The Lowest Pay I Ever Got Offered

I met with a couple today about babysitting their child over the summer. They were a sweet couple and the child was adorable! Everything seemed to be going well - I thought things were going better than I expected, because they were looking for someone to babysit approximately 32 hrs/week (could be more or less), and I was thinking - wow, that's almost like a full-time job - the pay will be worth it. They told me that they would pay a flat weekly rate rather than an hourly rate. And then they offered me $80/week. at 32 hrs/week, that is $2.50/hr - about one-third the minimum wage ($7.25 in this state)!! I was completely taken aback - I pointed to them that the hourly pay was way too low and they asked me what I would be willing to take. Unfortunately, the shock had blurred my mind and I said I'd think about it. I would love to work with them - they seemed so lovely, and I would like the money - but I can't do it at that pay. I had initially thought $8-$10/hr. Nearly 4 times as much as they were offering. Should I negotiate to minimum wage? That would be approximately $900/month for 2 summer months. Is it worth it? I am almost at the point where I want to give up the idea. What do you think? Any feedback is appreciated!

Some More Money

My sister used my referral for RME. I got the $10 referral bonus, and she also gave me her $25 sign in bonus. Isn't she sweet? So altogether, I now have $60 free from Revolution Money Exchange. I'm so glad I signed up for it. You can too - please use the button on the left panel to do so. It will help me out too and I will appreciate that very much.

Today, I started doing cleaning, garden and maintenance work around my apartment building for $50 off rent. The pros are - I get reduced rent, it's good exercise, I like it. The cons are - I could be engaged in more intellectually stimulating work, I'm spending way too much time for the $50 off.

My May-June challenge is coming along nicely. With some Amazon.com sales, the RME money, and soon my reduced rent, I'll easily hit the mark. I also have been advertising online for baby/pet/house-sitting. In a small college town like mine, I imagine it is hard to come by such work - especially in the summer. However, one couple contacted me and I am going to meet with them and see if I can babysit their daughter. If this works out, I can count on another $60/month hopefully. Wish me luck!

New Credit Card Update

I got it!!! The 0% APR (15 months, 7.99% after) credit card that I had applied for came through. Credit limit $5000. This allows me to transfer most of my Chase Visa balance. I'll be out of the stupid Chase Visa debt in two months now. And then I shall NEVER EVER apply for or own a Chase card. I HATE CHASE VISA! I love my new Advanta Mastercard!

Rent Reduction Update

Update from my previous post Reduce Your Rent. I had a meeting with my landlady today about what needs to be done around the yard and garden of the building I stay in. I have to weed, prune, get rid of winter’s rubbish, prop up garden gnomes that topple in the wind, put out the trash each week, rake leaves and other such stuff. It seems like it would be more work in the beginning, but that once the preliminary weeding and pruning is done, it won’t be as much work. And I get $50 off my rent in order to do that. The second part of the contract is showing my neighbor’s apartment to prospective tenants for a bonus of $200. Over the summer months, I estimate that this way, I’ll get a total reduction of about $450 in my rent until winter begins. Not bad, aye?

It’s all settled and I am looking forward to it – especially the bit that has to do with gardening. I love gardening! And guess what I found today as I was scoping out the weeds and voluntary plants? I found a whole patch of garlic chives that I initially thought was grass. That will spice up my food – an added bonus. And I think I’ll put mint in the ground and let it run riot! It will get the place smelling beautiful, and also I’ll put it in oodles of my food! Yummy!

P.S. Since I can now save an additional $50/month at least for a few months, I am increasing my "Monthly Challenge" amount to $150.

Guru - Online Freelancing

Today was a no-spend day. Yay! I also sold a book on Amazon and now have $21.75 to add to my monthly challenge fund! It has been a good day.

Like I have talked about before, once you start looking for money, it seems to appear all over the place. Well, maybe not the money itself, but the opportunities to make money certainly do. And that gives me hope that if I keep looking, I eventually will be able to make some extra money. I came across a website: Guru.com. This is a freelance website – people can offer their freelance services to others in a variety of different areas: legal, design, marketing etc. I signed up for it yesterday, and here’s my impression of it so far:

How it works:
You sign up and make a profile that indicates what sort of freelance service you are offering. You can create more than one profile, and can search for projects that fit your profile (employers post projects that require specific skills etc.) Guru will also email you when a new project that fits your skills is posted. Once you review the project and think that you can do it, you submit a proposal and place a bid stating how much you would charge for the project. Once the bidding closes, the employer picks a bid and if your bid gets chosen, then you get notified and can start communicating with the employer to discuss the details. Guru uses SafePay Escrow and you get paid once the project gets completed. They take 5% of the payment as a commission, and 10% if you are a non-paying member. As a paying member you get to place as many as 100 bids/month and as a non-paying member you get 10 bids/month.

