May Income – $413.30

by

Here is a breakdown of my income for May.

Online Income $25.36
Interest $0.79
Cash Back $7.20
Amazon FBA $164.02
Uber $201.97
Sell Stuff $13.96
Total $413.30

May was a terrible month for income. I was supposed to start a temporary document review job in May, but the start date was delayed three separate times. I’m still not sure when (or even if the job) will start. I was way too lazy in May. I kept off working Uber more or doing other things to make money since I thought I would be starting my document review job soon and making good money from that. Since I’m not sure that I’ll have any job income this month I need to start driving for Uber a lot more and start selling a lot more stuff. It is doubtful those two things will be enough to replace my job income, but I should be able to make a lot more money than I did in May. My savings took a hit in May and I can’t continue to let that happen.

One tiny bright spot was my FBA earnings.  This month’s profit was about $5 higher than last month’s making for my new best profit month ever. Unfortunately, this month will most likely not be a good month for FBA income. Since I didn’t make much money last month my Amazon payments mostly went to paying my personal living expenses rather than being used to buy more inventory. I have very little inventory left to sell on FBA. Unless I can find some really cheap inventory to sell or my job starts I won’t be able to buy any new inventory this month and the FBA income will dwindle.

I do have a lot of stuff around the house I can sell on eBay,Craigslist or Facebook. I need to concentrate on doing that this month rather than buying new things to sell. I should be able to make at least a few hundred dollars from selling stuff if I get most of it listed online for sale.

May Expenses – $1161.28

by

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for May.

Household $452.83
Entertainment $20.16
Transportation $58.53
Food $138.29
Student Loan $183.86
Travel $0.00
Phone $36.78
Health $270.83
Total $1161.28

 

My May expenses were once again fairly low although I did miss my goal of $1000 or less in spending for the month. If It wouldn’t have been for some medical bills and medicine I would have made the $1000 goal. The $1000 spending goal probably won’t be achievable for the next couple of months since more bills will be coming due.

Usually my only health expenses is $83.13 for my health insurance. This month I also had to pay $159.19 for a doctor visit and lab fees, and $28.51 for some medicine. These medical bills were not related to my accident. I also paid some medical bills related to the accident, but I’m not including them here since I expect to eventually get reimbursed for those bills. I’ll have another medical visit this month that is unrelated to the accident so this month so depending on when the bill is due my medical expenses will be higher than normal again.

Travel and entertainment expenses were low because I was able to erase most of them using my credit card rewards. Office Max had a deal in May that allowed me to rack up quite a bit in rewards. It isn’t likely that there will be that good of a deal this month which means the travel and entertainment expense will be higher. I don’t plan on traveling this month so that expense might still be $0. Entertainment expense should still be fairly low since I do have some free gift cards to use up.

My transportation expense was fairly low since my only expense was $58.53 for gas. This total was helped by a free $20 gas card an insurance company gave for getting an auto insurance quote from them. Some of this gas was used driving for Uber or going on mystery shops which I’ll be able to deduct the mileage for those on my taxes. Once you factor in the mileage deduction my transportation cost for the month will be even lower.

I did make some extra student loan payments in May as well, but I’m not reporting them here since they throw off the average. You can see my progress on paying off my student loan in the right sidebar.

Other than the exceptions I have already noted my June expenses should be about the same.

SmarterBucks Review – Not Recommended

by

SmarterBucks is an online rewards program that I recently read about on a blog. The blogger stated that they were using SmarterBucks to help pay down their student loan. Since I have a ginormous student loan and am interested in any way to pay it down faster I decided to check the program out. Doing a quick Swagbucks search I found several reviews of the service and they were all positive so I went ahead and signed up for the program.

SmarterBucks Overview

SmarterBucks is similar to other online rewards programs such as Swagbucks and Upromise. The main distinction between SmarterBucks and other online rewards programs is that SmarterBucks is geared towards paying off your student loans. You are able to set up a student loan in your SmarterBucks account to be automatically paid each month that you have earned $10 or more in SmarterBucks. This allows your rewards to automatically go towards paying your student loan which is a simpler redemption process than most other online rewards programs.

How to Earn SmarterBucks

1. SmarterBucks Marketplace

The marketplace works like an online cash back shopping portal such as TopCashBack or Mr. Rebates and pays you up to 10% back on online purchases made through their marketplace. Some of the reviewers didn’t read their marketing copy very well and stated that the marketplace would pay back 10% or more which had me excited to see what stores were available.

The marketplace ended up being a major disappointment. Their cash back rates are not competitive with other cash back shopping portals. Although they state that they pay up to 10% cash back I couldn’t find any stores paying that much and it appears most of their stores only pay 1% cash back. There probably is some store in their marketplace that offers 10% cash back, but it most likely is overpriced and not a store I’d normally shop at. Here is a comparison of cash back earned at five major retailers with SmarterBucks, Mr. Rebates, and TopCashBack.

