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Got a side hustle? Got twelve side hustles? That's awesome! Just remember the “side” part of side hustle:

This past Wednesday was a busier day than normal.

A few weeks ago I had agreed to be a guest on the 2 Frugal Dudes podcast. In the interim, things got crazy busy at my day job, and I had been putting in extra hours there. I also had arranged to visit a childhood friend who was visiting his parents only a few hours from us; we had scheduled something for this coming weekend.

Then, Tuesday night, I got a request through Wyzant to do some statistics tutoring. The tutoring had to be done this week because her class was almost done.

**Deep breath** OK, so I put in a full day at work, then drove a half-hour one way to tutor someone for two hours … then drove back in time to record a podcast that night for another hour or so.

Part of flipping on eBay for fun and profit is finding products to sell. But the deal isn't complete until things are sold …

Garage sales can be good places to get products for reselling on eBay.

Of course, finding the product is only part of this. The other part is selling it for a profit, after taking into account any fees and shipping.

Flipping on eBay: Thomas the Tank Engine overload

I've dabbled in buying things at yard sales and trying to resell them for profit. At one point I was selling magazine back issues — I even had an eBay store at one point — but got out of it because the shipping was killing me.

When cleaning house, a great rule is to “use it or lose it” — in other words, to get rid of the things you haven't used in awhile. So, I decided to use a digital recorder I hadn't used in a few years …

It's normal to accumulate stuff. Maybe even a lot of stuff.

Once every so often at least, it's a good idea to take inventory to clear out, sell, give away, or otherwise dispose of things you haven't used in awhile.

The road to clutter is paved with good intentions

Isn't this how it is: There's a well-laid-out, superb plan for using something we're going to buy. Whether it's starting up a new hobby, expanding an old one, or launching a business, we can almost taste how we're going to use that new gadget.

And maybe we do actually use it. Once.

Then it collects dust in a box because life gets in the way. Or because the new activity is more work than we thought it was going to be.

Getting tax compliance notices from the IRS stating that you owe large amounts of money isn't fun. It doesn't hurt to call them about it …

I received two letters from the IRS over the weekend.

These weren't pleasant letters, as in, “We caught an error on your return and we owe you a larger refund.” (I have received those kinds of letters before.)

My wife had checked our mail, and was the first to see the letters.

“We have a problem,” she told me.

Two letters, one for each of the LLCs we do business under. Each one saying that we owed $780 in penalties.

The IRS said that we filed our partnership returns late. That's $195 per month or part of month that the return was late, for each partner, for each partnership. From the looks of it this weekend, the IRS was claiming that our returns were between one and two months late: $195 times 2 months, times 2 partners, times 2 partnerships, gives $1,560 in penalties.