So my income has been up and down and back up throughout the last year, but it feels like it's settling back down again.
The balance of my income sources has changed a lot since this time last year...
As usual I'm not going to disclose exactly how much I earn, but it's lower than it once was, around the £2K mark before tax, which isn't a lot, and very much a holding pattern for 2024.
For me a holding pattern is OK because I've only got 5 years left on a small mortgage, no other significant debts, a house in Portugal on the market and 18 years of a teacher's pension which kicks in when I'm 60, so there's no urgency to filling the retirement coffers.
Income breakdown
- The blog ads vary massively from month to month, but on average the income from them makes up around 50% of my income.
- Another 30% comes from my revision resource sales, so similar source as the ads.
- My new job interviewing for NatCen is off to a slow start, but bringing me in 22% of my income, that should go up, I'm being conservative. Quite probably this will be nearer 35% by next month. Things are probably going to pick up.
- Interest on savings is also nearly 2%, now we have 5% rates back in force, which is nice.
- Finally the chatbot used to be a lot higher, but that has become much less reliable so I have it live for only around 20% of the time I used to, I don't like it, so I'm fine with this!
2024 -2025 plans
The plan is to hold this pattern for 2024 and then maybe leverage the interviewing job into a part-time regular research job, maybe even a full-time one in very late 2024, but preferably early 2025.
I'm not 100% whether I'd to this, but my gut is telling me to go this way.
I imagine the blog income will trend downwards over the coming year, so a job may well be a necessity in 2025, maybe earlier!
And crypto...
Well all of the above is the sans crypto income, if I include crypto yields my income is, obviously higher, but my aim with crypto is not to cash anything out... yet.
The idea is that crypto is my savings and retirement fund, and I'll cash some out when it moons, which isn't time yet.
The income above is JUST enough for me to have a decent quality of life.