SmarterBucks TopCashBack Mr. Rebates
Sears 1.25% Varies 2% -7% 3.00%
Walmart 1.00% Varies 1%-4% 2.00%
Target 1.00% 1.00% 0.50%
Kmart 1.00% Varies 1%-7% 3.00%
Staples 1.00% 3.00% 2.00%

As you can see they generally offer less cash back than the other portals. Even looking at Target where SmarterBucks actually matched TopCashBack for the best rate it would be possible to do better elsewhere. Ebates currently offers 2% cash back at Target. Since their marketplace doesn’t offer competitive cash back rates I won’t be using it unless they start offering more cash back.

2. Surveys

They also offer the ability to do surveys to earn SmarterBucks. The first survey they offered to me paid .57 SmarterBucks for a 15 minute survey. That translates to an earnings rate of $2.28 an hour. That is obviously a terrible return for your time. When I did survey for PineCone Research I was paid $3 per survey and the surveys generally took 20 minutes to complete. SmarterBucks’ survey pay rate doesn’t appear to be very competitive with other survey companies. Surveys in general aren’t a good way to earn extra money so I wouldn’t bother with these.

3. Debit Card

Another way to earn SmarterBucks is with their debit card. The website states that you will earn 1% back in SmarterBucks with the Radius Bank debit card. The 1% cash back only applies to non-pin purchases though. That means you would need to run your purchase as credit rather than debit in order to earn the cash back. If you’re going to do a credit purchase you might as well use a rewards credit card. There are plenty of reward credit cards that offer 2% cash back. Some offer even higher cash back for purchases in certain categories.

The debit card is not for me since I can always do better with my reward credit cards. I could see this debit card being useful for someone who doesn’t have the self-discipline to be able to use a credit card. If you have to use a debit card then this card appears to be a good option.

4. Gifting

A unique feature of SmarterBucks is that you can have family and/or friends sign up to be a SmarterBucks gifter and their SmarterBucks earnings would then go towards paying your student loan. This is not an option I would use since it is basically asking your friends and family to pay your student loan for you and would be a bad deal for them since they wouldn’t get to keep the cash back they earned.

A better option is to have your friends and family sign up for Mr. Rebates or Swagbucks. This way you would earn cash back when they earn cash back but it would not reduce the cash back earning rate of your family and friends.

Conclusion

SmarterBucks is not a good deal for the vast majority of people. There are better options for earning cash back. The only instance in which I’d recommend it is using the debit card if you don’t/can’t use a credit card. I’m surprised at the positive reviews I’ve read of this service. My guess is that the reviewers were biased due to being affiliates for SmarterBucks. I have no problem with being an affiliate of a product you review. In fact, this post contains several referral links for cash back sites since the sites are relevant to the post and in my opinion a good deal for my readers. I do have a problem with people giving a product or service a positive review just because they can profit from it. Although I am a member of SmarterBucks I am not including a referral link for the service since I think it would be a bad deal for the vast majority of my readers.

Walking from the Vegas Strip to the Airport

by
Scenery near Vegas airport.
Scenery near Vegas airport.

In order to keep my string of travel posts on Wednesday I’m writing about an aspect of a trip I took last year. I think it will be interesting to some people.

Last year while on a Vegas vacation I decided to walk from the Strip to the airport to catch my returning flight. Walking rather than taking a cab can save you a fair bit of money, especially since many cab drivers like to long-haul passengers by taking the tunnel to the airport. If you’re just interested in saving money though a better option would be to take the bus to the airport. The bus fare is only a few dollars. Your motivation for walking from the Vegas Strip to the airport should be for the enjoyment of the walk itself rather than saving money.

I was staying at the Excalibur hotel which is located at the corner of Tropicana and Las Vegas Boulevard (aka the Strip) which is one of the closest hotels on the Strip to the airport. A search on Google Maps showed that the walk was only 1.8 miles and would take about 35 minutes.  This gave me plenty of time since it was 11am and my flight didn’t leave until 2pm. My gambling budget had already been spent and I had some time to kill so a pleasant stroll to the airport seemed like a good use of my time.

The walk starts by crossing over the Strip and walking past the Tropicana, Hooters, and MGM. The hotels and all the people walking to and from them provide plenty of scenery to keep this part of the walk interesting. After passing the Hooters hotel there are a couple of budget hotels and then when you cross Koval you mostly have the airport on one side and desert on the other side. This part of the walk is less interesting and the scenery is marred by lots and lots of trash.

Although this was only a 35 minute walk I took a break in the middle of it. There is a shopping center about halfway between Koval and Paradise and I had lunch at the Subway there. This added a little distance to my walk since the shopping center was on the opposite side of the street and set back a couple hundred yards from the street. I had plenty of time and didn’t want to pay the inflated airport prices for food so I chose to have lunch then. There is also a convenience store at the corner of Paradise and Tropicana where I could have bought some snacks if I had them instead of or in addition to having a meal.

