By the way, I work in real state and live in DC. I own an investment property and looking to purchase more with my partner. Let me know if you ever have any quesitons.

-PB

I’ve read some of your other posts. It seems like your current “temp work” on a contract basis brings in a higher income than when you were full-time. Is this right?

I am in a similar situation as you, except I don’t share your credit card fetish. Late 20’s, and after 7 years of my current “career” the high pay and benefits still don’t justify the cost in freedom and life enjoyment. However, there is no “temp work” contract basis for my line of work (military), nor is there overtime pay. Like you, I’m here more out of “I wasn’t sure what I wanted.” I suspect the natural entrepreneur types don’t know they are natural entrepreneurs until they’ve been disenchanted in one profession or another.

I’ve had doubts about leaving a well paying job, so I find it encouraging to see someone who makes even MORE than I do choose to leave their career for something any high school kid can do (blogging).

While my blog income continues to grow bit by bit, a sizable chunk of my income still remains my real life legal practice. I believe in the importance of diversifying my income sources and not relying solely on one method of income generation. I may get into the individual financial breakdowns in a future blog post.

I know the idea of transitioning from the working life of an attorney to an online entrepreneur may seem rather odd to some, but the future prospects of the latter are much more substantial, albeit fraught with greater risk. Of course, the current professional transition is easier for someone like myself since I have a finance and computer programming background. I only went to law school because I couldn’t figure out what to do with my self after college.

Could you please give a breakdown of how much of that monthly income is legal, blog 1, and blog 2?

Could you also do a post about how you transitioned from 9-5 employee to your own legal practice? Both the “why” and “how”? You would be the first blogger I’ve read to have done such a thing successfully (and the blogged about it for some strange reason).

Unfortunately, I’ve already tried the cooking route. While cooking for oneself is not out of the realm of possibility, the time and effort involved simply is outweighed by the convenience of eating out in my case, unfortunately. Shopping for groceries and making sure the fresh veggies and fruits don’t expire on me is a tough task!

I guess I see it as a tradeoff…I’m merely outsourcing what I’m bad at (cooking and creating edible dishes) for something I’m much better at (making money and running my job and managing my businesses). I know it’s not the most frugal solution as dining out is terribly expensive, but perhaps things will change if I ever settle down with a family one of these days.

Well, I suppose theoretically I could check Kelly Blue Book for the fair market value of my continuously depreciating vehicle everytime I update my networth report, but frankly I don’t place too much stock into car value as a major factor of net worth to begin with. The only reason I even include the value of my 2004 Honda Accord EX-L into networth calculation is due to its high comparatively high resale value in relation to other personal property I own.

However, I think checking Kelly Blue Book every 3 months to update the vehicle’s market value should be more than adequate…

The last time I actually checked was a few months ago but I doubt it has depreciated all that much during that time period.

I attempted to dollar cost average down on my stock positions in the last 6 months by investing in more shares, but saw broad stock price declines that wiped out most of my investment money. Some of the money went towards that.

I also had to clear up a previous IRS tax liability, which is now fully resolved. As a self employed small business owner, I also have the responsibility to make quarterly self assessed estimated tax payments. After taxes, only a portion of my income remains. Believes it or not, taxes have the potential to take huge bites out of income streams.

As an aside regarding the upcoming U.S. election for president, clearly, I’m not looking forward to any wealth redistribution policies either of the candidates, but in particular Senator Barack Obama, may choose to implement. His proposed tax plan to penalize higher net worth small businesses with incomes over $250,000 with higher taxes to “spread the wealth around” and subsidize the lower tax brackets greatly disturbs me. On the other hand, McCain’s plan doesn’t seem too popular either among the majority of ordinary working class voters.