For 2025 my main goal was to be profitable.
To maintain transparency, I've been reporting both on my income and my expenses this year.
My day job has been subsidizing my side hustles, which kind of play out as a time-consuming hobby.
My goal for 2025 was to turn this around. Working at my business regularly helps me to sleep better at night, but without profit it eventually will just be added stress.
I'm still kind of in the course-buying mode, looking for insights that will pay off or techniques that will help me to develop and sell products and services.
Which sources I'm reporting and which I'm not
Since I'm not posting anonymously, my W-2 income and my main investments won't be reported.
I'll report on income as I receive it, not when I earn it. In other words, I report on it when it hits my bank account.
For 2025 my main goal is to be profitable.
To maintain transparency, I've been reporting both on my income and my expenses this year.
My day job has been subsidizing my side hustles, which kind of play out as a time-consuming hobby.
My goal this year is to turn this around. Working at my business regularly helps me to sleep better at night, but without profit it eventually will just be added stress.
I'm still kind of in the course-buying mode, looking for insights that will pay off or techniques that will help me to develop and sell products and services. With this in mind, I'm going to need to turn things around in a big way to be profitable for the year.
Which sources I'm reporting and which I'm not
Since I'm not posting anonymously, my W-2 income and my main investments won't be reported.
In my reel-scrolling sessions, I see a lot of people making full-time income on eBay reselling pretty much anything.
Over the past few months, I've begun selling various items I've either bought, or been given, to make some extra money.
My strategy is to start small, with things I mostly understand, and equipment that makes the entire process a bit easier at the level I'm at.
Taking advantage of my no-insertion-fee listings
First off, eBay offers 250 no-insertion-fee listings per month.
What this means is that for the first 250 listings I make on eBay, I don't pay anything to list the items, as long as I don't add any features that make the listing cost money. (Things like listing upgrades and promoted listings.)
All of my listings so far are Buy It Now, Good ‘Til Canceled, meaning that they run continuously until I sell the item, or I take the listing down.
For 2025 my main goal is to be profitable.
To maintain transparency, I've been reporting both on my income and my expenses this year.
My day job has been subsidizing my side hustles, which kind of play out as a time-consuming hobby.
My goal this year is to turn this around. Working at my business regularly helps me to sleep better at night, but without profit it eventually will just be added stress.
I'm still kind of in the course-buying mode, looking for insights that will pay off or techniques that will help me to develop and sell products and services. With this in mind, I'm going to need to turn things around in a big way to be profitable for the year.
Which side hustle sources I'm reporting and which I'm not
Since I'm not posting anonymously, my W-2 income and my main investments won't be reported.
(This article was written originally on May 10, 2006, and has been updated.)
In November 2025, awareness of 50-year mortgages hit the national airwaves following some statements of proposal by President Trump.
What are the implications of a 50-year mortgage to homebuyers? We'll discuss some of the implications below.
The 30-year mortgage we all “know and love”
Conventional residential loans have largely been no longer than 30 years since the years following World War II. They were authorized by Congress for new home construction in 1948, and for existing homes in 1954. By the 1960s, they were the standard.
Borrowers can pay off a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage with 360 equal monthly payments over 30 years.
Let's take a reasonable example from numbers current as of November 2025.
For 2024 I published my side hustle income report each month to maintain accountability.
This year, my main goal is to be profitable.
To maintain transparency, I've been reporting both on my income and my expenses this year.
My day job has been subsidizing my side hustles, which kind of play out as a time-consuming hobby.
My goal this year is to turn this around. Working at my business regularly helps me to sleep better at night, but without profit it eventually will just be added stress.
I'm still kind of in the course-buying mode, looking for insights that will pay off or techniques that will help me to develop and sell products and services. With this in mind, I'm going to need to turn things around in a big way to be profitable for the year.
Which sources I'm reporting and which I'm not
Since I'm not posting anonymously, my W-2 income and my main investments won't be reported.
Coffee out of animal poop.
