At the moment, life has left me in need a bit more cashflow (which should be obvious if you’ve been reading this site before now).   Most of the things I’ve checked out so far have produced small change.  My budget?  Doesn’t always balance.  Barring a large increase in income, we need to reduce our expenses.

It’s time to consider one of the biggest reduction methods.  It’s not really feasible to sell the house at the moment, but we certainly can reduce the monthly payment.

It’s time to refinance.

Continue reading “Is now the right time to refinance?”

This past weekend, our family took a trip to the local zoo.  We have had a family membership that we have enjoyed immensely over the past two years. It’s been a nice diversion, and the kids (or at least the younger ones) have been delighted to see the animals, especially the babies.

Unfortunately, our membership expires at the end of this month, and we are not renewing it.  Our household budget is not where it was a year ago, and so some hard choices have to be made.  We’re hoping that some of our side hustles (and/or the day job situation) will allow us to add this little luxury back into our family, but for now, it’s below the line.

And that got me thinking:  what are some of those annual expenses that, at least for us, don’t always make it into our monthly budget?  (We’re a little out of practice with the budget these days.)  Here are a list of yearly expenses that you might not remember to set money aside to pay until they pop up to surprise you:

• Memberships:  I know, I know, most people can’t really afford to have memberships to museums or zoos.  That doesn’t always stop us, though, does it?  But if you are trying to save money, or just balance your budget, this might be something you can jettison (for now).
• Subscriptions:  Like memberships, periodical subscriptions are pretty much a luxury for those who just want to set something aside in savings.  Hmmm…do I want to balance my budget, or do I need 39 more issues of TV Guide?  And yes, this can apply to newspapers, too.  I get the local Sunday paper, but I can do without it, honestly.  (The coupon inserts show up in the local free neighborhood newspaper as well, so that’s not an incentive for me to keep the subscription.)
• Auto registrations:  Okay, I hear you already, this is not a luxury.  Most of us need our cars to get to work (at least if you don’t live in the center of a city with good mass transit), so this isn’t negotiable.  It doesn’t have to be quite so painful, though.  You know how much you paid to register your vehicle(s) last year.  Just divide it either by 12 months or by however many paychecks you get per year, and set that much aside, preferably in a high-rate account.

Bonus:  Open a new account with Aspiration. Get up to 1.00% APY, and Aspiration will donate $25 to a charity of your choice!

• School books/fees:  Whether you are a student or a parent of a student, odds are that you are on the hook for some amount of money when the school year begins.  (Hopefully you won’t have to take out any student loans for them, but I won’t judge you if you do.)  As much as you can, once again, saving up for these expenses will lessen the impact when they come due.
• Insurance:  For some of us, this is not a monthly expense.  Some insurance providers will give you a discount for paying 6 or 12 months at a time, so if you can handle setting money aside for it, it could be worth it.  Obviously, if you have a mortgage, home insurance is included in your monthly payment and set aside in escrow, so this isn’t as much of a yearly shock.  (But, once you reach that lofty goal of getting the mortgage paid off, you’ll have to be prepared for that annual expense…though if you aren’t making a mortgage payment, you can afford to save for a home insurance payment!)
• Medical/Dental expenses:  Barring unforeseen circumstances, you’re hopefully making an annual trip to the doctor and semi-annual trips to the dentist.  (Aside: we aren’t at the moment, as we are looking for new doctors and dentists who are conveniently located for us.)  But are you budgeting for those visits?
• Property tax:  Again, if you have a mortgage, setting something aside for it is already being done.  But someday, if all goes well, you’ll need to be ready for that yearly expense to show up.*
• Income tax:   Ideally, you want to either owe nothing at the end of the year, or owe a small amount.  (If you get a refund, you aren’t getting a windfall, you are just getting money back that you didn’t need to give the government.  In effect, you gave the feds an interest-free loan.)  But you want to be ready for that payment in April regardless.
• Vacation:  I hear you now:  “What vacation?”  I know.  I’m not getting one this year either.  With that said, I intend to get my income to the point at which I can start setting aside for a big family vacation again.  (At one point, I was setting aside some money for vacation every month.  It worked well for us.)
• Birthdays/Christmas:  You can’t cancel gift-giving in most cases, but you can get some ideas for gifts well in advance.  You might even be able to wait for a sale and grab that gift for less if you have thought the gifts out in advance!

