June 1, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1,570.70; Rural libraries, $321.62.
The world is on fire. I have some words to express on the subject but that will have to wait until I have a moment and mentally can string together coherence. It’s been a heck of a week and a weekend for a lot of reasons and I’m focusing on actions first, then words.
On Money
Income
Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from an investment property (which is all saved for maintenance) and investing in dividend stocks (all reinvested). We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. We get a bit of income from Swagbucks and cash back sites (Ebates, Mr.Rebates). Some posts have affiliate links that pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running and I’ve added a way to support the blog in the sidebar to the right!
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.
***
Dividend income. We received $734.94 in dividends in May.
(more…)
May 4, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $659.86; Rural libraries, $321.62.
On Money
Income
Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from an investment property (which is all saved for maintenance) and investing in dividend stocks (all reinvested). We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. We get a bit of income from Swagbucks and cash back sites (Ebates, Mr.Rebates). Some posts have affiliate links that pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running and I’ve added a way to support the blog in the sidebar to the right!
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.
***
Dividend income. We received $193.60 in dividends in April.
Federal taxes. I’m glad we filed on the last day of March. I know there was no rush with the deadline delay to July 15th but we were due a federal refund and I wanted our money before the virus spread brought the IRS to some kind of grinding halt. Our deposit arrived in about ten days so I stashed it immediately to pay for our CA tax bill in the summer. I’m not paying that until July. We have a little extra after we deduct our state taxes, but I consider that money already spent. I’ve been hearing reports from other bloggers that they’d filed much earlier but they were being asked for ID, birth certificates, etc, and their refunds are indefinitely held up. What gives?? What has your experience been with your tax refund?
(more…)
April 20, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $640.74; Rural libraries, $321.62.
Winter! December 21 through March 19
This post contains affiliate links. I may be compensated for purchases made through them.
What I read
Terry Pratchett
Unseen Academicals (Amazon, IndieBound). When the world is too much, you just need Pratchett.
All the RWA nonsense (in Reno in 2005) and over the 2019 Christmas holidays made me have a look into romances to support the decent writers. I’ve mostly avoided the romance genre through the years because I wasn’t interested in books with HEA built in but you know what? With the world being what it is right now, that’s now something I appreciate! Clearly everyone had the same thought in my town because all of Courtney Milan’s books were checked out 🙂 Also Jeannette Ng interrogated something about romances of more than ten years ago that makes a lot of sense to me now – basically, the older romances defined love in a narrowly Western way that I didn’t recognize or didn’t resonate with me. Today’s are more varied and nuanced. So fittingly, I had a whirlwind romance with romances.
Sherry Thomas
The Luckiest Lady in London (Amazon, IndieBound)
The One in My Heart (Amazon, IndieBound)
The Hidden Blade (Amazon, IndieBound)
Jade Lee
What the Groom Wants (Amazon, IndieBound)
What the Bride Wore (Amazon, IndieBound)
(more…)
April 6, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $640.74; Rural libraries, $321.62.
On Money
Income
Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from an investment property (which is all saved for maintenance) and investing in dividend stocks (all reinvested). We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. We get a bit of income from Swagbucks and cash back sites (Ebates, Mr.Rebates). Some posts have affiliate links that pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running and I’ve added a way to support the blog in the sidebar to the right!
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.
***
Dividend income. We received $274 in dividends in March. I’m grateful we don’t rely on this income yet because we would not make it.
Our Rental Income has been seriously disrupted for the past few months with the previous tenant situation. I’m really glad that we managed to get a new one in before all this came down. We’ve contacted them to ask after their health, NOT THEIR RENT, even though really this is a truly low point in the finances of the rental after I spent more than all our reserves repairing everything the last tenant wrecked but good. So far they are healthy which is the most important thing and my hope is they will be fine financially so we can start to rebuild the reserves. But if they need concessions, we’ll make something work. Not all of us need to be heartless bastards in this.