The Unknown Professor of Financial Rounds is a blogging colleague from “the old days,” also known as the mid-2000s decade. His blog is still up and running in 2025 as I write this, which is extraordinary. (I also have no clue who he is, so I'll assume he's still around and speak of him in the present tense.)
He posted waaay back when on one of the world's rarest and most expensive coffee bean.
At the time of the post (end of 2005), Kopi Luwak coffee was horrendously expensive, at $175 per pound. In 2025 dollars, that's pushing $300/pound!
For 2024 I published my side hustle income report each month to maintain accountability.
This year, my main goal is to be profitable.
To maintain transparency, I've been reporting both on my income and my expenses this year.
My day job has been subsidizing my side hustles. All this does is make my online efforts play out as a time-consuming hobby.
My goal this year is to turn this around.
Working at my business regularly helps me to sleep better at night. But without profit it eventually will just be added stress.
I'm getting myself out of the course-buying mode. That's been a big expense for me. I have enough information right now to last several lifetimes.
I'm going to need to turn things around in a big way to be profitable for the year.
Which sources I'm reporting and which I'm not
Since I'm not posting anonymously, my W-2 income and my main investments won't be reported.
And the step I just took to do that
I picked up online poker at the start of the pandemic.
I had played (free) Zynga Poker on Facebook, and thought that I was good enough at that to profit in online cash games.
What I didn't know at the time was that people play very differently when there's real money on the line.
It doesn't matter that the “real money” was only a $0.25 buy-in to a six-person knockout tournament.
So I learned playing weekly freeroll tournaments and micro-stakes.
For five years I played. Sometimes several hours a night.
Over 3,100 games.
I will say it was fun. This was always play money. If I lost it, I wouldn't be in trouble.
For the playing I did, I usually could withdraw $50 a month, maybe $100 or more if it was a good month (or if I played a lot).
Even better: No ongoing costs until you make a sale
There's only so much you can keep going at once.
I'm convinced, though, that you can have more side hustles going on if they're mostly “set and forget.”
Nice surprises
The kind of side hustle that gives you a nice surprise once in a while:
“Oh, I sold another one!”
There are certainly worse surprises than making money, right?
If you like flipping (selling for profit) low-ticket items that don't take up a lot of space, then this can be one of those set and forget income streams that put money in your pocket.
For 2024 I published my side hustle income report each month to maintain accountability.
This year, my main goal is to be profitable.
To maintain transparency, I've been reporting both on my income and my expenses this year.
My day job has been subsidizing my side hustles, which kind of play out as a time-consuming hobby.
My goal this year is to turn this around. Working at my business regularly helps me to sleep better at night, but without profit it eventually will just be added stress.
I'm still kind of in the course-buying mode, looking for insights that will pay off or techniques that will help me to develop and sell products and services. With this in mind, I'm going to need to turn things around in a big way to be profitable for the year.
Which sources I'm reporting and which I'm not
Since I'm not posting anonymously, my W-2 income and my main investments won't be reported.
For 2024 I published my side hustle income report each month to maintain accountability.
This year, my main goal is to be profitable.
To maintain transparency, I've been reporting both on my income and my expenses this year.
My day job has been subsidizing my side hustles, which kind of play out as a time-consuming hobby.
My goal this year is to turn this around. Working at my business regularly helps me to sleep better at night, but without profit it eventually will just be added stress.
I'm still kind of in the course-buying mode, looking for insights that will pay off or techniques that will help me to develop and sell products and services. With this in mind, I'm going to need to turn things around in a big way to be profitable for the year.
Which sources I'm reporting and which I'm not
Since I'm not posting anonymously, my W-2 income and my main investments won't be reported.
Link for teaser title:
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For 2024 I published my side hustle income report each month to maintain accountability.
This year, my main goal is to be profitable.
To maintain transparency and accountability, I'll be reporting both on my income and my expenses this year.
I haven't been profitable for a while now. My day job has been subsidizing my side hustles, which kind of play out as a time-consuming hobby.
