankful to live in my in-laws’ unfinished basement rent-free. It’s not pretty, but it’s a big blessing with some great benefits.
Utilities– $0 While we don’t pay utilities, we work hard to conserve resources and keep the bills down, like I mentioned recently. We do pay $30/month for extra Internet bandwidth (our Internet options in the boonies are few and expensive), but that comes out as an expense from blogging income, which is deducted before it gets to our family budget.
Republic Wireless– $22 We both have smartphones through Republic Wireless (you can read my review here). With tax, each phone comes out to $10.89 per month. We didn’t actually make any payment this month because our phone bill is covered through referral credits that we’ve earned (we count the referral credits as blog income during the month they are earned).
Health Insurance– $114 We have an ACA plan. You can read the details here.
Car Insurance– $97 We love our USAA auto insurance. They have been so easy to work with whenever we’ve needed them, which unfortunately has been inordinately often lately (see here and below under “car maintenance”).
Renters Insurance– $14 Really a small price to pay for the comfort of knowing we will be taken care of when things go wrong.
Food– $303 We went slightly over our $300 food budget for the first time since January. I may have purchased some Halloween candy that I didn’t share with anyone.
Gas– $403 We’re excited to see gas prices going down under $3. I saw it at $2.99 yesterday!
Clothing– $6 I bought a pair of denim capris at the thrift store and a clearance shirt at Target for my 6-year old’s wardrobe next year.
Household– $55 I bought some new camera batteries from Amazon and a dresser at a yard sale. All three of our kids were sharing one dresser, so it was pretty crowded, especially when we got out fall/winter clothes. It’s really nice to have a second dresser. We also got a new Sam’s Club membership though an awesome Living Social deal (good through 11/5/2014). Our previous membership had been expired for over 6 months, so we count as “new” members and qualify for the deal. I shared the deal and I got it free since 3 friends also bought it. You can read about why a Sam’s Cub membership is worth it to us here.
Fun– $37 With Halloween, this was higher than normal. I purchased a few things to use for our costumes. We also went to see a movie for a date night, which is a very unusual treat. We went to a matinee of Meet the Mormons and really enjoyed it!
Lawyer Marketing– $11 Two networking breakfasts for Mr. SixFiguresUnder.
Law Practice– $44 Monthly subscription to Mr. SixFiguresUnder’s law practice management software.
Car Maintenance– -$1,186 That’s a negative in front of that big number. My husband hit a black bear (yes, a BEAR) on his way home earlier this month. The insurance adjuster gave him the option to have his car deemed totaled and then buy it back with a salvage title or to have the car deemed repairable and get a smaller payout. The money in our pocket would be about the same either way, but not having to go through buying the car back and getting a new title was more convenient. We got $1,746 from the insurance company. We paid for the most urgent repairs ($560 for a new bumper and headlight) and will just live with the body work issues (dents in two doors, paint scrapes). There are some internal problems (oil leaks, washer fluid leak) that we will have fixed soon and will easily eat up the $1,186 remaining in this category. Sometime, I will have to tell you the “bear story” because it’s not everyday you hear one of those.
Medical– $177 We usually don’t have any medical expenses, but this month we did. I’ll share more on that later.
Gifts– $10 I bought some books at the thrift store and on Ebay for my first grader for Christmas. She is a voracious reader and eats up chapter books, so we’re excited to expand our family library.
Emergency Fund– $200 This brings up our emergency fund up to $5,004. We’ll make frequent but small payments into this fund to make sure we have something set aside if a real emergency strikes.
Note: Some links in this post are affiliate links. For more info check out my disclosure page.
How did your finances go in October?
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Oh you will love your Restored 316 Design theme! Lauren is fantastic! I love watching your debt payment progress – y’all rock! 🙂
Thanks Jessi! And thanks for always being so encouraging and sharing and liking my posts on social media. You’re a great example to me.
I’m excited to start working on my new site design. It’s been one thing after another here and I haven’t even started! It will happen this month though!!
First of all thank you for explaining about the tithing. I had never heard of that before, it’s not common practice in my country.
Second a few questions:
– why do you deduct your internet bill from your blogging income? It still is a cost, isn’t it?
– how do you count your blogging income? Would you mind sharing this? You wrote it’s not all cash, since some of it is used as a deduction on your bills. Will you ever receive that money?
If not, why do you consider this income? (Instead of a negative cost?)
Your blog is very inspirational, thank you so much for sharing all this!
Congrats! You are rockin’ the blog income and debt payments!!!
We had a good October too! We reduced our mortgage by $2115! YAY! It’s been one of our higher debt payments in the past 6+ months.
You guys have had some crazy months! It’s good to be properly insured though, we also use usaa for all of our insurance. I think their customer service is excellent, and also when we bought a car they gave us a great rate for loan refinancing to allow us to pay it off faster.
Congratulations! It’s awesome to watch your speed and determination in terminating these loans!
