Andy Hough

Challenge Winners: Cash or Gift Card?

by

There doesn’t seem to be a clear consensus on how the $500 should be distributed but it does seem like most are in favor of everyone receiving a small prize and having one or two big prizes also. There have also been a few people suggesting I give the money to charity. I don’t want anyone to feel pressured into giving their share to charity though. If you want to give your share to charity, contact me and let me know, otherwise your share will go in the prize pool.

I’m going to start by giving everyone either $10 cash via PayPal or a $10 Amazon gift card, whichever you prefer. Luckily, I have built up a bit of credit on Amazon by redeeming gift cards from SwagBucks. It will probably be a week or two before I can contact everyone. If you want to leave a comment with your preference on this post I will give you priority. Please use your same name and email so I can verify your identity.

If you do opt for an Amazon gift card I would appreciate it if you would do your shopping through the Amazon link in the sidebar to the right of this post. That way I will make a little bit of the money back. 🙂

****This giveaway is only for those who entered the $500 weight loss challenge back in May. If you aren’t one of the entrants please don’t comment on this post. Thanks.

November Income – $357.16

by

Here is a breakdown of my income for November.

Online Income

$219.37

Interest

$57.36

Stock Dividends

$14.83

Bonuses

$50

Mystery Shop

$8.00

Survey/Cashback

$7.60

Total

$357.16

My November income was pretty poor. It was mostly passive income at least.  It shouldn’t be any problem increasing my income this month. I already know my online income will increase due to scheduled Adsense and affiliate payouts. Dividend income will increase since many of my stocks pay dividends this month.  I will also have job income which should help although I probably won’t be working a lot of hours.

November Expenses – $1098.55

by

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for November.

Household

$440.61

Entertainment

$76.98

Transportation

 $118.99

Food

$160.25

Health

$90.66

Phone

$46.06

Debt

 $165.00

Total

$1098.55

I wasn’t too far off my goal of keeping my monthly expenses under $1000. Considering I moved into a new apartment this expense level is reasonable. My food category was pretty high which isn’t surprising since I had at least 30 restaurant meals during the month. That category should be much lower this month.  I might be able to shave a little off my entertainment budget.  My transportation expense will go up because I have to do a lot more driving now that I have a job.  Everything else should stay about the same.

If you are eligible for part of the $500 giveaway I would still like to hear your opinion on how to distribute the money.

Ideas for Giving Away $500

by

Those of you who entered in my $500 weight-loss challenge back in May now stand to collect the $500. There were 35 entrants so if I distributed the money equally you would each be paid $14.28. I don’t think that is how I am going to pay the money though. I would like ideas from those who entered on how I should distribute the money.

One idea I have is to have a 12 days of Christmas theme and have 12 different giveaways of about $25-$50. The money would be in the form of cash or gift cards. Or maybe some vintage comic books if there are enough people interested in those. Another idea would be to have one big winner of the entire $500 or a big winner of $330 with $5 going to each of the other entrants so that everyone would win something.

From a logistics standpoint I favor the giveaways with fewer winners to make things easier to keep track of. Let me hear your ideas and then I will make a decision.

November 2009 Goal Review

by

I didn’t do very well on my goals this month.

My first goal is to increase my passive income. I made some progress on this. I purchased an established website which should provide a nice boost to my online income. The purchase and transfer of the site should be finished by the end of the month and I’ll provide more details when the purchase is finished.

My second goal is to lose weight. No progress was made on this goal. It is now obvious that I am going to lose the $500 weight loss challenge. Tomorrow’s post will discuss how I will pay the $500.

My third goal is to increase the number of RSS subscribers to 500. No progress was made on this goal as my number of subscribers leveled off this month. With a big push in December I might still be able to meet this goal.

One out of three is not a very good result. It will soon be time to set new goals for next year. I need to come up with better plans for meeting my goals next year.