My goal this year is to turn this around. Working at my business regularly helps me to sleep better at night, but without profit it eventually will just be added stress.
I'm still kind of in the course-buying mode, looking for insights that will pay off or techniques that will help me to develop and sell products and services. With this in mind, I'm going to need to turn things around in a big way to be profitable for the year.
Two ways to fix a pinchy bank balance (I do both)
“I can't be out of money! I still have checks!”
~Some old person who knows what checks are
Everywhere, prices are creeping up.
It's rare that I can shop at Walmart for under $50 anymore, and I don't buy crap.
What's worse, our pay stubs are just barely keeping up with rising prices over the past couple of years, so no help there. And tariffs haven't even hit badly in the US as of now (June 2025).
Being around break-even isn't much fun, is it?
I bet you've seen this equation before
Income minus expenses equals surplus (or deficit)
Income is the money that comes in. Expenses go out.
If income is more than expenses, there's a surplus. Otherwise, there's a deficit.
Easy peasy.
If the surplus is small, or if there's a deficit, we want to fix that.
The short answer: It Depends!
(Updated 11/4/2017, and again in 6/10/2025.)
At various times in our marriage, we've had more cars than drivers.
Sometimes it's been a headache, and other times it's been a blessing.
Our extra cars back in 2007
Back in 2007, my wife and I had three cars between us.
Two of the cars had more than 160k miles each: a 1997 Oldsmobile Achieva and a 1997 Chrysler Town and Country.
The third one was a 2004 Toyota Corolla that we had just bought because the Achieva was starting to let us down.
We had about $1,000 in exhaust repairs on the Achieva at the time. These needed to get done because we hadn't bought the Corolla yet.
All three cars were running fine; my wife used the van and I commuted with the Corolla.
Looking back, keeping those aging cars on the road required a mix of persistence, regular maintenance, and a little bit of luck.
Customer loyalty programs are everywhere these days.
Fast food restaurants, gas stations, and even state lotteries.
On the surface, they offer something we all love: free stuff. But what’s the real cost of those rewards?
Why Customers Love Them
For customers, it feels like a win: spend money like you normally would, and eventually get something for free.
You’re spending money, but at least there’s a little something on the back end. Occasionally, that feels like a treat, even though it’s just a planned reward.
I rediscovered an old trick a bit by accident
I signed up for a “chair workout” app last year called Muscle Booster to ease myself back into exercising.
There was a $22 for three months trial and then it went up to $66 per three months.
And then the app stayed closed most of the time.
Now it was nothing more than a leak in my bank account.
The road to hell and all that
I decided to cancel the app because I had RGI (Really Good Intentions), but only used it a handful of times during those three months.
(Somehow I managed to decide this the day before it was set to renew. Lucky me!)
Like a lot of things, I was hoping that the fact that I was paying for it would rouse me into action. That wasn't the case.
So I did catch it before it renewed and I went through the cancelation process.
For 2024 I published my side hustle income report each month to maintain accountability.
This year, my main goal is to be profitable.
To maintain transparency and accountability, I'll be reporting both on my income and my expenses this year.
I haven't been profitable for a while now. My day job has been subsidizing my side hustles, which kind of play out as a time-consuming hobby.
My goal this year is to turn this around. Working at my business regularly helps me to sleep better at night, but without profit it eventually will just be added stress.
Which sources I'm reporting and which I'm not
Since I'm not posting anonymously, my W-2 income and my main investments won't be reported. I'll report everything else, though!
I'll report on income as I receive it, not when I earn it. In other words, I report on it when it hits my bank account.
A friend of mine some time ago was bitten by the coin-collecting bug.
Like another couple of people I know, he's withdrawn substantial amounts of coins from the bank and searches them for treasures, like older coins, errors, and coins with precious metals.
To date he's already found a number of silver dimes and half dollars (around ten I think). That's more than I've run across with my searching, so good on him.
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