St. Thomas and $3,038 in Extra Income
Hey everyone! Happy Monday. We are leaving St. Thomas today and we had so much fun. I’m sad that my vacation is over, but I’m honestly ready to go home. I miss my dogs, oh yeah and I miss W 
It was a vacation with my sister and it was much needed!
A couple of you have asked me to do a full St. Thomas recap since you will be going on vacation there soon, so look forward to that! We both took tons of pictures. We spent a lot of time at the beach, got really sun burned, SUPed (for the first time!), went kayaking, and went parasailing (first time for this also). We didn’t leave the resort once in the whole 5 days but had tons of fun. Usually I explore the area where I go on a vacation to, but we decided to just stay and have a relaxing time at the resort.
I announced the winner to my Novica giveaway but haven’t heard back yet. If your name is Erika, please check the Facebook post where I announced the giveaway so that you can see if it’s you. I want to give you your certificate code!
Oh yeah, and go congratulate my sister, she is now a personal trainer! AND this is my birthday month so you all better be super nice to me for the rest of May. I kid, I kid, you should be nice to me all the time I definitely know what I want for my birthday, and that is a stand-up paddle board.
Spending
I don’t think we did any spending outside of the vacation budget. Earlier in May, our dryer did break though. Luckily we had a gift card that was good at Lowes which covered the whole purchase. It made having to replace the dryer not hurt our budget at all.
Extra Income (does not include income from our main jobs)
Extra income has been good for this month so far. I’m expecting a couple of payments this week. Affiliate income is still doing awesome. It’s nice to know that when I was on vacation, that you awesome readers were still clicking on my affiliate links. Of course I don’t count that as income until I actually receive it (usually 45 to 60 days after you click on the link), but it is still nice to know that future income has been made.
Not sure if this should be included in my Extra Income section, but I did win $85 to Starbucks last week. WOOHOO! I haven’t spent money at Starbucks in what seems like forever because I seem to constantly win Starbucks gift cards from giveaways.
Posts from my blog:
- Home Updates – How we Plan on Selling Our House Quickly – We have a tooooonnnn of things that we need to repair/replace/update in our house, but luckily most of it is pretty small.
- Why You Should Start a Blog – So Many Positives – In this post, I talk about all of the awesome reasons for why you should start a blog. What are you waiting for?
- How Being a Minimalist has Helped my Finances – This is a great post by Jordann. Hope you loved it!
- I want to learn more about you - I took an idea from another blogger and asked all of you a few questions. Loved the responses! Looks like W and I need to work on our food budget…
Link Love
- Fighting Boredom and Restlessness as you Work on Long-Term Goals The Frugal Farmer
- 3 Businesses you can run from anywhere in the world Young Adult Money
- Why Having Two Jobs Pays off Budget Blonde
- Do You Hoard Vacation Days Squirelers
- What are you willing to do for money My Shiny Pennies
- Pros and Cons of Living in a Smaller Home Retire by 40
- Why I will never regret a dime spent on vacations The Happy Homeowner
- Finance Carnival for Young Adults – I was included!
Food – Clean Eating!
We are still doing good with our food spending, but it’s hard to say because I’ve been gone for 5 days and W can’t cook to save his life (I have no idea what/if he’s been eating while I’ve been gone). But this is a new week and I know we will do awesome! What’s on your meal plan? Share any links, recipes, pictures and so on in the comments below.
Being healthy
I’m still doing great with being healthy. Our hotel room was on the 7th floor and we took the stairs nearly every single time (except for when we had luggage), which means something! We also worked out at the gym here. It was only one time, but seriously those stairs killed us. After we went down the 7 floors, it was also another 98 (maybe 96?) steps down to the pool and beach area, and we walked that EVERY single time as well. I should have killer legs now.
Have you been doing well with your extra income, spending and being healthy?
Why You Should Start a Blog – So Many Positives!
Every single day, many, many blogs are started. And it seems like there are more and more new blogs in the personal finance community.
I’ve heard some people say that there are too many new blogs out there, but who cares? I LOVE reading new blogs and hearing what they have to say. Who wants to hear the same ol’ story over and over? I want new and fresh perspectives on everything!
I started my blog in August of 2011 for multiple reasons. I wanted to have a “journal” so that I could go back and track everything that I’ve done. Before I knew it, I got sucked into the community and blogging has become a really fun hobby and side hustle of mine.
When I started my blog almost two years ago, I didn’t really think of the direction that my blog would go in, or where I’d even be with it in the future. I didn’t think I was going to be blogging for a year, or anything related to that.
