Amazon Kindle Unlimited Promo – 99 Cents for 2 Months

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Amazon is running a promotion for their Kindle Unlimited membership discounting the price down to 99 cents for two months. Kindle Unlimited is a service that allows you to read as much as you want, choosing from over 1 million titles and thousands of audiobooks. Freely explore new authors, books, and genres from mysteries and romance to sci-fi and more. You can read on any device. The links to Amazon are affiliate links.

The membership usually costs $9.99 per month. They have frequent promotions offering it at a lower price and there is usually a 30 day free trial for new members as well. I’ve joined Kindle Unlimited three different times during different promotions. I’ve already joined through the current 99 cent promotion. I only need to read one book that I would have otherwise purchased to get my money out of the membership. I will read several books during the two months of my membership.

The offer must be redeemed before 11:59 p.m. (PST), June 30, 2019.  Current Kindle Unlimited members are not eligible. The subscription will continue for $9.99 a month after the two month promo has ended. You can easily cancel your membership anytime by  visiting www.amazon.com/kucentral and adjusting your settings. I’ve never had any trouble canceling my membership.

An added perk of the Kindle Unlimited membership is that some of the books are also available as audio books. When I return to my document review job next month I plan to listen to a lot of audio books while my membership lasts. I will get way more than 99 cents value out of the membership.

If you’re interested in joining click through to Kindle Unlimited and browse the titles. If you see even one that you are interested in reading and would otherwise purchase it is worth signing up for a membership. Make sure that the 99 cents for two months promo is listed when you sign up. If it doesn’t automatically show you the 99 cents for two months promo you may need to do a web search for the promo and then click on the search results link.

eBay $3 Off $3.01 + Purchase with Promo Code

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eBay currently has a promo code that will give your purchase of $3.01 or more when you use the promo code PROMO3.  The purchase price must be $3.01 or higher for the promo code to work. It will not work if the price is under $3.01 and shipping or sales tax brings the total over $3.01.

I used the promo code to buy a book for about 30 cents. They had a similar promo code a couple of months ago and I used it for a book then as well. I’m working on getting all the Harry Bosch books by Michael Connelly. Once I have them all, I’m going to read through the series from the start.

The promo code is valid until 11:59pm PDT on June 17, 2019 so if you want to use the code you should make your purchase soon. Eligible items exclude warranties and protection plans, as well as items from the Stamps, Coins & Paper Money, Gift Cards & Coupons, and Real Estate categories.

You can go through a portal such as Mr. Rebates or TopCashback to save a little more on your purchase. Those are my referral links.

If you aren’t going to use a shopping portal please consider using my eBay affiliate link.

May Income – $146.71

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Here is a breakdown of my income for May.

Interest $6.35
Amazon FBA $14.20
Job $0
Free Stock $4.55
Cashback $3.99
Dividends $17.62
Online $100
Total $146.71

May was a terrible month for income. This was to be expected since I am unemployed while in Thailand and my non-job sources of income don’t add up to much.

Amazon FBA income consisted of reimbursement for an item that Amazon lost in their warehouse. I only have two items left in inventory. I’m going to lower my price and try to get them sold this month.  When I get back from Thailand I will restock my FBA inventory and try to build it up to where it can cover my monthly expenses.

My online income consisted of an affiliate commission from HealthyWage.  My links for Bluehost (aff link) and  (aff link) Hostgator for web hosting and Namecheap (aff link) for domain names didn’t result in any commissions. I’d like to increase my affiliate commissions. To do that I need to post more consistently and have longer, more helpful posts. So far I’ve been too lazy to do that.

My dividend income was slightly more than the previous month. I sold some of my stocks and invested the proceeds in a stock that doesn’t pay a dividend which will result in lower dividend income until I start buying more dividend stocks again.

I got one share of free stock worth $4.55 from Robinhood from someone signing up using my referral link. If you sign up using my Robinhood referral link we will both get one share of free stock. Thanks to the person who signed up using my link. Every little bit helps.

Due to the lack of job income, this month’s income will also be very small. It will probably be even less than May’s income. In July I should start making money again and will work on building my savings back up.

How was your month?

May Expenses – $1093.81

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Here is a breakdown of my expenses for May.

Household$122.41
Rent$298.47
Entertainment$37.42
Transportation$0
Food$180.62
Travel$132.04
Phone$14.68
Student Loan$132.58
Health$175.59
Total$1093.81

My May expenses were a little bit over my target of $1000 for the month. For the year, I’m still averaging under $1000 a month. If I were able to keep my monthly average for the entire year under $1000 a month that would be great. That won’t be easy to do since I plan on getting over a $1000 of dental work done this year and there are always unplanned expenses sometime during the year. It will be a good goal to work towards.

