Our Goals for May Were:
Maintain our monthly earnings at: $2,800
Increase our share of earnings from equities by 1% (for a new total of $318)
Our total income goal (both active and passive) for May was then: $3,118
Earnings
Earnings for May 2021: $2,800
How did we manage to exactly match our goal down to the penny?
Short answer: we faked it.
Long answer:
May was a tough month for us. We wrapped up what was without a doubt the toughest, most grueling school year of our careers, AND our well sprung a leak.
And the well is under a cement patio.
So we had to hire people to cut a hole through the patio. And dig down to the leak. And replace the leak.
What does this have to do with our suspiciously perfect earnings?
We made quite a bit more than our earnings target for this month (yay!). Normally we would put all of that extra goodness into our profit account and report it here and everything would be fine.
But, we still haven’t received the bill for all those well-leak shenanigans. We have literally no idea what it’s going to cost us.
So we moved enough of our earnings into our profit account to keep on rolling with our financial system, but we are keeping the rest in limbo as a buffer.
This really isn’t a big deal because we are well ahead of our yearly earnings growth goal. (If you remember from last month’s report, we are ahead by about six months).
As far as the online business is concerned, there have been no problems to report. We just ordered another batch of inventory and should have that in hand shortly.
Hours Worked
54. After our 200+ hours we worked in April, May has been a breath of fresh air. Most of our 54 hours worked were from our day jobs, this site and the online store took about 4 hours of work this month (including the writing of this report).
All-in-all We’re happy. Extremely happy. This is the level we want to maintain year-round. Is it possible? We think so.
Passive Income From Investments
Our share of earnings from stocks we own: $317
Slight loss here. We wanted $318 in earnings, but after investing our bare-minimum amount (according to our financial plan) we only came up to $317.
Could we have invested more to reach $318? Probably. But until we know the full cost of the well repair, we are holding as much cash as possible. Are we being too careful here? Probably. But we sleep well at night.
Total Online And Passive Income
We earned $2,800 in May
Our share of earnings from the stocks we own was $317
Altogether we earned $3,117
We worked for 54 hours. Therefore we earned $57 per hour
Our Goals For Next Month
Increase our monthly earnings to: $2,835
Increase our share of earnings from equities by 1% (for a new total of $320)
Our total income goal (both active and passive) for June is then: $3,155
Further Reading
To see how we set up our business, check out our Guide to Starting a Home-Based Business.
To see how we invest our earnings for passive income, see Our Guide to Investing.
To see how we manage our business to minimize the hours we work, see our Productivity Guide.
Or to see how our income has changed over time, see our main Income Reports page.
Books Read This Month
We believe reading is absolutely essential to running a successful business. You should read as widely as possible. To that end, here are the book we finished this month.