blog to discovery

One of my goals is to have multiple sources of income including passive income. My first action has been to review my current situation so I have a baseline and to aid in decision making.

Definition of my income

• I will exclude my husband’s income, however I will half any joint income we have e.g. saving accounts
• I will not include ‘theoretical’ money such as share value increases, I will only count money that I can access
• I will not include my daughter’s money, so for example, I will ignore the child benefit I receive

Current sources of income

I currently have three sources of income, my salary (or statutory maternity pay at the moment), interest on bank accounts and income from my blog – well it happened once! Each month I get a cash rebate from my credit card company, however I am excluding this because it is a percentage of my bill, so the way to increase the rebate is to spend more and that is not an action I want to encourage.

Picture credit: ZaCky ॐ

I am in the process of reviewing our bank accounts and investments and researching what accounts to set up for our daughter. The majority of my time has been spent on the internet, reading newspapers or brochures sent through the post, however yesterday I went into two high street banks and neither experience was great.

I am planning on making some long term investments while the stock markets are declining, however when I went to make my purchases I discovered my account is still in my maiden name and I am not able to make any additions to my account until I have updated my details. All I need to do is show them a copy of my marriage certificate, but as they are on an online institution I need to send them a certified copy of the certificate.

Sometimes things work so neatly you can’t believe it. After five years, I was expecting to make my final student loan payment in March which would mean I had extra money to spend each month. In January, my company offered a save as you earn scheme with the first payment in April, it seemed like too good timing to be coincidental. I know I don’t ‘need’ the money because I’ve gone for years without it, so I am investing 80% of it in the save scheme.

However it was nice this week to receive a letter from the Student Loan Company confirming I have paid off the loan. It is very comforting to know the only debts against my name now are my credit card which is paid off in full each month and the mortgage.

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