Andy Hough

Making Money with Pinecone Surveys

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One of the ways I used to make extra money was through doing surveys. My favorite survey company was Pinecone Surveys. When I first started using them they paid $5 per survey. They have since reduced the survey payout to $3 per survey. I did surveys with them at both pay levels and never had any problems getting paid.

It has been a few years since I did a survey with them though. It takes about 20 minutes to complete a survey and you don’t qualify for many of the available surveys. I decided that the payout was no longer worth my time since I always have other things to work on that should result in a better return on investment of my time. That being said, these surveys are a fairly easy way to make a little extra money. If you do them when you’re watching TV or otherwise would be wasting time they can be a reasonable use of your time.

If you would like to see if you are eligible to participate in Pinecone Surveys use the affiliate link below.

Pinecone Surveys Sign Up Link 

May 2017 Net Worth Update

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penniesIn order to keep track of my financial progress or lack of progress I have decided to calculate my net worth a few times a year.

My net worth as of 05/1/2017 is as follows.

Assets
Cash – $11,103
IRA – $25,998
Roth IRA – $1,591
Solo 401k – $1081
Car/Stuff – $3700

Liabilities
Student Loan – $114,688
Credit Card – $7875

Net Worth = $-79,090

My net worth improved a little over $800  last month. I decreased my liabilities by almost $9000, but a big chunk of that was from withdrawing money from my investments so the reduction in my assets was almost as big as the reduction of my liabilities. There won’t be any paychecks in May which will probably result in my net worth declining for the month.  I’m hoping my investments do well so I can at least make a little progress.

I’ve been using Personal Capital (affiliate link) to help track my net worth. It keeps track of all of my financial accounts and my student loan making it pretty easy to calculate my net worth each month. It is free to sign up. If you would like to sign up I’d appreciate you using my link. All blog income, including affiliate income, goes to paying down my student loan.

Personal Capital

April Income – $3118.58

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Here is a breakdown of my income for April.

Qapital $5
Interest $5.66
Gift $100
Amazon FBA -$21.20
Cash Back $99.46
Job $2929.66
Total $3118.58

April’s income was pretty good. It was down a fair amount from March.  That was expected due to March having three paydays and April only having the normal two.  I didn’t make much money from my alternative sources of income.  I actually managed to lose a bit on Amazon. This was my second month in a row of having no online income or expense. In June I will work on trying to get my online and FBA income back up.

May’s income will be down substantially.  The combination of being on sabbatical from my job and spending three weeks in Europe will result in very little money being earned in May.

If any of you have suggestions on how to make money on the side I’d love to hear them.

April Expenses – $846.55

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Here is a breakdown of my expenses for April.

Household $450
Entertainment $0
Transportation $183.08
Food $128.23
Travel $0
Phone $25.15
Health $60.09
Total $846.55

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April was a great month for expenses. My total expenses were well below my target of $1000 for the month. I didn’t have much in unusual expenses this month.

I had to get my car inspected and register it for two more years. I also bought a $100 gas card. Those two expenses made my transportation expense a little high. Since I won’t be paying for gas again for a couple of months and the car is registered for two years I am okay with this expense.

I didn’t have any travel or entertainment expense.  I went to the movies once and used a gift card that was reported in my expenses a few months ago so there was no new expense to report for April. I also made a couple of small travel purchases for this month’s trip to Europe. Those expenses were reimbursed by my Chase Sapphire card so there was no expense to report there.

I’ve decided to list my student loan expense separately since it will throw off my monthly numbers. In April I paid $8416.07 towards my student loan.  I consider that great progress on paying my student loan.  That will be the last month with big payments for a while.  I’ll only be making one small payment in May and I probably won’t be able to pay anything in June. In July, I’ll be able to start making payments again. They just won’t be multiple thousands of dollars like the last two months were.

This month I”m going to be in Europe for three weeks.  I expect that will result in a much higher expense total for May.  Since I’ve already paid for a lot of the trip expenses, I don’t think that the total will be too bad though. I’m not going to worry too much about spending money on this trip. It might be a once in a lifetime trip for me and I want to enjoy it.

How was your month?

117/132 Using My Roth IRA to Pay Down My Student Loan

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 In order to speed up the process of paying off my student loan I have cashed out part of my Roth IRA. Last year, I considered using my Roth IRA to pay down my student loan, but decided against it since I wasn’t sure I would be able to continue paying large amounts towards my student loan. Now that I have a stable source of income I decided to go ahead and use some of the money from my Roth IRA to pay down my student loan.

I know some people will think it wasn’t a smart move, but I will share my reasoning in deciding to use the IRA proceeds to pay my student loan.  Since I took the money out of my Roth IRA I will not owe any tax or early distribution penalty on the money I took from my IRA. The amount I took out was less than the contributions I had made to the IRA.  Since a return of contributions from a Roth IRA is not taxable this distribution will not subject me to additional tax. The benefit of using the IRA distribution is that it will reduce my student loan balance enough that I will owe less monthly interest on my student loans. Since I’m paying 6.8% interest on my student loan I am effectively getting a 6.8% return on the IRA distribution.  I think that is a reasonable return.

Using retirement savings to pay a student loan can leave you short of money for retirement. I took out $9500 from my Roth IRA which I don’t think will have that big of an impact on my retirement. I’ll be turning 50 this year so it isn’t like the $9500 has decades to compound before I retire. Of course, it could also be argued that at my age with my meager retirement savings I need to be saving every dollar possible for retirement. That being said, I still  feel that having the student loan paid off sooner will be more beneficial to me than keeping the $9500 in the IRA.

I do have a plan to beef up my retirement savings this year as well.  Sometime around late August/early September I will become eligible to contribute to my employer 401k plan. My company allows me to contribute 100% of earnings to the 401k plan and that is what I plan to do. There is a limit of $24,000 that can be contributed to the 401k in a year.  That limit won’t be reached since I’ll be starting my contributions late in the year.  I’m guessing I’ll still get about $20,000 into my 401k though.  That will make up for the $9500 taken out of my Roth and then some. The 401k money will be pre-tax which will also save me some money on taxes this year.

The drawback to contributing that much to my 401k is that I won’t have enough money to make any payments on my student loan during that time period.  In 2018 I will reset my 401k percentage to one that is sustainable for that year which will allow me to continue making payments on my student loan.  What I can save in my 401k in 2018 will depend on whether I’m able to refinance my student loan and what my required monthly student loan payments will be.  For 2017 saving the maximum I’m able to in my 401k is what I think will be best for my finances in the long run even if it means it will take a little longer to pay off my student loan.  What do you think is the best move when deciding whether to save for retirement or pay off the student loan?