Now the cons:
The membership is expensive - $74.95 (Quarterly) and $149.95 (Annual). This is more expensive if you are a vendor. If you aren’t a paying member, the percentage of projects you can bid on is miniscule. That’s all the cons I have experienced in two days.

And the pros:
This website offers work to people all over the world. Since most of the communication is done over the internet (and maybe the phone in a few instances), the freelancer does not need to be located in the US, and can still get paid. There are several thousands of projects available that you can bid on. Guru emails you when a matching project is found, and the website is easy to navigate.

I placed two bids totaling $110. That is $99 after Guru’s commission. I’m not sure if I will get picked, but I certainly hope so. If I find enough freelance work here, I might upgrade my membership and become a paying member. We’ll see. And even if it turns out that I am not paid, it feels really good to know that there is such stuff out there, and it motivates me to keep looking.

Textbook Blues and Pink Folders

I started teaching for the summer today. Being an instructor is financially fun because you don’t get charged for the textbooks – the publisher’s rep just sends you a free desk copy. I have loads of instructors’ textbooks – no different from the regular textbooks other than the fact that they have “Instructor Copy” printed on the cover, or stamped on the fly-leaf. These are books that I could sell to reel in several hundreds of dollars. I wish so much I could bring myself to sell them, but I can’t. It is not illegal or anything, but if I do so, I contribute to raising the cost of student textbooks. And I cannot bring myself to do that. I know how hard it is to shell out good money at the beginning of every semester to buy textbooks – and I will not add to other students’ financial burdens in order to ease my own.

Not that some students mind shelling out money! As a 28-year old graduate student, I suppose I am more mature than most of the population in my small college-town. However, immaturity itself cannot be the sole factor in the reckless expenditure of most of my fellow students. I see people spend money on what I now think is the most ridiculous stuff – closets overstuffed with clothes, shoes, bags and other accessories that match them, $5 - $7 on “weight loss smoothies”, premium gym memberships when there are fiver perfectly well equipped gyms on campus, not to mention other sports facilities – and unnecessary trimmings on bags, folders etc. It has to be more than immaturity – vanity, maybe. I am chiding myself for saying all this because what got me into credit card debt in the first place was partly my own frivolity and vanity (and other unavoidable stuff too). Anyway, I just benefitted from one such frivolous act of another student’s spending. One of my students a few semesters ago turned in a portfolio of a semester’s worth of work – in a really lush and fancy pink leather folder with really fancy section dividers and additional folder pockets. I guess she must have spent nearly $15 on the thing. She has not bothered to pick it up in nearly two years now, so I suppose she has decided she doesn’t need it back. So, I took the pages out and turned the lovely thing into a financial folder for myself – it cost me absolutely nothing, and it brightens up the ugliness of my financial situation. :-)

New Credit Card

I am amazed! For a year now, I have been trying to transfer my high APR% Chase Visa (24.24%) balance to a lower balance card. However, the past few tries, I was rejected because I had high balances on my card and my Debt:Income ratio was very high. I felt quite frustrated about this... it seemed like it seemed impossible to get out of debt even when I tried. A few weeks ago, I read on another PF Blog (I forget which, and so cannot give them credit) that one could apply for a business card by just entering one's own name in place of the business name. Today, while browsing BankRate.com, I decided to try it - and got approved instantly! I have never been approved instantly online for any credit card I have ever applied for. They always say that they will contact me after reviewing the account, and so I was doubly amazed when I got such a quick answer. I don't know what amount I got approved for, although I asked for $4500 to be transferred. They said they would mail the card within 3 days, so I should know by the end of the week how much of my Chase-load has been eased. If they approve the whole amount, then I will save $1500 in the long run. Please God, I will get approved for the amount I asked for!

It's an Advanta Platinum Business Card with Rewards. Here are the stats on the card:

* 0% APR for 15 Months, 7.99% APR thereafter.
* Up to 5% Cash Back on office supplies, gas etc.
* No Annual Fee and No Limit on Earnings.

Please pray that they'll give me a credit line large enough to transfer my horrible Chase Visa balance over.