(more…)
March 2, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $521.62; Rural libraries, $321.62.
On Money
Income
Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from an investment property (which is all saved for maintenance) and investing in dividend stocks (all reinvested). We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. We get a bit of income from Swagbucks and cash back sites (Ebates, Mr.Rebates). Some posts have affiliate links that pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running and I’ve added a way to support the blog in the sidebar to the right!
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 have today.
***
Dividend income. We received $545.98 in dividends in February. This was an unusual month.
Ko-Fi! Awwww, another kind reader! I so appreciate the support. Thank you! <3
W-2 income. We’re making a little more money this year. This was just about enough cover our increased costs of living with inflation plus a trickle to savings but thanks to my new health spending category below, that’s gone. Drat. Every bit counts. Especially with PiC’s increasing unhappiness with his job, and the peculiarities of his company’s financial stability, I am banking and investing as much as I can. We’re earning well right now but I also know that can go away very quickly. Maybe this is me being pessimistic but I don’t think so – he’s been unhappy for two years and they’ve been through five layoffs. Also I AM admittedly pessismistic because I feel physically terrible all the time. How long can I keep going?
(more…)
February 3, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $521.62; Rural libraries, $321.62.
On Money
Income
Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from an investment property (which is all saved for future maintenance) and investing in dividend stocks (all reinvested). We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. We get a bit of income from Swagbucks and cash back sites (Ebates, Mr.Rebates). Some posts have affiliate links that pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running and I’ve added a way to support the blog in the sidebar to the right!
Our long term goal is to replace our day job income with passive income before my health prevents me from working because I know from my Mom’s experience that qualifying for or relying on disability is incredibly tough or near impossible here in CA.
I aim to make the most of what we can do while we can.
***
Accounting and tracking. It felt great to switch all my spreadsheet tabs to fresh tabs for 2020. I have one for our net worth tracking and transactions history, one for our dividend investing, and another one for our index fund investing.
Smaller paychecks. I forget that the first part of the year always means smaller paychecks because we work on to maxing out PiC’s 401K as soon as we can. This is not helpful.
Dividend income. We received $165 in dividends in January.
Ko-Fi! A friend encouraged me to set this up so readers can support the blog. I was skeptical but then tickled to receive a lovely note and coffee from a long-time reader this month. Thank you! <3
(more…)
January 6, 2020
On Money
Income
Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from an investment property (which is all saved for future maintenance) and investing in dividend stocks (all reinvested). We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. We get a bit of income from Swagbucks and cash back sites (Ebates, Mr.Rebates). Some posts have affiliate links that pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running and I’ve added a way to support the blog in the sidebar to the right!
Our long term goal is to replace our day job income with passive income before my health prevents me from working because I know from my Mom’s experience that relying on disability is incredibly tough or near impossible here in CA.
***
Dividend income.We received $298 in dividends in December. It was all reinvested. Our whole year of dividends from stocks plus index funds dividends adds up to $7319. We’re still not nearly close enough to making enough on the side to cover even half my income (less than PiC’s before benefits, grrr). I’ve been thinking about one of us going part time for family and health reasons but we can’t afford to do that yet without dramatic changes and I’m not prepared to make them (moving would be required).
Windfall. My work finally earned enough revenue to give a wee bonus this year! I never ever count on bonuses because it’s never certain whether it’ll be a good enough year for one so it’s extra sweet when we get one. It’s the perfect time. While I wish to hoard it like a dragon, it will be such a help with our bills from last month.
CD interest. Our emergency fund is mainly in CDs at Ally. I set it to pay out the interest annually which means Dec 31 is a fun day.
Side money. I didn’t have time to commit to any real side jobs this year but we earned $1,805.81 this year from Craigslist, cashback sites, MyPoints, Swagbucks, and Bing. Most of our side income wasn’t in the form of cash, so this money subsidized our household spending and freed us up to direct our cash where we needed it most.
(more…)