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Personal Finance Overview, June

Every month I am going to post the things that my wife and I have done to eliminate our spending while increasing our income. Many debt reduction blogs will post the progress they’ve made towards escaping debt, but I’d like to look at the bigger picture, which is life far beyond paying off debt.

Everybody pays for certain wants in life.

It can be a good thing, but you must come to realize that you can’t have everything you want and expect to be where you want to be as well off financially, at least not in the very beginning.

Below are some of the things we have cut back on in the month of June that are slowly changing our future financial outlook for the better.

1. Cable TV. We have eliminated cable TV completely. We get free over-the-air HD and 90% of what we watch is on those channels anyway. It also has made it a lot easier to get some home improvement projects done and get some more exercise. Total savings – $30/month.
2. Cable Internet. It would be nearly impossible to cut this out since almost all of our business is done online, but we “downgraded” from a 12mbps connection to 3mbps downstream. That is still nearly 400KB/second, plenty of speed for downloads and streaming video. Besides, the 12mbps connection rarely reached even 25% of the advertised speed. Total savings – $10/month.
3. Newsgroup Subscription. We were paying Giganews every month as Comcast has discontinued their newsgroup service in our area. We can still get what we need through other sources so we decided that this was just a luxury. Total savings – $25/month.

We are also always actively working to find new sources of passive income. I am not going to include anything where we directly trade our time for money because my overall goal is to create enough passive income to not worry about working. Below is a list of some of the things we started or began seeing profit from in the month of June.

1. Stock Graphics. Through my projects in graphic design, I come up with plenty of extra elements that go unused. I have always sold stock graphics and photographs, but have taken a much more proactive approach to packaging and selling my work. After spending only one hour a day for an entire week getting files ready for purchase, I more than doubled the income generated in this way. Total income – $105/month.

I also have a full time job, and other sources of passive income that have been ongoing for a few years, but the things I mentioned above are relatively new endeavors. Overall it turned out to be a productive month with a lot of potential for growth.

After the changes we made in June, the net change in monthly income is +$120. If we could do that every month, we’d be well on our way to financial freedom.

I also wanted to let everyone know the kinds of things we are able to do with the extra money.

1. We painted almost the entire interior of our house. It looks almost brand new and has added much more in value than it cost in materials. For only about $150 we were able to completely update the look of our house, making it a much nicer place to live.
2. I spent less time worrying about bills and more time researching new income and investment opportunities. This is key because by eliminating time and money waste and increasing your ability to earn money, you can exponentially increase your income each month.

I hope this has been encouraging in your quest for financial freedom. What goals have you reached this month?