Ooh, want to hear the black bear story!
Amazing on the blog income this month — Would love to hear how things shake out between affiliate, ads or other sources.
Also, nice to hear you are investing in the blog via a custom design as well. Why did you decide it now vs. earlier or later?
Great progress! Sorry to hear about the black bear. You are probably in the top 1% of people earning money from blogs with that total. That’s really awesome.
Great job! I agree with Stacey – I feel like we’re all on the same team, and I just watched you score a goal! Big congratulations.
Nice job, Stephanie! I get excited for you when I see your balance coming down month after month. It’s like I’m cheering on one of my teammates. Way to go!
we have nothing like a bears in the uk so thats something I won’t have to budget for. Been using ynab for a couple of months now and its really interesting to see where the money goes. Both kids gone to uni in september so we know who was eating everything and having all our spare cash. Well done for this month
It is nice to know where your money goes! Hooray for spare cash! 🙂
I hope the bear is okay!!
Sadly, the bear did not make it. He wasn’t full grown, but not a cub either (a teenager maybe). The bear hit the front corner of the car then bounced back and hit both doors. My husband turned around and went back to check on the bear (from inside the car). It twitched slightly, then was still for a long time. Fortunately it was quick, but it was sad to lose such a big, beautiful animal that is so rarely seen by people.
Great month! Mine was very good too — substantial net worth increase put me over $10,000, which was fun.
I’m curious about your blog income. I don’t see any advertising on your blog, so where does this all come from? That seems like a lot of money, and it’s great that you’re making it — it’s just not visible to me how it’s actually happening.
That’s an exciting milestone! Congrats Cecilia!
I do have ads through Google Adsense (on a desktop you’ll see an ad in the upper right corner and there are some at the bottom of posts). I also have some affiliate links throughout the blog. They probably don’t stand out as “advertising” because I am careful to only share things that I love and things that fit my audience.
As far as monetization goes, I’m not really doing anything different than I was at the beginning of the year. The growth of the blog income is in direct proportion to growth in blog traffic.
Would you share what company you have your renters insurance through? We recently cancelled ours because we couldn’t swing the $34 a month, but I think we could do $14!
Thanks!
We have our renters insurance through USAA. My husband’s dad served in the military, so that’s how we have it (USAA is for servicemen and women and their families). We also have bank accounts and a credit card through USAA. They are wonderful to work with.
It would be worth getting some different quotes.
Another $2k paid down despite the bear encounter AND your blog income increasing… what a wonderful month!
Yes we were pleased with the progress! 🙂
Wow.. a black bear!! I hope your husband is ok! Its amazing the amount of destruction one creature can have on a vehicle. We were driving home in the dark about 2 weeks ago, and a deer ran in front of us. While we were able to avoid hitting that one, there was apparently a second one right behind it. It looks like she leaped onto the side of our mini-van, her body hit the middle side window where my 3 yr old sits, but didnt leave anything but a mud streak.. however her back feet crashed right into the back window, shattering it inward and also leaving 2 hoof/leg dents just below the window on the outside. When we got out to see what the heck had happened (my husband thought a hunter had been shooting at the 1st deer and hit our window instead), we saw the body and hoof damage on the side of the car… but the deer was gone. We assume she survived, but it scared the daylights out of us! I can’t begin to imagine the damage your car sustained from a bear!
That’s scary Kim, especially with your 3-year-old right there! Deer are pretty resilient. They are all over the place here! It’s amazing the damage they can do and still run away afterward!
Our damage actually wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been and thankfully my husband is just fine (just sad for the bear, who died almost immediately).
Once you are done designing and using your new site I would love to know why the new theme is better than the free one. I have been considering some new things for my blog and would love to hear more about themes!
My current theme is just really limited with how I can change it. I have never really liked the look of the header I designed, in fact I was waiting to redesign it before I told any friends about my blog, but then it kept growing and I just never got around to changing it. Pert of my frustration with changing it is that the theme only takes an image. I can’t put my social media icons up there and the size is preset. I also don’t like the way the sidebar is and it’s not quite the right size (see how the adsense ad in the upper right on a desktop is outside of the shadow underneath it?).
One of the main things I’m excited to change up is the navigation. For example, when you click on “Frugal Living” it takes you to a page with thumbnails of my posts that I have to manually update. I opted for this as a work-around because I didn’t want it to default to showing complete posts of all the posts in that category because no one wants to scroll through a million posts to find what they want. With my new theme, my content will be more organized and easy for readers to access (and it will be built-in without requiring me to manually add thumbnails to my static category page).
Those just are just a few of the things that I’m hoping to improve with a new theme. I’m hoping that it will look more professional and less homemade. We’ll see how it goes!
You are completely rocking the blog income Stephanie. Really nice work here! I’m excited to see what your website will look like with the new theme : ) Have a great week!
Thanks Liz! I’m excited to get working on the site design as soon as I get caught up with a few other things around home. 🙂