Those are just a few of the non-monthly expenses that can bite you.  If you are proactive about preparing for them, though, you won’t find them to be that much of a bother.

* My county splits the annual property tax into two payments, but obviously, you need to prepare for it either way.
Note: this post may contain affiliate links.  And honestly, it probably does. View my affiliate link disclaimer here.

Note: this post may contain affiliate links.  And honestly, it probably does. View my affiliate link disclaimer here.

If you’re like me, you find yourself in the evenings with very little energy remaining after a long day at work.  And if, like me, you have younger kids, you will find that they want as much of your time as they can get.  (Treasure that, by the way…there will come a time when they don’t really care if you give them any attention or not.  This period is known as adolescence.)  So, maybe you’ve given this question some thought at one point or another, as well as the quick answer:

Do I really have any time to make extra money after a long day?  Yes!

 

I know I would like to be making extra money.  It’s a lot better than the alternative, which is to make painful cuts to the family budget.  (And no, I’m not going out for Starbucks every day, nor am I doing most of the frivolous items that pop up so often in the “here’s how to increase your savings” posts as things to cut.*)

But there are definitely days in which I do not have the energy, or even the desire, to do much of anything other than veg out and binge-watch Netflix.  (No, I’m not cutting Netflix.  I pay for that out of what extra money I do earn, thank you very much.)  Heck, this post is only being written after several days split between vegging out (this week’s binging choice is Babylon 5, just so you know) and staring at a screen as I deal with writer’s block on a fledgling blog. So I understand how it can be, to a point. Obviously, everyone’s situation is going to be a little different, and that’s okay.

When I find myself in one of these blah nights – and it happens way more often than I would like – occasionally I find a few things that I can do to make money. These suggestions won’t make you much, but if you have little time or energy, they’re presented here as an option for your benefit.

And no, surveys aren’t included.  If I’m that tired after a rough stint at the day job, I’m definitely not up for spending up to twenty minutes working on a survey, only to be told that I didn’t actually qualify after all despite having completed the entire survey.  (It happens more often than survey companies will admit.)

Also not included:  work-from-home jobs.  They might appear in a later post, but if you are as worn out as I am, do you really have the energy to put into another job when all you want to do is watch TV?  I don’t.

So, what things get my time when I have little to no time to give?  I use these:

CashCrate:  One of the many companies with hundreds of offers for cash, CashCrate hasn’t really been a priority for me.  With that said, the site gives away free money just for “checking in” every day, and unlike so many PTC sites, this site doesn’t even require me to stay on the clicked link for any period of time.  So, even if I do nothing else on the site, I might as well get cash just for clicking a link.

Inbox2Cash:  I don’t particularly care for PTC sites.  I may write soon about why the whole industry is probably doomed to fail eventually.  However, this site has a nice, short waiting period before crediting after each link clicked in an email (they have been sending four a day), so I go ahead and click them, usually while I’m watching the late news.

UniqueRewards:  Again, lots of offers and other ways to earn money, but there are usually 9-11 links to click to make easy cash.  You simply have to wait 30 seconds between clicks, but you don’t have to keep the link you clicked in the forefront.  May as well make a dime while you’re sitting around, right?

And, of course, you can get paid simply for searching.  Provided, that is, you use the right search engines.  Click here for more information.

* I rarely pay for Starbucks, but I go often, thanks mostly to Microsoft Rewards and other sites like that.  $5 gift cards FTW!

Note: this post contains affiliate links.  View my affiliate link disclaimer here.

Note: this post may contain affiliate links.  And honestly, it probably does. View my affiliate link disclaimer here.

Consult most of the make-money blogs, and they’ll, pretty much unanimously, tell you that you should use Swagbucks for all your internet searches.  They’ll tell you that you’ll make the most money doing so.

But should you search with Swagbucks?

For that matter, should you search with only one site?

In order:  yes and no.  You can get rewarded from several different search portals (and none of them is Google).  You may as well get as many rewards as you can while you search, right?

You can get rewarded from several different search portals (and none of them is Google).

