February 9, 2021
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 tiny bit of income from Swagbucks and cash back sites (Rakuten, 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.
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Dividend income. We received $175 in dividends from my stock portfolio.
Disability income. Dealing with EDD this time around has been 29 kinds of headache. They left a message asking questions about my claim, didn’t give me a way to respond, won’t pick up the phone when I call, and denied my claims. I went three rounds with my HMO’s records office, had a call with my doctor, and got the documentation needed but I’m still trying to get it fixed. Cross your fingers for me?
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January 12, 2021
I hardly know where to start with this year’s recap. It feels nothing like last year’s for obvious reasons. Obviously, COVID blighted the world and changed nearly every aspect of life. The US Presidential election campaign (and all the Congressional races) dominated the US news for months.
Throughout that …
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January 5, 2021
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 and cash back sites (Rakuten, 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.
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Dividend income. We received $909.60 in dividends in December from my individual stocks portfolio. That’s definitely higher than the usual because Costco paid out an extra large dividend. I would say unexpectedly except it was only unexpected by me – they announced it in November and I simply wasn’t paying any attention to such details.
Our YTD monthly average is $422.
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December 8, 2020
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 and cash back sites (Rakuten, 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.
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Dividend income. We received $752 in dividends in November from my individual stocks portfolio. We have two months in the year that are this high: May and November. It’d sure be nice if all months were this high, I’d feel like I was really getting somewhere with our income replacement. Our YTD monthly average is $350.
Our annual dividends from our index funds total is about 70% of the individual stocks portfolio total. Our YTD monthly average there is only $236.
This isn’t anything to sneeze at but we’re a far way away from income replacement.
Rakuten. I mostly do my shopping through MrRebates but sometimes there are shops that only do cashback on Rakuten. I wonder why Target still hasn’t come back to MrRebates. This was an accumulation over quite some time because we don’t use them as much, but we also had a $34 payout from Rakuten.
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November 3, 2020
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 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.
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Dividend income. We received $193.60 in dividends in October.
My experience with ibotta so far is: it’s slow. We don’t buy a lot of the brands they have offers for. But it’s a handful of spare cash, whenever I finally reach a cash out point, so I have no objections.
I’ve been holding a grudge against Achievement for the past few months because it took so long to get my last reward but also because I’ve been too lazy to log back into my mapping apps. Both silly reasons. I should add that back for that slow trickle of earnings.
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October 5, 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, $1,886.35; Rural libraries, $346.69.
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.
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Dividend income. We received $435.94 in dividends in September.
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September 7, 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, $1,732.74; 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.
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Dividend income. We received $739.94 in dividends in August.
Claiming Funds. I spent quite a bit of time this month following up on cash back and money owed to us:
- It took all month to get Achievement to pay up. I don’t know what’s going on with them but it’s really frustrating that their responsiveness has been so terrible. I’m on the verge of dropping them completely.
- I had to submit claims to Mr. Rebates since the tracking on some of my purchases failed to register. Their customer service is great, though of course they are limited in what they can do during a pandemic with the stores.
- I’m still trying to get our FSA to release our dependent care funds.
- I finally joined ibotta and started inputting some receipts for their Any Brand credits. We don’t do much specific brand name shopping but I figured why not get money back for the shopping we already do? It’s tiny but I’m happy to take what I can get if we’re already spending – it just takes 20 seconds a piece. I could string those small 20-second bits of time into some side hustle if I were determined but frankly, I’m not prepared to take on any real commitment anyway so this isn’t a diversion that’s taking away from a grander purpose. It’s just spare change.
- I finally had enough Swagbucks banked to redeem a $25 Visa gift card a couple months ago. They are 13% off which is 1 whole percent more than the standard monthly 12% discounted redemption discount, soI’d been saving them to coincide with a Birthday Swag-up. The $25 cost 2120 Swagbucks instead of 2175 (or the 2200 for a standard discounted redemption). I haven’t redeemed one for several months so this was nice.
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