Monthly Challenge

Over the past few months I have been an avid reader of several personal finance blogs. People are so creative when trying to reduce debt and increase net worth. I think I shall adopt several of these ideas in my debt-reduction journey as well. The first idea I shall adopt is a monthly challenge that I found on MevsDebt's Blog. This is how it works. I challenge myself to find an additional sum of money to pay towards my debt each month. I’ll set a goal of $100. And I track my progress towards that $100 as I get money. Each month I review what happens so my readers can see how I got there. Amanda at MevsDebt also offers to text-link a webpage on her progress sheet for a month for $2.00. I shall do the same once I update my PayPal account which I have not accessed in several years.

Reduce Your Rent

I said in a recent post that money is easy to come by when you look around for it. That has been proved true - again! I called my landlady and asked her if she would agree to knock some money off my rent in exchange for yard-work, trimming bushes and other general maintenance around the building. My neighbor is moving out in August and I also offered to help with the cleaning after he leaves. I was hoping that she'd knock off about $30-$35 per month over the summer. This would be a godsend because I don't get paid my regular salary over the four summer months, and any reduced bills are very welcome. Anyway, she said she'd think about it. That was a few days ago. She called me back today. And she offered to knock $50 off my rent per month for yard-work! And she said if I'd show prospective tenants my neighbor's apartment and got someone to sign on, she would give me $200!!! Now isn't that wonderful? All that money will go towards paying off my dreadful Chase Visa debt.

P.S. I came out of my vacation spending less than $150 (excluding airfare). And that's definitely an achievement for me. :-)

Vacations and Frugality

Vacations and frugality do not go at all well together. When one is on vacation, one is called to spend huge more money than one usually would. I am staying with friends for five days - these days involve outings, excursions, shopping and eating out. And all that involves spending money. I have been very careful with the outflow of cash, but have not been able to resist buying my hosts lunch, dinner and some gifts. I shall be glad to be back home and in my non-spendthrift mode.

I checked online. I made a few more sales on Amazon. It looks like my Amazon sales are paying for this vacation – but I did so want that money to go toward my summer funds!

Stimulus Check Deposited

A stimulus check of $600 has been deposited in my account. I love the government – it’s giving away free money. Now, my plan had been to apply all of this money towards my Chase Visa card debt. But since this is summer, and I don’t get paid very much, I will probably end up using the stimulus money to stimulate the economy – like the government wants me to. Incidentally, I saw on the news yesterday that economic analysts say that with the skyrocketing gas prices, $600 of additional expenditure by each person is hardly likely to give the economy the boost that it needs. Be that as it may, I am still glad about this money. Hopefully I’ll end up not having to use it anyway. I will spend as little as possible and if I still have any money left over at the end of September (the first month of full pay I will receive after the summer), then it’ll go directly towards paying off my high-interest Chase Visa balance.

I am away on vacation, and I managed to steer clear of the airport shops – no books or snacks bought. And before I left home, instead of buying a soda-pop on the way, I brought some iced-tea with me. I’m quite good at this when I put my mind to it!

Get Paid for Online Surveys

I think online surveys are a brilliant idea. I am a student psychologist - and I know how important self-reported surveys can be in psychological research. I imagine that this is even more so the case with market research. When I collect data, I would gladly offer people money to take the survey if I had the funding for it, but unfortunately I don't. But the huge companies do - and they pay good money to people who will tell them how to make their product better and more marketable. Yesterday I signed on at four different online survey websites:

* American Consumer Opinion
* Global Test Market
* MySurvey, and
* Opinion Outpost

So far, I've been offered two surveys. I finished one, but while taking the other, I hit the back browser button and messed the survey up and so was unable to finish it. But the one survey has earned me $10. It took me about a quarter of an hour to complete. If only I got paid at work at such a rate!! I also have a few random points on the websites for taking profile surveys. Technically, on most sites I can cash out once I earn $5. However, I think I will wait till the end of the month - $10 in a day. I wonder how many I'll get this month. Four sounds like a good number. I hope I earn at least $40/-.

I'm going on vacation for a week. Not sure how this will affect my budget, money-tracking or money-making, but hopefully it will all turn out to be okay.

Money All Around

Once you start looking around for money, it seems to be remarkably easy to come by. Since yesterday, I have made $202.87!!! Amazon is wonderful – I love it. I sold 4 books and 3 DVDs in one day! And these are books that I don’t read anymore, and DVDs that I don’t watch anymore. That totaled $147.87. I’ll have spend money to mail the stuff out, but it’ll all be media mail and so not very expensive anyway. I have more listings on Amazon – so hopefully I’ll sell more. Amazon has high commissions – but the speed and the consumer base is stupendous. Also, unlike eBay and PayPal transactions, you can cash-out free of charge.