Before I started my blog, I was doing what I thought was “normal.” Paying down my student loans little by little, and assuming that I’d completely pay off my student loans 10 or 15 years from now. I also never I never really even thought about becoming “financially independent” because I didn’t know that it was even realistically possible.
My views on life and personal finance has completely changed since I started my blog, and all for the better. Being more involved in the personal finance community has helped improve my life overall. If you are interested in starting your own blog, please read my post How To Start a Blog, and also be sure to check out all of my other posts in my blogging series. Below are reasons for why you should start blogging:
To Have Fun
Before I started blogging, I never gave it a single thought. Now that I’ve been blogging for almost 2 years, I couldn’t imagine not blogging. I like reading posts on other blogs, finding new people to talk to, giveaways, and especially writing. Blogging is a fun hobby to have, regardless of the subject that you talk about. Blog about what you enjoy to talk about! Pursue your passion…
To Blog For Others
Not everyone blogs for others, but I like to talk about personal finance so that maybe I can help others as well. For me, I have learned a lot (and I’m still learning) about blogging, extra income, personal finance and everything else – all from other bloggers. If other bloggers never talked about extra income, I probably would have never pushed myself to create side hustles.
Hopefully my blog posts help others and motivate others to be awesome with their finances as well. For example, I hope that all of my extra income posts help motivate others to create multiple streams of income. I hope that others will want to pay off their high interest student loans. I hope that others want to become more in control when it comes to their finances.
To Be a Part of an Awesome Community
I’ve made a lot of good friends through my blog. And I love receiving emails from readers and blog-friends that I’ve made. Being able to connect and learn from others is one of the biggest positives of blogging. I’m excited for FinCon and all of the fun that will be happening there. Are you going? My hotel is booked and ticket bought! Luckily I don’t have to fly since I live in the St. Louis area already.
To Grow
Without my blog, I don’t think I would care as much about personal finance. Yes, I care, but I most likely wouldn’t be so focused on extra income like I am now. I also wouldn’t make so much extra income as well. I didn’t start my blog to make money, and I do think that’s one of the reasons for why I’m doing so well with making extra income from my blog.
Why did you start your blog? Why haven’t you started one?
$7,859 in April Extra Income and Goals
Hey everyone! Happy Tuesday. I changed my mind and decided to post my April goals and extra income update TODAY instead of tomorrow. I figure that there won’t be a huge difference by missing just one day, so why not?! I did receive a couple of payments yesterday that I’ve been waiting on, and that helped increase my extra income for the month.
April was another awesome month. I wasn’t able to crack the $8,000 level of extra income just yet (this is after expenses), and I was actually $3 lower than last month’s amount. Still great to me though
If you are looking to start a blog, don’t forget to read my post How To Start a Blog. It gives step by step instructions on starting your own. And one of my most popular posts this money was How To Make Money Blogging.
We did some wedding planning last month and booked and paid the deposit for our wedding photographer (she has SUPER cute pictures!) and also chose our wedding date. Our photographer is AWESOME and I’m glad we found her. Check out her website Harper & Brothers. The wedding will be on June 7, 2014. WOOHOO!
Next weekend my sister and I are going to St. Thomas, WOOHOOO! We’re going for 3 days/4 nights for her birthday. It’ll be a fun time and I’m very excited. We haven’t gone on vacation together since we were probably in elementary school, so it’ll be a new experience.
In April, I made $7,859 in extra income, after most expenses. In case you are new to my blog, “Extra Income” consists of all income that I make that does not include my salaried job that I have in the financial services industry. Extra income also does not include any money that W makes, as he doesn’t do anything for extra income and is mostly commission at his work (so it fluctuates every month anyways).
As I say every month in my income update posts: this is not all super easy. None of it is. I spend enough time to make this a full-time job on top of my already full-time job. Luckily, I do enjoy what I’m doing so it’s not like I’m dreading anything. The goals that we have are also a great motivator. I just keep thinking about how badly I want my student loans gone, and also how badly we want a new house next year. Read further on my Extra Income page.
This is for the month of April and after most fees and expenses (expenses were a little over $700 and include payments for staff writing on my blog and work with FITnancials, PayPal fees, etc.) being taken out. April’s number above includes a rent payment from my sister.
April was another great month. I’ve come a long way from the just the beginning of last year when I was ecstatic about $50 in extra income in a month. Don’t get me wrong, $50 is still awesome, but I never thought that I would be to the point where I am today. I look up to so many other bloggers and if it weren’t for them, I really don’t think I’d be anywhere near the level that I’m at today!
