My side hustling plan is off to a decent start! So far I have:
(1) made $355.79 from a combination of selling things on amazon and ebay, watching usertesting.com like a hawk, and skimming a little more than $100 off last month's paycheck. I did that last accidentally, by the way, through double-transferring money from my checking account to the new savings account I set up to fund Roth shares. I am not a financial master of the universe. But having made the transfer I decided to let it stand, rather than pulling it back and using it for cash spending, so even though it is technically from my paycheck, I'm calling it a side hustle I pulled on myself.
(2) Talked to a friend of mine about booking me for a paid lecture in the fall (I am not sure how much this will be, maybe no more than a couple hundred dollars, but every little bit counts.)
(3) Mentioned to a few friends, in a casual and low-key way thus far, that I am looking for writing, editing, and, what the hell, pet- and baby-sitting work. By the way! Anyone reading this: I am looking for writing and editing work! Feel free to get in touch :-)
(4) Signed up for a new checking/savings account that theoretically will give me $20 a month -- apparently in perpetuity -- for using direct deposit and billpay. By the end of this year, if this works, that would be $140. Again, repeat after me: every little bit counts.
I am not getting too excited yet, because I still have, uh, $5144.21 to go on my "fund the Roth using extra income" plan, and obviously I'm going to have to acquire more lucrative part-time work than I've done so far. But setting the goal and already making some progress feels good; I'm going to buy in $250 increments so I can do the first lot as soon as the money's available in my savings account.
Showing posts with label Personal Finance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Personal Finance. Show all posts
Thursday, May 1, 2014
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Introducing Me (And My Slowly Growing But Still Negative Net Worth)
Hello to anyone reading this; thanks for being here.
I'm a 35-year-old, permanently (at least as far as I know) single woman. I'm not complaining about that -- singleness has its pros as well as cons! But....
As this article notes, single people face some particular issues when it comes to cash flow, housing costs, and retirement savings. (See also this post by Krystal Yee, which got me thinking about this topic a lot.) Those things are definitely on my mind right now. And what with singleness being one of the key factors in my financial life right now, I figured I'd make it the title of this blog, which I'm starting after a couple of weeks of fairly intensive reading around in the personal finance blogosphere. It seems like a really good way to keep myself motivated as I move forward; I like the thought of sharing my journey, which in some ways is well underway and in some ways is just beginning.
Here's the big-picture snapshot of my financial situation, which shows you both "well underway" and also "just beginning":
That's my net worth, starting in June 2013, when I was (thanks, mint.com, for the precision) $21,249 in debt, of which nearly $19,000 was embedded in student loans that were about to begin coming due. I also had $5629 of "assets" (the little green bar) but since $3500 of that is the value of my car, we were really talking...not that much. But counting the car, that brought my net worth in at negative $15,619.
June 2013 was a big month for me; I graduated from a humanities PhD program, located in a Giant Expensive City, and moved to a much smaller, much cheaper city to take a fortunately very well-paid, by humanities PhD standards, but unfortunately only 1-year, job. The move was expensive, since it required buying a fair amount of furniture (long story), but nevertheless, as the summer and fall went on, I started throwing chunks of money at the student debt pretty regularly. So I've arrived at the end of March, 2014, with $7703 in debt and a net worth of negative $1034 (still including the car!) The student loan stands at $7558. In other words, I've paid over $11,000 on the student loan in nine months. By putting basically all my extra income towards it over the next few months, I hope to have it entirely paid off by August.
This is great, and I'm glad I've been able to tackle the loan to this extent, but it still leaves me with a lot of question marks about my financial future, which I'll tackle in my next post.
I'm a 35-year-old, permanently (at least as far as I know) single woman. I'm not complaining about that -- singleness has its pros as well as cons! But....
As this article notes, single people face some particular issues when it comes to cash flow, housing costs, and retirement savings. (See also this post by Krystal Yee, which got me thinking about this topic a lot.) Those things are definitely on my mind right now. And what with singleness being one of the key factors in my financial life right now, I figured I'd make it the title of this blog, which I'm starting after a couple of weeks of fairly intensive reading around in the personal finance blogosphere. It seems like a really good way to keep myself motivated as I move forward; I like the thought of sharing my journey, which in some ways is well underway and in some ways is just beginning.
Here's the big-picture snapshot of my financial situation, which shows you both "well underway" and also "just beginning":
That's my net worth, starting in June 2013, when I was (thanks, mint.com, for the precision) $21,249 in debt, of which nearly $19,000 was embedded in student loans that were about to begin coming due. I also had $5629 of "assets" (the little green bar) but since $3500 of that is the value of my car, we were really talking...not that much. But counting the car, that brought my net worth in at negative $15,619.
June 2013 was a big month for me; I graduated from a humanities PhD program, located in a Giant Expensive City, and moved to a much smaller, much cheaper city to take a fortunately very well-paid, by humanities PhD standards, but unfortunately only 1-year, job. The move was expensive, since it required buying a fair amount of furniture (long story), but nevertheless, as the summer and fall went on, I started throwing chunks of money at the student debt pretty regularly. So I've arrived at the end of March, 2014, with $7703 in debt and a net worth of negative $1034 (still including the car!) The student loan stands at $7558. In other words, I've paid over $11,000 on the student loan in nine months. By putting basically all my extra income towards it over the next few months, I hope to have it entirely paid off by August.
This is great, and I'm glad I've been able to tackle the loan to this extent, but it still leaves me with a lot of question marks about my financial future, which I'll tackle in my next post.
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