Increasing Alternative Income

This ATM's been drinkin
photo credit: joshuaheller
Earlier this week I asked what you would like to read about and one of the topics you wanted to read more about is alternative income. Thursdays will now be dedicated to the topic of alternative income. I have a category for alternative income but haven’t written much on it lately since I haven’t developed any new sources of alternative income. Therefore I will just update you on how I am doing with my current sources of alternative income. Perhaps I will start breaking out passive income from my alternative income as well. Since I don’t have a job all of my income could be considered alternative income depending on how you define the term “alternative income.” To start things off I am going to do something every day next month to increase my alternative income. There will be weekly updates and I will share any new sources of alternative income I discover.

April Income- $490.30

Here is a breakdown of my income for March.

Online Income

$379.81

Interest

$57.34

Survey

$3

Stock Dividends

$42.87

Ebay

$7.28

Total

$490.30

My income was decent for the month considering it was all alternative income. My income should go up slightly or a lot this month as I have at least some medical study income coming and possibly a large amount of medical study income coming. If I do end up hiking my income will probably go down a little while I’m hiking but I plan to concentrate on bringing it back up when I finish the hike.

February Income- $721.47

Here is a breakdown of my income for February.

Online Income

$367.68

Interest

$25.04

Bank/Other Bonuses

$87.60

Survey/Half

$2.39

Stock Dividends

$4.11

Cash Back/Mystery Shop

$4.65

Medical Study

$230

Total

$721.47

My income for February was down slightly from the month before.  I had a big dropoff in online income but much of that was from increased expenses since I renewed a couple of domain names for three years.  My online income for this month will probably be about the same.

Only one of my stocks had a dividend payable in February.  My dividend income will go up this month since I have several stocks that will be paying dividends.

I won’t have any medical study income this month which will probably result in a lower income total this month.  Hopefully, I can replace at least some of that income.  Overall, I am pleased with this amount of income since it is all alternative income.  Now if I could make this much in passive income every month I would be really pleased.

Living on $10k a Year

My plan for this year is to keep my expenses under $10k and so far I am on target to do that.  Of course there is a lot of time left in the year for something to go wrong.  I was curious how much a $10k a year budget translates to as a daily amount.  My calculations put the daily budget for $10k a year at $27.40 rounded up.  This does not seem like very much money to live on and the daily budget number could be a little intimidating when first making plans to live on a $10k budget.

On the other hand the daily budget number looks great when you look at it from the perspective of how much income you need to make.  I have a goal of making $10k a year in alternative and passive income. Earning an average of $27.40 a day looks pretty easy.  I don’t make that much money from my blogging and alternative income now but the figure certainly seems attainable.  My blogging income from last year would cover about 40% of the days in a year.  My dividend income would cover about half a month.  That puts me close to having half the year covered. I just need to find some additional sources of income and/or increase my current income streams to cover the rest of the year.  I probably won’t reach the $10k level in alternative/passive income this year but the goal is close enough that it seems realistic that I’ll make it in the next few years.  Being able to see progress and knowing I don’t have to wait too long for the payoff should make it easier to stay on track towards my goal of having $10k a year in alternative and passive income.

December Income- $1309.44

Here is a breakdown of my income for December.

Online Income

$450.12

Interest

$16.96

Bank/Other Bonuses

$44.10

Surveys/Mystery Shopping

$34

Stock Dividends

$53.10

Cash Back

$26.16

Car Sale

$480

Medical Study

$205

Total

$1309.44

My income was higher than my expenses which is always good.  Without the sale of my car though it would have been pretty close and my expenses will normally be higher than they were last month.  My income will probably go down a little this month. I need to find a way to ramp my alternative income up or get a job. I know a lot of people would be pretty happy with the alternative income I’m generating but since I’m not working I feel like I should be doing better.  I’m wasting a lot of time that could be put towards earning more income or at least doing something productive.