This site contains affiliate links, view the disclosure for more information.
With the new year, I have decided that every month I will be going through how much money I made, how I made it, and my goals for the previous and future month.
Ben (my boyfriend) was still home from college until the 8th and when he is around I tend to do absolutely nothing. I always am so on the go that it was nice in the beginning to have literally nothing to do but it got old real quick:). He headed back to college on the 8th and unfortunately a mixture of being sick and not having any motivation to do anything lead to… well, me doing absolutely nothing (again). I honestly don’t think there is a Youtube video out there that I haven’t seen in the last few weeks. My school just started so I had about three weeks where everyone was already back to school and it was just me with nowhere to go and nothing to do.
This month I had a major fail and that was being apart of the Acro and Tumbling Team at my school. I was a gymnast for basically my whole life until I quit junior year of high school and I thought this would be a great way to meet some new girls and be back to a “gymnastics” type of sport. Unfortunately, I only lasted a week because my body is just so beat from the years of gymnastics.
Since my break was so long, I headed out to Iowa to visit Ben. My dad had points for a hotel room and it was so nice to have a place to just hang out with him and watch TV. Theres not too much to do where he goes to school so our days revolved around where we were going to eat ;). I ended up leaving just in time because they got a huge snow storm and all classes were canceled!
I am so excited to be back to school and actually have things to do! I am the type of person that thrives when I am SO busy so not having anything to do has really messed with my productivity. I am in a slight dilemma with my major because I am now thinking I want to fully major in architecture (I am currently majoring in Interior Design and Architecture) but my school doesn’t offer that as a major. I could get my masters in it but that would be three more years of school (and three more years I would have to pay for..ugh!). I have time to figure it out but at the same time, really don’t have much time at all.
I barely worked in January due to being sick and the family I babysit for not needing me so it was a really low income month for me. I didn’t make much money but I did finally save $1,000 (well technically $967) for me to buy Elite Blogging Academy. It comes out March 5th and I am so excited to take it!! Kind of a bummer that I didn’t make a lot of money, but it makes me super motivated to bring in money next month!
February Goals
- Only spend $50.00. This could be a hard one but since I don’t have any payments besides my car (I am not counting that in the $50) I don’t really have any need to spend money. I am working on not going out to eat as much so hopefully this is motivation to eat at home/at school.
- Workout 3 times a week. I just stopped my membership to Orange Theory but need to keep up my workout so I am going to start Kayla Itsines’ program again.
- Hang out with friends on the weekend at least twice. I love being social but since I live so close to home from where I go to school, I tend to come home a lot and hang out here. My sister is home so I do want to come home still, but I want to make it a priority to spend a couple weekend nights with my friends.
- Make $500 dollars this month. To reach this goal, I will have to find some side jobs since I had to take off some hours of my normal babysitting with my school schedule this semester. I have some ideas so hopefully I will follow through!
- Put $300 towards car payment. Since I was saving for the Elite Blogging Academy I put a pause on adding extra to my car payments so I really want to start putting as much towards this as I can. I have $3,093.56 left to pay but in less than a year I have put over $4,900 towards it so I am pretty pleased!! I want it gone!
- Manually pin the whole month. I have been using schedulers for all my Pinterest pins because its so easy but my traffic has been so low I am about to do just about anything to bring it up again. A blogger I follow, Carly Campbell, has had huge success on manual pinning (and makes over $15,000 a month blogging) so I bought her book (https://transactions.sendowl.com/stores/6400/107092” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>Pinteresting Strategies) and am going to try out the techniques. It takes a lot of time which is why I have been holding off so I guess we will see if it is worth it! I am planning on doing a whole post on this in March going over my results.
- Post at least once a week on my blog. Would love to do two but I have no idea how much work my classes will be this semester so we will see how that goes!
Blog Goals
- Pinterest Followers: I am currently at 527 followers and want to get to 600.
- Pageviews: Ughh!! This has been down SO much for me ever since I switched from Blogspot to WordPress (seriously, if you are starting a blog start on WordPress!!! Worst decision for me blogging ever was starting on Blogspot). In January I received 13,671 views and want to get 15,000 in February.
- Email Subscribers: I haven’t been active emailing my subscribers which I know is important but I still am getting a decent amount. Right now I have 2,388 and would love to get to 2,500.
- Start debt payoff interviews: I have wanted to do this series for ever but have kept pushing it off so this month I actually want to get it!
Extra Monthly Income in January
*Because I am a full time student I consider any money I make to be “extra”*
Babysitting: $314.00
Blogging Affiliate Income: $100.05
Mom Money (My parents are divorced and I am under my dad for all money related purchases so my mom will send me money randomly when she can): $250.00
So I made a total of $414.05.
For barely working at all this month, I am pretty satisfied. I am really hoping I pass the $500 dollar mark next month!
