Goals and Extra Monthly Income Update

August definitely flew by! I hope you all had a great summer and are ready for Fall to begin in a couple of weeks.

A lot happened in August. I went to Vegas for a 5 day bachelorette party (talk about needing a lot of time to recoup), then right after that I went to DC for work for 5 days. I also graduated and earned my Finance MBA.

Yes, I realize that I have a lot of fails on my list below, but it's mainly because: a) I was gone for the half the month, and everything was budgeted anyways (so I guess the food budget goal is probably actually a pass); and b) I decided to push some things further out (such as looking for pilates and thinking about my CFA) because other things were more important.

Overall, I would say that August was EXTREMELY successful for me, and I am very happy.

A lot of my September goals relate to improvements around the house. There are a lot of things that we have been putting off because we have both been too busy. But now we both have a lot of time together, so we plan on crossing a lot of things off our list.

I plan on designating a lot of our extra August and September income towards home improvements. This is mainly because we don't plan on taking another vacation until next year, and our vacation fund right now is full, so there is no need to continue to add to it. What do you designate your extra income towards?

I'm also hoping to break out into additional areas of online income. What do you do?

You can find my 2012 yearly goals update here.

1. Cut my food budget down to $400. FAIL?? We ate out a lot! But this was also expected since I was gone for over 10 days because of work and the bachelorette party.
   
2. Workout at least 4 times a week and run with my dog.  FAIL. This was hard since I was gone for almost half the month and didn't have time to work out while I was gone. Plus, working out in Vegas would've been miserable.
3. Make an extra $850 this month. PASS. As you can see below, I made around $1,600 last month. I definitely beat my goal by a lot. Future months will probably be around this as well, mainly because I've ramped up my side hustles and have a lot planned.
   
4. Start thinking about my CFA. FAIL. Haven't really thought about this at all.
5. Look for a pilates or boxing class to enroll in. FAIL. Wow I have a lot of fails going on in my goals.
6. Find some sort of hobby to take all of my extra time. PASS. I have a lot planned, it's almost scary… 🙂

1. Cut my food budget down to $400. Yes, this IS possible. This has been my goal for awhile and I am sure that we will be able to successfully complete this.
   
2. Workout at least 4 times a week and run with my dog. This is definitely more possible this month since I will be home.
3. Make an extra $1,500 this month. I have increased my online income by a lot and will be staff posting on a couple other blogs.  Also, I recently noticed that I had misspelled my blog e-mail on my advertise page wrong. Ever since I fixed it, I have been receiving around 5 times as many advertising requests.
4. Read 2 books. I'm going to finish the last Hunger Games book. I've been putting this off because I hate finishing trilogies or the last part of anything because I don't want it to end.  Is anyone else like me, or am I alone?
   
5. Lay new stones around the front of our house. Right now we have ugly brick and I think our house will look 10x better with new stone.
6. Hire someone to put carpet in. We have had no carpet in the living room for a very long time. Luckily, the hard wood floor underneath is liveable, but it's ugly so we want it replaced. Whoever put the carpet down before we moved in did a horrible job and made smiley faces (yeah, i know, what the heck?) with the glue and that has stained the floor.
7. Paint the guest bathroom. I told the boy that I want to paint it coral, and he agreed! WOOOHOO! Many of you told me that he would say no, but he said yes. Maybe he doesn't realize what coral is? 🙂
8. Install a new light in our dining room. Right now we have a hideous fan as our dining room light. It is truly ugly and needs to be replaced ASAP. I'm looking for either a rectangular light or a big sphere shaped one. I need to make a trip to Ikea.

• Twitter followers:  Goal was for 900, I'm currently at 1,104. My goal for September is 1,200.
• Alexa rank: Goal was to be under 90,000. I'm still stuck at around 90,000. This is probably where I'll be at. But there's nothing wrong with that, it most likely just means that I have others reading my blog besides just bloggers 🙂
• RSS readers: Goal was for 1,000, I'm currently at 1,200. My goal for September is to have 1,300.
• Guest post at least 2 times this month. I failed at this. I'm going to try to do this in September but I've been busy. So I'm not sure if I want to make this a goal!

• Online Income – $700
  
• Selling Clothes – $500
• Mystery Shopping – $78
• Rent – $325