Well if you have been reading my posts you know how much I hate April and it didnt disappoint. It was an ugly month for net worth, spending, income, just all around not a good month. It will carry on into May a bit as well since we put off paying the property tax till the end of this month. Well any way here is the run down.
Photography Business
April ended up being a pretty slow month with only 10 sessions on the calendar (goal is 16). Cash flow wise mint.com showed I just eeked over the 8k mark wich is my break even point. If you recall in my last budget post I need about $6,250 to cover the expenses in the budget (which does not cover incidentals) tack on cost of sales to that and $7-8k is what I need each month. Well although it shows im over it can be deceiving as I had an unusual high cost of sales in April due to a large commercial frame order. If I mad it I just squeaked by.
AdSense
Adsense took another little nose dive ending again lower than the previous month. Ive let a couple sites go rather than renew the domain as they weren’t producing or selling. My main 3-5 sites are doing the majority of the producing and a coule that were just have stopped. Need to use my new found free time to pay more attention to these sites and get them going again, as well as finding a few more.
The past couple google updates have taken their toll on not only my income sites but my main photography site as well. More time is going to be needed to get its rankings back up as well.
Amazon
While affiliate sales was miserable, I did post and sell a couple items that saved the month. Going to try and get back into finding items to sell on amazon and perhaps ebay.
Membership Site
Memberships trickle along. Need to spend some time adding more benefits to members.
Other Affiliates
Just been a dead month overall, more reason to hate April
Portfolio
I guess this would be my one bright note. Even as things start to tighten up Im still contributing to my vanguard monthly. And while I missed doing a dividend stock purchase I will be making one today/tomorrow to Intel (which has a dividend payout June 1st). The market in general is not doing to bad so I am showing growth there and still getting those dividend payments. Not the $1000 a month Im shooting for yet but someday 
Still on track for meeting the goal of $10k improvement, most likely in next couple days will be half way there.
March 2012 Report
Income
Passive Income
| Amazon | $29.48 |  |
| Adsense | $24.74 |  |
| Merchant Accounts | $2.68 | |
| Membership site | $4.90 | |
| Direct Advertising | $450.00 | |
| Hosting/Wordpress Setups | $70.00 | |
| Other Affiliates (clickbank, infolinks, e-junkie,Linkshare |
$0.92 | |
| Studio Rental | $150.00 | |
| Prints and Calendar Sales | $40.63 | |
| Total | $773.35 | |
Portfolio Income
| All Savings | $5.29 |
| Vanguard | $0.0 |
| buy and hold | $16.74 |
| Total | $22.03 |
Spending
Well at least my pets spending is down Its even worse cause I paid the sales tax last night about 10pm so it dosent show up here (will show in next months). If you take out the taxes though I did spend less in April than in March so its an improvement!
Assets vs Debt
Assets
Assets obviously dropped this month. There is also the little issue of the house value. I haven’t checked in awhile, just making myself feel good keeping it at the same level. Reality has hit when I looked into refinancing and the credit union put it more like at $280k.
Ok I just went and let mint.com’s zillow run an estimate for me and it put it at $302k? maybe there is some hope after all. We are going to look at doing a VA refinance this month, mainly just to get payments down.
Debts
Yep debt went up. I had miscalculated taxes this year and did not have enough set aside. You can read my previous post for details but in the end I took some from credi and some from the bank accounts so I wouldn’t deplete both and paid the taxes. So my goal of paying off the Visa by June may be pushed back. That was a soft goal with the main goal of being paid off by end of the year. That may still be doable, just depends on how business goes and the wife’s job.
Net Worth
As expected the net worth dropped a hefty amount. Not much more I can say about it.
What I learned, Goals and milestones achieved
What did I learn? Well that I too can have a downturn. Been 3 years of going pretty good and not worrying about finances. April has but a little scare in me and even though I like to spend money, and was saying if I have it why not, I do need to be a bit smarter. $10k in emergency funds may not be enough and I should be putting even more aside. I’m 25 years from retirement age an during those 25 years if I should have to struggle at some point it will make it that much harder to retire.
On a good note though I did break the $750 barrier in secondary income this month. I really need to keep boasting this the best I can, preferably in passive ways
Goals / Milestones met this month:
- Earn $750 in a month Secondary income Completed 4/30/12
Whats next and Goals
Did a re-look at the budget and working hard to check it often and abide by it. Going to continue to work on it as well as work with the wife to get her spending and budget under control and work more as a team. Going to work hard on my online ventures a bit more as well. I did have that one big project site re-listed with google so need to set some time to complete and improve that site and see it start bring in something soon I hope.
May is also both my kids birthdays so there will be some spending going on, but hope to make May a big month for income/savings/investing.
How did you do in April? Get all your taxes paid?
Hey Jeff, nice to see such a detailed article first of all. Congrats on breaking the $750 secondary income mark. Hope to see the income rise in the coming months :)
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