A $20K confession

May 2022 financial report

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To kick off my savings journey, I’m sharing this first financial report with you :) From now on, monthly financial reports will go to subscribers only, so check your status if you want to follow along (subscriptions are discounted to $5/month through Aug. 15). If you had a paid subscription to Notes before I paused in 2021, it’ll restart this month (you can update your preferences here).

May 2022 financials: Let’s get our bearings

• Savings at start: $20,000

• Savings at EOM: $20,000

• Revenue: $12,585

• Spend: $4,139

Here’s the starting point: I have a pot of $20,000 reserved for Healthy Rich.

That looks like a head start toward my $50,000 goal, but don’t get too excited.

I saved this money through 2021, intending to use it to grow the business this year. But I haven’t touched it, because I’ve been afraid to spend it “wrong.” Instead, I’ve worked overtime on the freelance side to earn enough money to cover the site’s expenses.

Yikes.

That’s what internalized budget culture looks like. Sitting on a pile of money that could help me achieve my goals, but still panicking about earning enough to get by and wondering how I’ll ever achieve my goals. Um… what.

So I’m recommitting to dipping into that pot this year to ease the pressure of earning from freelancing and carve out more time to be a founder. Because, yes, you can spend money and work toward financial goals at the same time.

Revenue breakdown

• Freelancing: $12,585

• Healthy Rich: $0

My freelance revenue for the first five months of 2022 has averaged $10,613 (some of that passed on to subcontractors). It’s been around $8,000 to $10,000 per month since July 2021. Expect that to take a dive in the coming months as I rely more on savings!

Healthy Rich isn’t generating revenue yet; I’ll count any revenue from this newsletter in that pot, and we’ll officially monetize when we launch classes this fall.

I know mingling these revenues together isn’t what I’m supposed to do, and I’ll eventually separate them more officially. But the freelance business funds Healthy Rich right now, so ignoring that side of the revenue wouldn’t make sense yet.

Spend breakdown

• Team: $2,163 ($1,363 for subcontracted freelance work)

• Tools: $476

• Tidbits: $1,500

Another time, I’ll go through all the tools I use to run my business, in case you’re as much of a tool-phile as I am. I have way too much nerding out to do to fit that into this post :)

Tidbits this month included coaching — I’ve worked one-on-one for a couple of months with a private coach for personal/professional development. I’m shifting down to group coaching for a bit and dropping that expense while I put my head down and focus on class curriculum in the coming months.

Paying myself

Also in another post, I’ll break down exactly how I pay myself through my business — a technique I’ve used as a freelancer that I’ll continue as I transition to running this new kind of business.

For now, I’ll let you know I pay myself a salary of $66,000 a year, with taxes coming out exactly like they would if I were working for someone else’s company. I don’t count that cost in my monthly spend, so if you’re doing the math and something’s not adding up, that’s probably the missing piece.

What do you want to know?

I’ve never shared my financials like this before — is this useful for you? What questions are you left with? What information would help you learn from these reports?

Reply to this email to let me know how I can make these monthly financial reports as valuable as possible for you!

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🥑 Thanks for reading Notes, where I share what I’m learning as I build Healthy Rich, a platform for inclusive, budget-free financial education.