Goal Update: End Of October 2017

At the end of each month, I post an update of my goals, including a brief discussion of any notable events that might have occurred during the month. The latest month's figures can always be found under the Featured menu in the menu bar at the top of the blog.

Last updated: End of October, 2017
Current value: $36,165
Change from last Month: +1,201
Percent of Goal:  33.3%

Note that the funds in this account are invested in stock, so there will be fluctuations in value that are outside my control. I never withdraw money from this account, so any dips are purely due to stock price changes.

Events Of Note Last Month:

I saw an increase of just over $1,200 this month!

I was able to sell another round of cash-backed naked puts of Realty Income for a net income of $171. In terms of a dollar amount, this is less than I made last month doing this, but because the options I sold this month have a shorter time until expiration - two weeks - my annualized ROI is actually higher. The options expired out of the money on 10/20, so I earned an annualized ROI of 10.22%, higher than the 8.28% I made last month.

Realty Income stock took a little bit of a dive in the fourth week of October, so I turned around and sold another 6 contracts on 10/23 for $0.40 per share with a strike price of $52.50. They expire 11/17, which is three weeks out. That's about one week longer than I prefer, but the stock was heading down, so I thought it would be a good time to make a little money. The 52-week low for the stock is $53.63, so I think there's a good chance these options will expire out of the money. Total cash received for this was $231 and I stand to make a 10% annualized return.

My courses on SkillShare.com have seen a little bit of activity. Students have watched 188 minutes total of my three courses. I don't have details on how much income that translates to yet - October stats aren't paid out until November 16th. I don't expect it will be much. I should note I haven't really done any promotion for these courses (other than what I have written about here) and I've only got a total of 5 students enrolled. I'm going to wait to see what the payout is before deciding how much effort I should put into promoting them. I've got one more class ready to publish over there, but I'm going to wait until my other classes have more students. When you publish a new course, students of your other courses are automatically notified of your new offering, so that's free advertising.

Over on Udemy however, I picked up another $128.60 in income.

I earned a whopping $0.01 on my ebook royalties.

Achievement Unlocks!

It's been a while since I last unlocked an achievement and this month, to make up for it, I've unlocked two!

I crossed the $35,000 saved threshold!

And I reached 33.3% of my goal!

For those old folks that remember vinyl

Relocation Update

We have moved into our new house! We've still got boxes everywhere and are trying to figure out where to put stuff. We also had to have some maintenance work done to the house, so that is a big reason why our net worth dropped this month - several thousand dollars worth of new paint, new carpet, repairs, etc. Our garage is filled with furniture that does not fit into the new house, so I'm also selling that off a piece at a time on Craigslist.

Net Worth Update 

Our net worth dropped by $2,069 from last month. This was due to the aforementioned repairs. Some bills have not come in yet, so next month I'm expecting another drop of about $10,000.

September 2017

October 2017

You can see we've moved some money from our investment accounts to cash in anticipation of the upcoming bills.

If you have any questions or suggestions for topics, please drop me a line in the comments section!