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Side hustle income: January 2024
Yeah, another writer posting about their side hustle income.
How. Exciting.
We all have to start somewhere!
The thing is: I haven't done this ever. But it's the right time now.
I'll be publishing my online income report monthly for a while as accountability to myself.
And at least for now, to give you a reason for you to feel good about how much you're making online!
What sources of income I'll report, and what I won't
I won't report everything. Some people have reported their entire net worth publicly, like J. Money. He did so anonymously. Since I'm not posting anonymously, I'm not putting everything out there like that.
Income from my primary day job, my music director job, my retirement plan, savings accounts, investment accounts, and so forth, won't be reported here.
Why I got excited earning $4 in one day on Medium
I started publishing articles on Medium this month. Once I repost it, this will be my seventh article on Medium. (Wanna check it out?)
Yesterday I opened my stats and found that I'd earned nearly $4 on a single article that day. (It also marked my first article that earned over $5 total.)
I get that four bucks in one day, in the grand scheme, isn't much. It's a Starbucks.
A quick calculation, though, made this $4 a lot more exciting.
Money goes out All. The. Time.
We all have expenses. Most of us have jobs that pay the bills.
On average, American households spend just north of $6,000 per month.
Members of Generation X currently spend the most on average, followed by Millennials, each over $7,000 per month.
Tackle job stress, one article at a time
I don't need to tell you that workdays can be stressful.
If you're not physically exhausted, you're mentally exhausted. If you're not overtasked, you're looking at the clock every five minutes. And the sheer stupidity of office policies and politics can leave you on your last thread.
But for many of us — certainly for me — if we don't show up regularly on time to Do The Job Things, we don't get paid.
The getting paid part keeps us coming back again and again, asking for another.
Most of us can't reasonably quit our jobs
I don't hate my job by any stretch. Most days I like it. It's a good job with unusually beefy benefits, a nothing commute, and fairly interesting work.
I'm thankful for that.
But even so, I can't reasonably quit without putting myself and my family in a bad place financially.
Cashback web sites I use for shopping rebates
Cashback web sites make your online shopping sweeter by giving you a kickback on your online purchases just for clicking through their site.
You know that there are great deals to be had just about everywhere you look. Cashback sites are pretty darn easy. The more you buy from merchants on their site, the more they pay you.
How can cashback web sites hand out free money?
Now, they're not just being nice guys in giving you free money, of course. They get paid for closing the sale and pay you part of it, and keep the difference.
But regardless of how they can get the money to you, it's yours for the taking if you want it!
Here are a few sites I enjoy that give you cash back as you shop for your rebating pleasure.
Auction deals: A look back at our craziness
(This is a reworked post from 25 September 2007.)
During the first quarter or so of our marriage, we had gotten turned on to estate and consignment auctions.
The deals were amazing and we were determined to take advantage of them. We filled up our minivan easily for $40 — sometimes for $20 or even $5. A friend at the time (the one who introduced us to auctions) one time bought the contents of an attic for a dollar, sight unseen. He made $30 just charging people admission to take what they wanted!
Auction deals are only good if you have room for them
We eventually got way more selective about what we brought home from estate auctions.
Goodwill purchases (sadly, no $100k Italian vases for $4)
Purchases from Goodwill stores are usually decent deals if you know what to look for.
Goodwill stores, the chain of secondhand stores that are the public-facing arm of the American nonprofit corporation, accept donations of most items and resell them either in-store or online.
Goodwill has a close eye on donations (most of the time)
Goodwill overall pays very close attention to the donations that come into their doors. The truly valuable items are sold online rather than in the stores. They rarely make it out of the back room. Housewares, games, well-loved clothes, inexpensive furniture, etc., get sold in the stores.
Holiday fatigue (plus some ways out)
The holidays are a time for festivities, for looking back at the past year and looking forward to the new year in a relaxed, joyous atmosphere.
And if you're like me most years, you wonder what planet this is on, and who these aliens are who celebrate like this, because it sure as heck isn't here.
I'm better about the holidays than I was in my 20s and 30s (and even part of my 40s), but it takes effort on my part to do this.
On a whim, I googled “holiday fatigue” and it's actually a real thing. Following a study from the National Alliance of Mental Illness, nearly two-thirds of people who suffer from some kind of mental illness find that the holidays make it worse.
Word-of-mouth advertising and my wife’s growing business
Over the past year, my wife and I have gotten some side jobs completely on referrals.
There are many ways to make extra money. Broadly, there are two kinds of ways: active and passive. Active income involves trading time for money, whether it's going to a second job or performing a service. Passive income is residual income that comes with much less effort, like interest income, royalties, affiliate income, and so forth.
Active income is typically a faster way to get money into your pocket. Do a job, and get paid (once). Passive income takes longer, and there is typically a lot of up-front work or investment before the money really starts to flow.
Word-of-mouth advertising drives my wife's sewing income
For people who provide services, though, there can be a residual, almost passive component to it: word-of-mouth advertising.
How to keep on budget when nothing’s cheap anymore
My wife did a Costco run after an appointment this morning. After she was done she lamented that it was going to be a big bill because meat (chicken in particular) wasn't cheap.
I said, “Nothing is anymore,” and she agreed.
How to keep on budget, then, if prices keep going up?
A recent jump in the Consumer Price Index
Prices have risen sharply recently due to inflation. The Consumer Price Index has increased by 18% over the past three years (September 2020 to September 2023). In contrast, it increased only 11% during the previous seven years.
On the ground, this means that the increase in the prices of things has been a bit more noticeable recently than it was in the mid-2010s.
Big and little price surprises
The price of things catches you by surprise here and there.
Soft drinks. Candy bars. Eggs. Toilet paper.
OXO Brew 8 Cup Coffee Maker: Upgraded coffee experience
A few months ago, our inexpensive but functional coffee maker's carafe broke. Rather than look for another inexpensive maker or a replacement carafe, I pulled the trigger on an OXO Brew 8 Cup Coffee Maker, and I'm so glad I did. I'd been wanting to upgrade but couldn't justify replacing a perfectly functional coffee maker; now I had my excuse!
OXO Brew 8 Cup Coffee Maker is SCA-certified
At some point, I researched higher-end coffee makers that appealed to more refined tastes than mine at the time.
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