New Year and money

In order to make my goal of $3000 in MTurks earnings I will have to average $8.21 per day. It's a slow start already, but I've managed to earn $5.85 yesterday, but only $1.30 total the first 2 days of the month. Hopefully, once the university surveys are back in full swing I'll be picking up more.

Work has been quite a bit more involved lately, it seems. With the addition of the new satellite office, adds more payroll, expenses, etc. Then Quickbooks discontinued it's nice online bill pay service last month, that we have used for several years. Now, in order to pay bills online I have to enter it all through our online banking platform, which requires me to enter it in both Quickbooks and then again online with the bank - for every invoice paid. UGH! I'm not a happy camper. Our banking doesn't offer any integration with Quickbooks and paying bills. I'm trying to see if there is another 3rd party vendor that offers this service and the only one I can seem to find is Bill.com....so I was online looking around their website Thursday trying to get more info. I set up on online phone meeting with one of their "specialists" for yesterday morning but when I tried to join the meeting online and call in, the "specialist" never arrived. So frustrating. So, I'll be spending more time trying to see if this will work. We do not want to go back to printing, signing, stuffing checks in envelopes, that's for sure. And then throw in needing to get ready for our audit at the end of the month. I'm not even finding time to complete my all regular work.

And it's that time of year to wonder about salary raises. It will be interesting to see what it might be. I've had a few years where they were very good, a few years of decent ones and several years of pretty small ones. It's off and on when I actually have to do a formal review (and self review). Some years my boss does it, other years (like last year) she just tells me what my raise is. Usually this is done fairly close to the beginning of each year. It's been a fairly challenging year, with the big change in payroll companies. I'm just going to guess my increase will be like last year, of $1500/yr. They did change our bonus program to only paying out at the end of next year, rather than mid and end of year, so that is kind of a bummer.

And I really should consider asking for an increase in my side job. It's been quite a few years since that went up. But, I don't think asking for say $100 more a month (I make $1000) is out of line. I've been at $1000 for probably at least 4 years now, maybe more. I'd have to look back and see. I really don't think they will have a problem with it, if I ask.

We're supposed to get a big wind storm today. I think I'll have to run into town for a few groceries. We are holding off going into the city for grocery pick up, as I am waiting for the Christmas tree I ordered to pick up at Home Depot to come in, so we only have to make one trip. It's supposed to arrive Monday.