December 5, 2024
On Money
Income
Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from investing in index funds and dividend stocks (all reinvested). We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. We get a bit of income from Swagbucks, cash back sites (Rakuten, Mr.Rebates) and affiliate links to Bookshop and Amazon sometimes pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running. The sidebar has ways to support the blog and our charitable giving.
Our long term goal is to replace our day job income with passive income before my health prevents me from working. I know from my Mom’s experience that qualifying for or relying on disability is incredibly tough or near impossible here in CA. Aside from that, I aim to do my best to make the most of what we can do while we can.
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Dividend income. We received $1060 in dividends from the stocks portfolio. One of two big months in the year.
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November 6, 2024
On Money
Income
Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from investing in index funds and dividend stocks (all reinvested). We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. We get a bit of income from Swagbucks, cash back sites (Rakuten, Mr.Rebates) and affiliate links to Bookshop and Amazon sometimes pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running. The sidebar has ways to support the blog and our charitable giving.
Our long term goal is to replace our day job income with passive income before my health prevents me from working. I know from my Mom’s experience that qualifying for or relying on disability is incredibly tough or near impossible here in CA. Aside from that, I aim to do my best to make the most of what we can do while we can.
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Found money. We routinely pick up paper trash off sidewalks to pop into the nearest bins wherever we can and PiC picked up a receipt that was worth $4 in Ibotta cash. Woo!
Mystery money: I found a deposit in a checking account with no explanation where it came from or why it was there. It took me a week to unearth a letter from the bank saying this was restitution for having restricted outgoing transactions on our account and for the inconvenience and fees caused by their doing so. Huh? When did they restrict my account? When did they cost me fees? I’m mostly confused, but if I can’t find any record of any harm done, then this will just go towards defraying the car repairs.
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October 2, 2024
On Money
Income
Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have some income from investing in index funds and dividend stocks (that is all reinvested). We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. We get a bit of income from cash back sites (Rakuten, Mr.Rebates) and affiliate links to Bookshop and Amazon sometimes pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running. The sidebar has ways to support the blog and our charitable giving.
Our long term goal is to replace our day job income with passive income before my health prevents me from working. I know from my Mom’s experience that qualifying for or relying on disability is incredibly tough or near impossible here in CA. Aside from that, I aim to do my best to make the most of what we can do while we can.
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Dividend income. We received $519.25 in dividends from the stocks portfolio. That all goes to buying more index funds.
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September 4, 2024
On Money
Income
Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from investing in index funds and dividend stocks (all reinvested). We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. We get a bit of income from Swagbucks, cash back sites (Rakuten, Mr.Rebates) and affiliate links to Bookshop and Amazon sometimes pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running. The sidebar has ways to support the blog and our charitable giving.
Our long term goal is to replace our day job income with passive income before my health prevents me from working. I know from my Mom’s experience that qualifying for or relying on disability is incredibly tough or near impossible here in CA. Aside from that, I aim to do my best to make the most of what we can do while we can.
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Dividend income. We received $1,056 in dividends from the stocks portfolio. Immediately reinvested, we need to grow our portfolios enough so that if we lose our jobs, we won’t be totally up a creek. That’s a concern again! Layoffs at PiC’s, absurdity piled upon absurdity at mine.
I was gifted a $100 Clipper card in a stroke of pure luck. A friend of a friend didn’t need their card anymore and wanted to give it to someone who would use it. My Clipper card had malfunctioned several months ago and after too many phone cards PiC managed to at least rescue the balance, but that solution meant I needed to replace the card itself.
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August 7, 2024
On Money
Income
Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from investing in index funds and dividend stocks (all reinvested). We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. We get a bit of income from Swagbucks, cash back sites (Rakuten, Mr.Rebates) and affiliate links to Bookshop and Amazon sometimes pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running. The sidebar has ways to support the blog and our charitable giving.
Our long term goal is to replace our day job income with passive income before my health prevents me from working. I know from my Mom’s experience that qualifying for or relying on disability is incredibly tough or near impossible here in CA. Aside from that, I aim to do my best to make the most of what we can do while we can.
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Dividend income. We received $295 in dividends from the stocks portfolio.
I’m getting an FSA account of my own! This doesn’t change our planned spending, it’ll just reimburse us for that planned health spending that isn’t covered by the first one. There’s the increase in dental fees for our dentist going out of network, at least $600-800 we weren’t previously charged and a number of my brain therapy sessions that aren’t covered by our first FSA. That’s a help. If it works! I’ve been fighting with United Healthcare for weeks and months trying to get them to pay out the very valid claims I’ve submitted repeatedly.
I finally got fed up and asked PiC to call them and find out what the hickory sticks was going on. Would you believe they kept him on the line for almost two hours fiddling and hemming and hawing? They claimed they couldn’t identify the problem claims and that the claims submitted at the start of the year were only “courtesy” approvals. Lies.
So I’m furious and report them to the Department of Labor. Turns out they have a whole department specifically to handle these types of complaints. Magically, when we got on a conference call with them and he introduced himself as a rep from the DoL, you could hear the shift in attitude in that long moment of silence. There was hardly any hot potato at all, they only transferred us once. When he asked the exact same question that PiC did: why are these being rejected when the same type of receipt was provided in Jan and Feb and approved without issues, they paused for a long time, put us on hold for almost an hour, and then came back to say that they sent all of the claims back for reprocessing. That hold time really ticked off our rep so he’s ready to open an investigation into them if they still don’t resolve this within the required amount of time.
Edit to add: This is the Employee Benefits Security Administration – they specifically deal with complaints like this for ERISA related plans. They can’t do anything with medical denials unfortunately which really really needs a department for that, but they can deal with fiduciary-related fails.
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July 2, 2024
On Money
Income
Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from investing in index funds and dividend stocks (all reinvested). We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. We get a bit of income from Swagbucks, cash back sites (Rakuten, Mr.Rebates) and affiliate links to Bookshop and Amazon sometimes pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running. The sidebar has ways to support the blog and our charitable giving.
Our long term goal is to replace our day job income with passive income before my health prevents me from working. I know from my Mom’s experience that qualifying for or relying on disability is incredibly tough or near impossible here in CA. Aside from that, I aim to do my best to make the most of what we can do while we can.
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Dividend income. We received $511.25 in dividends from the stocks portfolio.
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June 4, 2024
On Money
Income
Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from investing in index funds and dividend stocks (all reinvested). We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. We get a bit of income from Swagbucks, cash back sites (Rakuten, Mr.Rebates) and affiliate links to Bookshop and Amazon sometimes pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running. The sidebar has ways to support the blog and our charitable giving.
Our long term goal is to replace our day job income with passive income before my health prevents me from working. I know from my Mom’s experience that qualifying for or relying on disability is incredibly tough or near impossible here in CA. Aside from that, I aim to do my best to make the most of what we can do while we can.
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Dividend income. We received $1,053.00 in dividends from the stocks portfolio. Bigger than usual big month, but it all averages out to only a few hundred dollars a month. It was all reinvested immediately as usual.
I moved our emergency fund to Vanguard’s Cash Plus account to get more interest there as well though that might have been a futile attempt since it looks like that APY went down from 4.7 to 4.6 (vs Ally’s 4.2%). Oh well, every penny and dollar count.
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