This is finals week at my school and graduate students often have to proctor exams for undergraduates. Now, a friend of mine who was scheduled to invigilate had some studying of her own to do and I subbed for her. She gave me $30 for an hour and a half. I also cashed out my $25 sign-in bonus on Revolution Money Exchange. (You can sign on too and get $25 free just for signing on – check the link on the right sidebar). And all that is a total of $202.87. Not bad for one day! Now why didn't I think of doing this before???

Selling Stuff Online

I began making a list of items to sell online today. Books mainly - I have a lot of them. It's the academic books that people usually buy at high prices - I have fewer of these that I want to sell off than my fiction books which are much harder to move. Most people when raising money sell on eBay. I thought of that, but I've had bad experiences both selling and buying on eBay and am a bit eBay-shy. However, I am in the process of trying to conquer that fear in order to raise money. I began by listing ten books on amazon.com. Amazon has wonderful guidelines and standards and I have always had good experiences with it. So I will start there for now. I also have a lot of other unwanted junk that I believe people online are eager to buy.

At some point this summer I also plan on having a garage sale. Hopefully I will raise some money through that as well. But again, I don’t think I have the sort of stuff that sells at high prices – it’s the kid’s clothes and toys that sell for good money. I also listed a charcoal grill on Craigslist. I listed it at $15.00, all of which will be a profit since the grill was handed down to me by the previous renter of my apartment. No bites yet. I’m hoping and praying that people will soon want to take some stuff off my hands and lighten their wallets a little in my favor.

Update - 2 hrs later: That was fast! I sold one book already on Amazon - $31.39 after estimated shipping costs and Amazon commission. This is wonderful. I also listed 5 DVDs. I hope lots of people buy stuff from me. :-)

Welcome

Hello Dear Reader,

This past New Year, I resolved to reduce my debt. I have a stupendous amount (or what seems like a lot) of credit card, and car loan debt. I was not at that point sure what to resolve to. It was a vague "I-want-to-reduce-my-debt" at the time. But this is what I wanted at the time:

* Be credit-card debt free ($16,728.19)
* Pay off my car loan ($10,095.17)
* Have a $1,500 emergency savings fund ($0 currently)

Now don’t get me wrong, I have other goals too, related to retirement, investing, travel funds and property-buying. However, being a graduate student with limited financial resources, I limit myself to these goals for now. I will eventually expand.

My goal is to have all this under control in three years time. This is a lofty goal given that I am a graduate student who is a full-time student, and works 20 hrs a week on a 9-month work-contract. After tax is withheld, I get a measly $1,219.89 per month. This money goes into payment of rent, car, credit-card minimum payments (I can't afford more, but hope to change this), groceries, gas, phone, and other stuff. I would gladly work more if I could, but can't for reasons that can't be overcome, and that limits my income.

Not having a detailed plan at the time, this is the progress I made in 4 months –

* Credit-Card Debt : $15,886.50 (- $841.69)
* Car Loan : $9,283.87 (- $811.30)
* Emergency Savings : $105.00 (+ $105.00)

How did I achieve this? The answer is – I am not sure! However, a few things that I changed since 01/01/2008 are:

* I kept track of every single cent I spent
* I eat out less often now
* I cancelled my Netflix subscription
* I downgraded my cell-phone plan
* I did not charge anything new to my credit cards

Then, around early April, I began seriously investigating debt management. I read several PF blogs, met with a financial counselor, asked my parents to lend me some money and paid off three smaller credit card balances. I also created a very elaborate spreadsheet that helps me budget, track expenditure, bill payments, debt repayments and the progress made. Then I decided to start a blog myself and be accountable. This blog is my attempt at managing my personal finances and being debt-free eventually. Since I will be a student for two-and-a-half more years, progress will be slow and painful. I imagine that cataloging my own expenditure and income in such a public way would also be painful. But I think I would like to feel the pain. It might make success that much more sweet!

Here is a chart of what I have accomplished money-wise so far:

* Please note that the chart tracks my progress starting 04/01/2008

It is terribly painful to see myself make such infinitesimal changes each month. At times I think I ought to give up until I get a job and worry about all this then. But since just making the minimum payments on my credit cards wipes out most of my money, managing my finances is very important. The greatest virtue I must own now is patience.

Amat victoria curam!