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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July 2, 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 1. I complained to Comcast about their scheduling maintenance during the work day but not bothering to warn us about it, and they credited my account on request. For 2 cents. Wow.
Micro-income 2. I don’t do much with MTurk now but occasionally they’ll email me to do the odd survey. $0.50. 😀
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June 13, 2018
What I read
The library rampage continues apace!
Naomi Novik
His Majesty’s Dragon: A Novel of Temeraire
Throne of Jade
Black Powder War
Empire of Ivory
Victory of Eagles
Uprooted (Not a dragon story, I liked this one even more than the Temeraire series.)
Carrie Fisher, The Princess Diarist
This made me miss Carrie Fisher so much all over again. As did Wishful Drinking.
E. Nesbit‘s The Book of Dragons
Maybe it was just my mood but I didn’t really like this one at all. It felt far too old timey and juvenile. Which makes sense, it’s a children’s book. But there are children’s books and then there are books that delight children and adults alike. This wasn’t the latter.
Terry Pratchett‘s Nation
I did really like this one – I hadn’t read it for ages because it wasn’t Discworld and I’ve been in the mood for great comedy primarily but I’m glad that I gave this one a go.
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June 4, 2018
On Money
Income
Our normal income comes from two full time day jobs. We earn money on the side, including minimal cash flow that 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.
Our long term goal is to replace our day job income before my health declines enough to prevent me from working.
***
I forgot to mention some of these in April’s update so I’m taking credit this month!
Craiglist Sales. PiC had some luck offloading some of our spare parts. That brought in a small handful of cash: $40.
Legal settlement. I got an unexpectedly large check for a lawsuit for a brand of dog food that we’d bought for years. It turns out that not enough people claimed their share so my check was almost twice the amount originally projected! Score! $280.
Decluttr. I tried selling off some books and DVDs. Sadly, most of the DVDs we have aren’t desirable but oddly enough some old Meg Ryan movies were. And I sold PiC’s smashed to heck phone for a few bucks which was more than I thought we’d get: $10.
Freelancing. I picked up a little bit of freelance work. That brought in almost $400 between March and April. May was too busy with work to do much on this front but I did manage to squeeze in another $100 worth.