Once I resumed my walk after lunch it didn’t take long to reach Paradise and turn southbound on the walk. The sidewalk follows Paradise and the bustling traffic for a little bit and then veers off into a somewhat park-like setting. There were plants and sculptures to provide some pleasant scenery. This is where I took the picture of the cactus that is at the top of this post.

It wasn’t much longer until I was at the airport terminal. I did get to see one more interesting thing. A shuttle bus driver apparently decided to enter a parking area that wasn’t accessible by his shuttle bus. The shuttle driver and the passengers probably had a much less pleasant trip to the airport then I did.

They should have walked.
They should have walked.

The walk from the Strip to the airport is easy because it is very flat. I did this walk in November when it was about 65 degrees.  I also only had a small backpack for luggage. The walk would not be pleasant in the summer with the usual 100 degree temperatures or with a lot of luggage. My last trip to Vegas was in late March and even then it would have been almost too hot to walk. I was with my GF on that trip and I don’t think should would have been up for the idea of walking to the airport so we just took the bus on that trip. The next time you are in Vegas you might consider walking to the airport or from the airport to your hotel. It might be a pleasant addition to your trip.

 

Some Strategies for Paying Off My Student Loan

by

studentloanpayoffPaying off my student loan is going to be a humongous task which will take several years. My goal is to have it paid off in less than ten years. I’d like to pay it off quicker than that, but even the ten-year goal is a stretch based on my current finances. My expenses are about as low as I can get them so most of my strategies for paying off my student loan sooner will be related to earning more income. Since it will take years to pay off my student loan some of these strategies will likely change over time while others will be abandoned entirely and new strategies adopted as they become available and/or I become aware of them.

My first strategy for paying off my student loan quicker is signing up to have my student loan payment automatically debited from my checking account. Doing this lowered my interest rate from 6.875% to 6.62%. That isn’t much of a decrease in the interest rate but when you are dealing with six figures of debt it does make a difference. It will be about a $25 month decrease in interest on my loan.

I also want to refinance my loan. I applied to refinance my loan with Sofi. They have variable rates as low as 1.9% and fixed rates as low as 3.5% which would save me a lot of money. Despite my 798 credit score my loan application was swiftly rejected due to my income being so low relative to the amount of my debt. I can’t really blame them for rejecting my application. I’m considering reapplying to refinance just part of my loan later this year. I have found that there are a number of new refinancing companies with competitive rates and term lengths. Does anyone have any recommendations for a student loan refinancing companies? I’d love to hear in the comments below.

Another way to refinance part of my student loan is with my credit cards. One of my credit cards offered me a 0% interest rate for 18 months on a balance transfer with a 2% transaction fee. I signed up for the deal and am having my credit card company transfer part of my student loan to my credit card. The transfer is still processing so I’m not sure if it will work the way I planned. After this transfer is done I might do another balance transfer deal on another of my credit cards. I just have to make sure that I can pay the balance off before the 0% interest rate ends.

Reducing the cost of the loan is helpful but to make significant progress on paying it down I need to make more money. A lot more money. I should have a document review job starting next week and I’m hoping that there will be a steady amount of document review jobs the rest of the year. These jobs are currently my best source of guaranteed income so I’ll keep working them until I know for sure that I can make more money elsewhere. Whatever I make from the job above my basic expenses will go to paying down my loan.

One job won’t be enough to pay off the loan quickly though. That is why I signed up for Uber.  This weekend will be my first weekend driving for them. After the weekend I should have a good idea of how much I can make through Uber. If nothing else, it should provide me with a little extra income when I’m between jobs. My plan is to drive for them nights and weekends while working my regular job. I really like that I can drive for Uber whenever I have time and don’t have to commit to a schedule.

I’m still working my Amazon FBA business and I think I’m slowly learning and getting better at it. I’m hoping to make at least enough from FBA to pay my regular student loan payment.

Blog income has mostly dried up, but I’m hoping I can revive it somewhat.  I need to work on increasing my affiliate and referral income from my blogs. Posting regularly on my Bank Bonuses blog should help with that. I also plan to have one or two posts a month on this blog about products or services for which I have affiliate or referral links.  I only write about services/products that I actually use and think are a win/win so you don’t have to worry about this becoming a spammy blog.

This past week I’ve made some decent progress on my e-book. I’ve procrastinated writing this book for years, but I am finally going to get it finished. It should be done by the end of this month. Once that book is done I have a couple more ideas of books to write. If I am able to publish two or three books by the end of the year they will hopefully produce a nice bit of additional income.

Those are the strategies I currently am using/am planning to use to reduce the cost of my loan and make more money. If you have any suggestions I would love to hear them.