Month End Snowflakes

A while back I looked at the snowflakes I've accumulated so far this month. I set a goal of hitting the $500 mark by the end of the month and I'm happy to say I've made it! In addition to a jury summons and a few bills the mailman brought me a check for $630. The consulting work I did in March had a fuzzy ending and I didn't submit a time sheet right away.* I don't know that this snowflake will go into the snowflake account. I think it will be earmarked for my wedding dress/alterations/shoes. On a side note I think I've found a dress!

Without this check I've made $403.35 for the month. The snowflakes from 5/28 and 5/29 were unexpected** so I could make a few more dollars this month. Regardless, I'm happy with 1033.35.

*Upon submitting my last report the agreement was to wait 3-7 days for revisions and turn it all in. The revisions never came.

**Or I've been doing a really bad job of tracking my extra income.

Snowflakes, the good kind

Though I whined about snowflakes yesterday I have to say I'm happy with the snowflakes headed to my bank. Tomorrow is the halfway mark for the month and I'm up to $381.38!

Technically the figure is $409.05, but I decided to take the money I spent eating out for lunch while babysitting out of the snowflakes. I may be babysitting for that family again later this month and I will definitely be bringing enough food to tide me over to avoid eating out.

The snowflakes are a mix of passive and active income. I've seen passive income defined as income outside of your regular job. I define it as the things I don't have to put time or thought into. In the case of my snowflakes it's interest from the snowflake account and returns from Lending Club. For me active income are the things that require work/effort for the reward. In this column it's babysitting, mystery shopping, surveys, etc.

I don't have enough planned to double that before the end of the month but I'm going to try to hit the $500 mark.

Snowflakes

Yesterday, when doing a tour of my accounts I realized a few more April snowflakes had come in. Since they won't actually hit my account until early next week they've become May snowflakes.

I did two surveys from Pinecone earlier in the month. I also signed my mom up for Lending Club the Friday before they sent out their email halting lending for at least the time being. I wrote off the idea of getting the referable bonus, but when I checked for my last interest payment of the month and extra $25 was hanging out.

After accounting for upcoming bills and leaving a small cushion my account had a nice surplus, which got divided between my snowflake, Roth, and emergency funds.

Green-eyed Wanderlust

So, I love to travel. Some of it must be in my blood. My parents met 1,600 and 6,500 miles from their respective homes. One was on a new continent, the other in a new country. My first international trip happened before I was 12 months old. A large part of why I chose my school for undergrad was the ease of study abroad, something I did 4 times in 4 years.

Ok, so we've established that I like to travel. My girls from undergrad feel the same way. One is in grad school and just got accepted to a 3 week program in a country on my short list.* I was thrilled for her and just a teensy bit jealous. Then she let me know our other girl would be joining her for a week of traveling. My first questions were when and how much. When works with my work schedule. But the how much stopped me in my tracks. The plane ticket price, while well priced for the area, has 4 figures. That's before food, accommodation's, and travel, none of which have been figured out.

I am well versed on how to travel on a budget but for many reason I know I can't work my magic to make this trip compatible with the budget and debt repayment. I could put away enough between now and the time of the trip. Though the doors to the Bank of Mom are generally closed these days I'm sure she'd loan me the money for the plane ticket between now and when I can pay for it. The problem is that every snowflake and other monies budgeted for debt reduction would have to go to the trip. This doesn't fit with any of my/our goals in the short or medium term.

So I'll tell myself Gameboy and I will make it there one day and wish them well. A few months later we'll all get together and share stories and pictures about life, their trip, my last big trip, and anything else that strikes our fancy. but I may be just a little bit jealous until then.

*I have a list of places I'd like to travel broken into short, medium, and long term goals, much like investing.

Snowflakes and other Progress

I've decided to add a list of snowflakes to the sidebar. This will help keep track of all of the snowflakes that come in throughout the month. So far, considering that I haven't had much free time the snowflakes are going well this month.

For the most part the snowflakes will go to the loan I'm focusing on repaying. Earlier this month I decided to use a big snowflake from my contract work and fully fund the emergency fund. I prefer thinking about as few things as possible at once. I combined the rest of the snowflakes and sent in a student loan payment. Both are highlighted on the progress bars I was finally able to figure out, also on the sidebar.

I would love to keep writing but I need to get some work done to keep the snowflakes falling.

Snowflakes

On the sidebar is a list of snowflakes for March. I'm going to try posting them for a month to see how it works out. Depending on the source they go straight to ING or my local bank. As a result sometimes I can't immediately put the money where I would like it to go. This will help me keep track. I'll also use it to help me decide the best ways to focus my snowflake earning efforts.

I decided to use the large snowflake from contract work to finish off my emergency fund. I like focusing on as few things as possible at once. So now all of my focus can go to day to day things and paying down all that debt.

As I type this I'm looking at real snowflakes falling from the sky. I hope that the snowflakes (real or financial) in your world are working for you.

$0.84

This amount of money shouldn't make me as happy as I am right now but it totally does. Why you ask? Because of all of the money I earned this is truly free money. I didn't have to work, drive, or do much more than spend some time online to earn it.

In January I joined Lending Club. I used a referal that should have given me $25 to play with. Instead I magically got $50. After a some verification (a checking account number is involved so I had to make sure things were on the up and up) I chose two individuals that I wanted to fund.

So far I've only invested funds from signing up and one referal, but I'm looking forward to a steady string of small snowflakes that required no upfront funds.

If you're interested in joining you can use this link or the one above.

Happy earning!

Snowflaking

The first time I read about snowflaking was on Paid Twice. It is an adaptation of Dave Ramsey’s snowball method to pay down debt, but snowflaking fits better with my lifestyle. Paid Twice has a great primer, but the general idea is using all of the little bits of income that come in to pay down debt. The key is to do it right away. Since most of my banking is done online this is pretty easy to do.

Most of my snowflaking money will come from mystery shopping, online surveys, and some of my babysitting jobs. So far this month I’ve paid over $450 towards my student loans using this method. A large chunck of that (approx $350) is money that I’d let sit in my paypal account for way too long. Each month I’ll decide how much should go where based on our savings/debt goals.

The other bit of my snowflaking will be my own bit of delayed gratification. This is more for Him (still trying to come up with a blog name for the other half) than me. He’s definitely an impulse shopper and so far this is the best method for redirecting. It’s one thing to continually say “I can’t buy that” and another to see the money necessary to fund your dreams grow. Each time either of us doesn’t buy something that calls our names in the store the same amount of money goes into the down payment account.

Is this something you've been working on? Something that may work for you?

Happy Snowflaking!