Hey all! I hope you’ve had a successful February!
So it’s the 9th March and only now am I finding the time to sit down and reflect on the February financial happenings and set out my goals for March – whoops! February was a mighty busy month for three main reasons: I had plenty of work from my efforts in business consultancy which more than met my goal for side hustle income! Secondly, there has been a large organisational shift at work which has put me in line for a promotion in the coming months!
Fi has also been super busy setting up her craft shop on Etsy, be sure to check it out here! Here at BB we have also been considering heading back to the states for a few weeks rather than interailing which has meant we’ve had to play around with our budgets a little!
February 2014 Goals Review
Read the Naked Trader by Robbie Burns – Complete!
I chose this book as from reading Robbie’s blog I thought this would be a great guide for me to get to grips with trading shares. With a very limited knowledge of the stock market I wanted a book that could describe the ins and outs of the topic without losing me with technical jargon and I can happily say this was well achieved by Burns! The Naked Trader is a book that encourages you to act on the information you are given and presents plenty challenges and examples to keep you reading more and more! This is a must read for any aspiring trader so read the review here!
Begin Paper Trading – Failed
When setting this goal I had the aim of executing my paper trades as I read the above book. However, The Naked Trader gave me more than enough reading and activities within a month and although I set myself a budget for paper trading, I didn’t get round to marking my first trade!
One thing that has become clear from reading the NT is that for me to commit to trading shares I will need to make time in the day to monitor, buy shares. This is something that I could only be comfortable with if I had a considerable amount of cash to commit to trading due to the impacts this would have on my current work. I am therefore going to be delaying trading shares for at least another year and funnel my savings into a mutual/index fund this year. Don’t get me wrong though, I’ll still be keeping my eye out on the market in coming months!
Generate over £210 in side hustle income – Complete!
Total side hustle income for February came to a massive £326! My work in the evenings doing some business consultancy totaled over 90% of this income with the remaining income coming from coaching. I’m very proud of this figure which has really set the bar for what can be achieved with enough hard work during the evenings and weekends. I’m not confident that I can meet this figure again next month but I’ll certainly be looking to increase the amount of my objective for March!
Deposit £487.50 in my Cash ISA – Failed – £200/£487.50
Now I know what you’re thinking… how could I fail this goal when my side hustle income was so high? Well here’s the spiel; back in September 2013 Fi and I decided we wanted to go interailing in 2014 and would likely be budgeting around £750 each to travel Europe for three weeks. We’ve since had a little change of heart and now like the idea of jetting off to the states again and spending some more time in New York and Miami. Obviously we’d have to fly out which means (here’s the clinch), we should be looking to book our flights around now. I therefore have made a smaller deposit in the ISA and have a cash reserve in place in case we decide to book our tickets any time soon. I’ll be sure to pay the full amount in at the end of March, plus the missing figure from this February.
Goals for March 2014
So here’s what my goals are set to look like this month. I’m still fighting hard to stick to my new years resolution of reading one book a month, driving up my side hustle income each month, coaching parkour, advancing my career in marketing and having fun blogging! I only have three goals for this month as I feel that two of these are particularly challenging and want to try my best to succeed at them. Persistence is key and I’m certainly enjoying the challenges of 2014 so far!
Read ‘The Rules of Work’ by Richard Templar
Up to now I have read a book on the rituals of the rich and a guide to trading shares. To keep the balance in my work life, my next book is titled ‘The Rules of Work’. This is a book based on developing your personal success in the workplace; it is a list of ‘rules’ that you can use to leverage your effectiveness at work in order to advance your career trough promotions and salary. This is quite a short book that I am very excited to read!
Generate £230 in Side Hustle Income
Despite the success of February’s side-hustles I think this month will be a little trickier to generate extra income I’ll have to look to get mighty creative to hit this target. I have increased my monthly target from £210 to £230 and will likely have to put together a mix of business consultancy, online income, coaching and online sales to get this one together. Wish me luck!
Deposit £775 into Cash ISA
This is a mighty ambitious goal but if I can keep expenses low for this month and side hustle income high it might just be possible! My instant access cash ISA is going to hold my emergency fund of £1950 and to get to this amount by the end of April I was looking to deposit £487.50 into the account each month. However, with February being £287.50 short of the goal, I will be looking to make up for it this month despite the potential cost of our flights to the states!
What are your goals for March? Any big plans for this month?
Awesome job, Joe!!! I bet you CAN do the same if not better every month. Last year I only made a few hundred dollars in February and March just like you but one year later it’s enough for me to live off of it completely. It’s a slow and steady climb, and I have no doubts with your work ethic that you can get there!
Thanks for the support Cat! I think this will be the month to chase some new leads to keep the side hustles coming, hope you’re enjoying the self-employed life so far!