A Little Extra Money

I’ve seen it written elsewhere and it’s an obvious statement, but if you want to save money or stay debt free there is only ONE thing you can do.  Earn more money than you spend.

If you aren’t earning more than you spend, then there are only TWO things you can do to change this and they are pretty obvious too.

1- Earn More Money

2- Spend Less Money

There are countless ways to accomplish these goals and I have been working on both. Here’s what I’ve been doing to earn more.

I have a pretty good job and make a decent living, but anything extra would come in handy as I try to reduce my debt..  At work, there is a man who will be having surgery soon and will miss a couple months of work.  He’s the only one that does his particular job at our company and I’ve been asked to take his place while he’s gone.  He makes about $1.20 more per hour than I do and I will get his pay while he’s gone.

I used to work a lot of overtime when I needed extra money, but the company has tried to eliminate as much overtime as possible, due to the poor economy.  I was offered 8 hours of overtime Sunday and although I REALLY wanted to be off, I agreed to do it. After having my hours cut during the holiday’s, I could use some extra to make up for the lost wages.

Last weekend, I was off work and pretty much just sat around watching football, but while I did I read financial blogs and read about a site Amazon has called Amazon Mechanical Turk.  This site lets people do little taks in exchange for pay, so I decided to try it out.  I found one that paid about $5.00 for signing up to a web site and reviewing two financial products.  That didn’t take long at all.  Most of the tasks only paid a couple cents each, so they aren’t really worth the time spent, but I did several anyway.  I checked the available tasks everyday for several days and it looked like I had done just about everything that looked easy or interesting.  I was ready to quit and cash out my earnings, but found out you must have $10.00 before you can withdraw money and Amazon must verify your bank account.  In order to verify the account they make two small deposits into your account and then when you see them in your bank account, you log in and tell Amazon how much each deposit was to prove it’s your bank account.  While waiting on the deposits, I did a few more tasks and eventually my balance finally hit the $10.08 mark.  The two deposits added another 31 cents to my account as well.  It might have been the most time I’ve ever spent trying to make $10.39, but I guess I would’ve just wasted time around the house earning nothing, so it’s ok.  It’s another $10.39 I can throw at at the debt snowball, so I welcome it.

I also listed some books and movies on Ebay, but so far only one sold and it only brought in $5.00, but I will march on!  Rome wasn’t built in a day.