I’ve tried several search portals.  Some of them, to be fair, are not so great…but quite a few are definitely worth your time, especially if you are getting nothing with your current search engine.

We’ll start with everyone’s favorite:

Swagbucks:

Swagbucks has been around for almost a decade, and it shows no signs of losing steam.  In addition to earning through searching, you can earn Swagbucks (worth pretty much one penny apiece) through activities such as taking surveys, completing offers, answering a daily poll, watching videos, and shopping.

Now, you will not earn for every search you do on Swagbucks.  The way to earn through searching on this site is to receive a message saying that you have won after performing a search.  (Important:  you have to claim the win in a reasonable amount of time, before it expires.)  You can win, at most, four times a day; the amount of SB per win varies but is usually about ten at a time.

Potential daily search earnings:  $0.30-$1.00*

But there are many others, including one from a very, very large company:

Microsoft Rewards:

Don’t like Google?  Well, how about Bing?  If you sign up and search with Bing, you can earn 5 points per search, up to 150 points a day.  (Another 100 points is available for searching Bing with your mobile device.)  You can also earn just for using Microsoft Edge, for taking quizzes, or for shopping at the Windows, Xbox, and Microsoft stores.

And how much is one point?  A lot of the prizes for which you can redeem your points (at least, those that aren’t for Microsoft products) have an exchange rate of about 5250 points for a $5 gift card, making each point worth about a tenth of a cent.

Potential daily search earnings:  $0.24*

InboxDollars:

As with Swagbucks, InboxDollars offers rewards for all sorts of things:  reading emails, completing offers and surveys, watching videos, and playing games.  This site rewards frequent searches, with a few cents offered to those who search for four distinct terms in one day and five (formerly ten) cents given to those who search on the site four days out of the week.

Potential daily search earnings: $0.04* (not counting weekly bonus)

Bonus:  Get $5 free, just for joining InboxDollars!

TreasureTrooper:

Like Swagbucks and InboxDollars, TreasureTrooper gives rewards for all sorts of activities – in fact, pretty much the same ones at the other two.  The additional income opportunity with TreasureTrooper, however, is through the training and fighting of virtual dragons.  Users can sell one adult dragon per month for a minimum of $5.

Searching income, though, is harder to come by through this program.  As with Swagbucks, wins are random; with this program, when the wins come, they are in the form of arrowheads, which are worth one penny.  You can win one to ten arrowheads at one time, but, in my experience, you won’t win more than ten in any one day.

Potential daily search earnings:  $0.10*

Irazoo:

Irazoo is pretty much like most of the other programs in this post. The one issue I have with them at the moment is that, though they release promo codes for extra points each day, you must complete an offer to take advantage of it.  Hey, that’s their prerogative, but it’s my prerogative to spend most of my time at other search rewards sites.

Now, as with Swagbucks, you can win points at random times when you search, and you don’t have to have done any offers to get credited.  The usual amount of points you can win is about 15.  3600 points gets you $5 via PayPal. I’ve never won points more than once on this site.

Potential daily search earnings: $0.02*

Bonus:  Get 500 points free when you use invite code XU39TX!

Gifthulk:

Yet another offer/survey/whatever/search program, GIfthulk will give you four Hulk coins (HC) for each search, once per hour.  10,000 HC gets you $10, so you can make $0.004 every hour you search.

Potential daily search earnings:  $0.09*

Those are the six different search engines I use these days.  There have been others in the past, but they have mostly gone by the wayside.

My general method of handling searches is to use TreasureTrooper for ten searches, spaced at least five minutes apart, in order to get a dragon scale (more on that in a later post).  If I need to search for something else within the five-minute waiting period, I generally use Bing (for Microsoft Rewards). I try to also get in four searches at InboxDollars, which gets me the daily bonus there. Honestly, I don’t search as much with the random-win sites because I simply don’t have that sort of patience.

Oh, and one more thing: make them legitimate searches. You have enough things you wonder about each day not to have to make up things to search for. Just searching at random for things you never intend to click will eventually kill the search reward industry.

But assuming you are searching for all legitimate items that actually interest you, you can make a little money doing it.  It isn’t much, to be sure, but how much are you getting paid to use Google all the time?

* This amount does not include potential earnings from other offers, surveys, or things like that.