December 3, 2018
On Money
Income
Our normal income comes from our full time day jobs. We earn money on the side, including tiny cash flow we don’t touch from an investment property and investing in dividend stocks.
Our side income comes from Swagbucks, occasional sales on Poshmark, cash back sites like Ebates, Mr.Rebates, and tracking physical activity through Achievement (my introduction to it). Some posts have affiliate links that pay a (very) small commission to keep the blog lights on.
The long term goal is to replace our day job income before my health declines enough to prevent me from working.
***
Mini-windfall, Tweetchat: The random number generator loved me and gave me a win for the many tweetchats I’ve participated in this year, a big Amazon gift card! Woo! This will be really helpful to defray normal household costs – I’ve got a huge list of things we’ve been holding off on buying until we have the money for it and we’ll get a few of them. I’ve also allocated a small part of it to buy one random person in need of help a small gift from their wishlist because I believe in passing on the luck / love.
Dividend income. This was a huge month for dividends: $504.44 which is our highest month of the year. It’s just the way the quarterly dividends shake out. Most months are typically around $200 but they’ve grown little by little each month. Our year to date net dividends are now $2,855.80. We don’t spend our dividends, these go right back to work for us purchasing more shares of something.
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November 5, 2018
On Money
Income
Our normal income comes from our full time day jobs. We earn money on the side, including tiny cash flow we don’t touch from an investment property and investing in dividend stocks.
Our side income comes from Swagbucks, occasional sales on Poshmark, cash back sites like Ebates, Mr.Rebates, and tracking physical activity through Achievement (my introduction to it). Some posts have affiliate links that pay a (very) small commission to keep the blog lights on.
The long term goal is to replace our day job income before my health declines enough to prevent me from working.
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Micro-income, freelance: I had almost made a resolution to really buckle down on generating new gigs in October but that would have been a broken promise because the rest of life was unbalanced in the direction of too much work. But I did polish up some works in progress and that brought in a wee bit of cash.
Micro-income, Craigslist: PiC unloaded another piece of bike equipment, $30. This is a double win: getting things out of our crowded home and bringing in a bit of money.
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October 8, 2018
On Money
Income
Our normal income comes from our full time day jobs. We earn money on the side, including tiny cash flow we don’t touch from an investment property and investing in dividend stocks.
Our side income comes from Swagbucks, occasional sales on Poshmark, using cash back sites like Ebates, Mr.Rebates, and tracking physical activity through Achievement (my introduction to it). Some posts have affiliate links that pay a (very) small commission to keep the blog lights on.
The long term goal is to replace our day job income before my health declines enough to prevent me from working.
***
Micro-income, freelance: I eked out a trickle this month. In any month we travel, even just a long weekend, the routine disruption eats up all freelance work time. That stinks – travel costs money and it also costs the opportunity to earn extra. +$80!
Micro-income, Craigslist: PiC knocked out a sale at the end of the month. +$50!
Micro-income, credit card churn: We finished our minimum spend on the Citi Thank You Premier this month and I am contemplating how to convert those 50,000 points. I think 30,000 will turn into Target money to cover normal needed household spending. I haven’t decided about the other 20,000 points yet but my goal is to use it only to cover necessities and thus preserve $500 in cash flow.
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September 12, 2018
What I read
Our library is pretty great but also drives me bananas with their book-licensing habits. They hold licenses for random books in series (see Sue Grafton below) so that you never know which books you can read in what order.
I did some digging to find out that I can make a directed donation to the library so that they will buy the e-books that I very much want to be in their collection so I and anybody else can read them. YAY! I feel better about donating to have them own the books, for some reason. Probably because I’m still staring at 10 moving boxes blocking my entirely full bookshelves.
Also, they let me know that e-books can either be owned by the library entirely for unlimited check outs OR they might be limited by elapsed time or number of checkouts. This was news to me and it kind of stinks but someone pointed out that it makes sense because the library has to replace physically worn out hardcovers, they don’t have to do that for e-books so publishers have to make up their money somewhere else.
I couldn’t write reviews on every book but they were all, unless otherwise indicated, two thumbs up! (more…)
September 3, 2018
On Money
Income
Our normal income comes from two full time day jobs. We earn money on the side, including tiny cash flow we don’t touch from an investment property and investing in dividend stocks.
Our side income comes from Swagbucks, infrequently selling on Poshmark, using cash back sites like Ebates, Mr.Rebates, and tracking physical activity through Achievement (my introduction to it). Some posts have affiliate links that pay a (very) small commission to keep the blog lights on.
The long term goal is to replace our day job income before my health declines enough to prevent me from working.
***
Micro-income: Achievement. Another 10,000 points combined for diligently answering my chronic pain surveys and being active equals $10 in PayPal. Not bad. I do wish I had a better app to connect than Google Fit though. That earns a paltry 6 points per day of activity instead of points according to the amount of activity.
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August 6, 2018
On Money
Income
Our primary income comes from two full time day jobs. We earn money on the side, including tiny cash flow we don’t touch from an investment property and investing in dividend stocks.
Our side income comes from Swagbucks, infrequently selling on Poshmark, using cash back sites like Ebates, Mr.Rebates, and tracking physical activity through Achievement (my introduction to it). Some posts have affiliate links that pay a (miniscule) commission to keep the blog lights on.
The long term goal is to replace our day job income before my health declines enough to prevent me from working.
***
Micro-income: Achievement. I’m participating in a chronic pain study and getting rewarded with points. Combined with my regular earnings, I cashed out a $10 Paypal reward this month.
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July 23, 2018
Oops, I missed writing up the April report! I think about our investing all the time but somehow forgot to report since last July. It’s been a bit busy here. 🙂
Observations
- I predicted that we’d see about $2600 in dividend income in 2017. We netted $2,445.95.
- Knowing that at some point, we’re due for a recession, and with stock prices being so high, I’m focusing on buying consumer defensive stocks – necessities, not luxuries.
- I’m trying to decide how I feel about buying Amazon stock. I don’t own any right now, and I’m very not cool with how Bezos treats his employees – the way he pays his employees is awful. At the same time, it’s the one company that provides a significant number of the services and products I need so I use them quite a bit as a consumer and that bothers me. Similarly, when the racist incident happened at Starbucks, I was really annoyed that we hold stock in a company that responded so badly at first, but I came around to realizing that it doesn’t make sense to dump stocks, or refuse to buy stocks, entirely on how a company conducts itself on single episodes. It’s a tough needle to thread sometimes and I’m still figuring out how to make this work.
- First quarter dividends (Jan-March): $346
- Second quarter dividends (April-June): $770
- Total net dividends year to date: $1,293.07
- New purchases: 100 shares of CLX, and 100 shares of KMB
- I sold GE at the start of the year at $17.59 a share and that felt silly because I mistimed it for tax loss harvesting for 2017 but it should work well enough for 2018.
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