August, So Far…

Since my assistantship contract at work starts only on the 15th of August, I’ll have only half a month’s pay at the end of August. I sat down and tallied the expected income and expenses. It’s a horrifying looking spreadsheet. However, I have decided to make a few changes. I am not sending any money towards savings this month, I shall use my snowflake and extra income money to pay for the semester fees and keep the rest in my checking account to tide me over till the end of September. If I am frugal and stick to my budget, I will manage to scrape by without digging into my savings. We’ll see how that goes…

So far, I have not had a single no-spend day this month. However, I only have had one evening of eating out. Taking stock of my pantry definitely helped in terms of planning meals. The pity of it is sometimes I don’t want to eat what is in my pantry. I’ve been busy cooking. I went and bought the silicone baking mats I wanted ($10.63 at Wal-Mart). So, yesterday was baking day – I made raspberry scones and sundried-tomato biscotti from ingredients I had at home. Also, a friend of mine gave me a HUGE bunch of basil that she grew in her garden. I kept a chunk of it to use as garnish, on pizzas and to add to bruschetta topping, and made pesto with the rest. And then, I used up a lot of the pesto in a HUGE batch of olive-artichoke-pesto-pasta (in order to use up more stuff I had at home but was not using). And I made some delicious Baba Ghanouj (using up an eggplant and half of the tahini I have in my fridge), and a large batch of pita chips. So all in all it was a good couple of days of cooking – at least it prevented me from going out to eat! Tonight, I picked up a bread machine from a fellow freecycler. I have never used a bread-machine before, but hopefully I will be able to make fun breads with the machine and use up more of the various flours I have at home.

On a sadder note, it looks like I will not be able to continue with the English speaking partner any more. We met for about a week and then our schedules started to clash. And it now looks like our semester schedules don’t match either. Oh well… maybe some other opportunity will pop up somewhere.

New Source of Income Confirmed

I talked in the last post about the possibility of generating some income as an English speaking partner for an international student. I met with her - she is sweet. We've agreed to meet 2hr/day 4x/week @ $7/hr. That's $56/week. Isn't that nice? More money towards savings and debt-reduction!

Money, Money and....

I feel that I should start labeling my posts “More Money 1”, “More Money 2” and so on. Since I started getting serious about my savings and debt-repayment, I have kept an eye open for new avenues of generating income. I would love to take a secondary job and generate some regular income. However, since I am a graduate student working hard on qualifiers prep and my dissertation proposal at the moment, I don’t have too much time to spare to work any decently paying second hand job. So I look around here and there for small scraps of work that I can do without too much effort or travel. And I have been incredibly lucky in finding a bit of money here and there. Here are a few sources of income that are either coming in soon or that I am considering right now.

1. My friend whose dog I pet-sat last month is going out of town again with her family and asked me if I would pet-sit again Thu-Sat. Yay! That’s another $25 coming in.
2. I saw a note in one of the university buildings for an English speaking partner for an international student. Two hrs/wk @ $7.00/hr. I called, and she and I have agreed to meet today and see if this is something that we would like to do.
3. An additional 5 hrs of research assistantship/wk in the Fall semester.
4. I found a new tenant for my landlady for the room next-door. According to an agreement that I had with my landlady, she will now give me $200 off the next month’s rent.
5. Selling more stuff on Craigslist and Amazon.
6. Any other ideas???

That’s all that I have right now. Most of them are very small income generators. I do keep an eye out, but money is hard to come by – especially in a small college town, and especially in the summer. I would appreciate any other ideas about what to do and where to go to look for more money!

P.S. Yesterday, I participated in the simulation research study. They are going to pay me $120 that will be added to my payroll. I won’t get it at the end of this month – too late for that. Also, they will probably take part of it out in taxes, but I think I shall still count it as a whole $120 this month towards my monthly snowflake challenge.

Now, Seriously!

Money seems to be wandering around looking for me. I said about a month ago that once you start looking for money, it seems to just keep coming to you - it's true: FINDING MONEY IS EASY ONCE YOU START LOOKING FOR IT. It practically falls into your lap apparently. Check this out - My major professor is working on a grant application and needs some extra help. She offered me an additional 5 hours of work/week for the Fall. Time-wise, this fall is going to be a tight semester, but with a bit of effort, it can be done. That would mean an additional $1200 after taxes over the whole semester! That would probably pay for my internship applications. I was dreading that expense. I love my major professor!

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!

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.

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. :-)