Time for the end of month numbers.
401k - wow! a $4441 increase in 30 days. I can only imagine how much my mom's large investment account is growing. She has quite a bit still invested fairly aggressively. She uses an investment broker guy who watches over her account.
M-Turk - $31.59. I'm finding it hard to make more on it. I don't seem to be qualified for much, even though I try to complete a lot of those I am qualified for. Plus, it seems if I look at it on a daily basis, most of the hits are ones I've already done......or I'm not sure if I have or not and it appears if I do it again and have done it then I won't get paid. It's too much to try to look back at history and see if it matches up with one you've already done. Maybe I'm missing something on how better to do this "job". I'd be happy if I could just do a few dollars a day, but it seems I am only getting that every few days. I'll probably need to put in some time on it to figure out how to get qualified to do more.
Swagbucks - approx. $17.68. I can't get their "ledger" to work anymore to give a total for a specific time period. I also had another large online purchase that I did not get credit for. It was supposed to be $12.00. I even have the Trip ID and I submitted copy of my receipt with the ticket I opened to try and resolve. They are terrible about taking care of issues, unless you constantly hound them. Makes me mad because I knew I was spending a good chunk (an anniversary present/tool DH can use) and wanted the credit, so I made sure I had "activated" the swagbucks shopping before ordering.
Credit score: dropped suddenly from 743 to 735 - right after the bank ran a credit check on me. Boo!
Other extra money I wasn't expecting was the retro pay of $169, that mostly ended up going to 401k, due to payroll company error. I also got a quarterly dividend check on some old stock shares I have for a whopping $1.44. I'll put that with my $13 net retro paycheck, LOL.
Extra spending:
we had to spend a little to do some car maintenance. Oil and filter and also an air filter, $48. Then we realized a headlight was out, so another $13 for that. Trying to get my car to last another couple of years. DH was saying he wanted to find some old beater truck to use to go back and forth during the site work and building, so he didn't get the inside of our car all dirty. I said how about you just take a pair of slip on shoes with you and take your work boots off and set those on a towel in back and then you aren't getting the floor mat all dirty and muddy. Plus, we can't afford even an old beater truck right now with what we are still trying to pay out of pocket for the property improvements.
Overall - since I'm not getting as much as I had hoped via M-Turk I'm hoping I can start pickup up extra each month from my side job. That pays WAY better anyway. Keeping my fingers crossed.
Isn't it exciting to see retirement funds increase by leaps and bounds? I haven't been doing well at all with Swagbucks or M-Turks. I keep telling myself I need to do more with it, but then life gets in the way. I'm with you in that a side hustle may be more lucrative.
ReplyDeleteI seemed to get luckier with MTurk today. got two $1.50 surveys and a .50 one so far. Still waiting to hear back from my side job on adding to it.
DeleteI'm not holding my breath that the stock market will stay as healthy as it has been. Remember 2001? Remember 2008? I fear there is a big bubble blowing artificial air and it may burst. this is a case of me really wanting to be wrong!
ReplyDeleteFor sure, the market will correct itself. It always does. Down years and up years, but a 401k is a long term investment plan that historically gives an average return of 8% a year (or 12% according to Dave Ramsey). I didn't sweat out the bad years much. My contributions were able to buy more shares (since the prices were down)and now I can reap some of the benefits of that as the share prices increase and reflect in my value.
Delete