Rent was low although not quite as low as I thought it would be. I had to pay about $30 in cleaning fees when I moved out of my room in Uttaradit. I added that to my rent total. I also paid for one month’s rent in Pattaya for May 29th through June 29th. After my month is up I will travel back to Uttaradit and then Bangkok staying in hotel rooms. Thus, there won’t be any rent expense for June. Taking that into consideration my rent total for May looks great.

There was no transportation expense in May. I did purchase a bus ticket from Bangkok to Pattaya and took a taxi to my hotel in Pattaya. Those expenses are both included in my travel expenses. There are cheap buses here in Pattaya which can be taken for about 30 to 60 cents. I haven’t used one yet, but I plan to use them some this month. That will result in there being a few dollars of transportation expense this month.

My food expense was higher than I’d prefer. That is to be expected though since I ate out almost every meal and also bought some meals for my girlfriend. This month my food total will probably be even higher. Pattaya has a variety of Western restaurants which I will eat at often and they are expensive by Thai standards. The Thai food in Pattaya is much more expensive than the Thai food in Uttaradit as well.

The household expense was mainly about $90 for electricity for my room. That was pretty expensive considering my rent was only $140. The temperature was over 100 degrees almost every day which led to using the aircon a lot and the resulting high electric bill. I also bought my girlfriend a small present.

Entertainment was for two movies with concessions and a dinner out with my girlfriend. Most of our dinners I just included in food. The one meal I included in entertainment since it was a fair bit more than I would have spent if I was alone. I saw both of the movies after I arrived in Pattaya. The theater near me has all of their movies available in English so I’ll be spending a lot more at the movies this month.

Travel was for a private car from Uttaradit to Phitsanulok, a plane ticket from Phitsanulok to Bangkok, a bus from Bangkok to Pattaya, a taxi from the Pattaya bus station to my hotel, one night hotel in Pattaya, 3 nights hotel in Uttaradit and one night hotel in Shanghai, China. That is quite a bit of travel for my money. When you consider it is possible to pay $130 for one hotel night, getting 5 hotel nights, a plane ticket, a bus ticket, a private car ride, and a taxi for the same amount is a great deal.

My phone bill was low since I still had some trade-in credit to use up. This month it will be higher since I’ve used all the credit and I use more data on my phone here in Thailand. I expect it to still be a reasonable amount of $30 or so.

I paid about $50 for a dental visit. I’ll be getting a dental implant this month which will cost about $1000. That will obviously result in my medical expense being much higher this month.

May was a decent month for expenses. Even though the cost of living is cheap in Thailand my monthly expenses are still about the same as in the States since I keep my expenses so low.

This month’s expenses will be quite a bit higher due to the large dental bill. Excluding the dental bill, I expect this month’s expenses will be a little lower than May’s expenses.

Get Free Stock from Robinhood

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When you sign up for a free brokerage account with Robinhood through my referral link they will give us both a free share of stock. The stock you receive is chosen at random and will be worth between $2.50 and $200. When I signed up the stock I received was worth about $2.93. The value of the stock you receive will most likely be worth about $2.50, but some people get lucky and get a more valuable stock. According to Robinhood you have a 1 in 250 chance to get a share of Apple, Facebook, or Berkshire Hathaway. That isn’t bad odds for something that will only cost you a few minutes of your time.

Robinhood is an app that allows you to make commission free stock, option, and ETF trades from your phone. They also have a desktop site you can use if you don’t want to use your phone. I was skeptical about buying stocks from my phone, but now that I have been using the app for a while I prefer using my phone and rarely use the desktop site. I like being able to just open the app on my phone and see how my portfolio is doing. Although that does lead to me checking my portfolio way more often than I should.

Of course, if you find the Robinhood brokerage account useful signing up for the free stock is an even better deal. When I signed up, I did it only for the free stock and didn’t have any plans to buy stocks through Robinhood. After selling my free stock and cashing out, I left my account dormant for about a year. Then I decided to take a flyer on the parent company of MoviePass (HMNY) and see if they could recover. That didn’t work out to well. I ended up selling the stock for pennies. I only invested $10 so it wasn’t too big of a loss.Since that purchase I have been buying stocks on a pretty regular basis. My focus is on dividend growth stocks. I’m not sure what return I’ve made on my stocks. They have done pretty well although probably not quite as well as the market overall since it has mostly been a bull market since I’ve started investing in dividend stocks. I’m not too concerned whether my stocks trail the total market a little since this is a small part of my total portfolio. The bulk of my retirement accounts are invested in index funds. I think of investing in these dividend stocks as a profitable hobby that leads to me saving more money than I would otherwise. It allows me to have a little bit of the thrill of gambling but with the odds in my favor.

If you would like to sign up for Robinhood please use my referral link and we will both get a free stock.