Sunday, January 13, 2008

Found Money

I'm usually pretty good about making a budget with my regular income sources and sticking to it but I've never sat down to account for all the little bits of money that happen to come my way from other sources.

Based on my activities over the past few years and some new stuff I have recently begun, here's what I can reasonably expect over the year:

Credit card cash back: $100
(for living expense purchases I would make anyway)

Mypoints: $50
(just for clicking emails, no shopping. I will get this in the form of a gift card to a store I regularly shop at for living expenses)

Inbox Dollars (referral link): $50
(just for clicking emails, no shopping; you can get $5 just for signing up)

Bond Rewards: $100
(online shopping for some of my living expenses- but this money is in the form of US savings bonds that will mature at a later date)

ING savings account interest: $150
(after accounting for taxes and even if I end up spending some of my emergency fund )

Health Insurance Rebate for Gym Membership : $300
I would maintain my gym membership regardless of the rebate, so this really is a bonus.

Property Tax Rebate: $250

That's an extra $1000 over the year. Not too shabby!

2 comments:

Jacob said...

Tell us more about this clicking emails business? How does it work? Is it worth it on an hourly basis?

moneychallenge said...

The clicking emails business is basically allowing these sites to send you spam and then you take as long as it takes you to scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the "get points" or "confirm" button at the end. I use a specific email address for sites such as these so as not to clutter up my regular email account.

Is it worth it on an hourly basis? Hard to say. Sometimes I think not so I don't bother clicking. But when I do click, the points add up fast.

Mypoints gives me 5 points for reading every email. I get a couple of emails a day. Their point system very roughly translates to 15points=$1. You can redeem your points for gift cards from a huge number of retailers. I'm picking Target and Walmart (don't hate me for shopping at Wallyworld!) I've had Mypoints for years.

I started Inbox Dollars just a few weeks ago. They don't mess about with points but just credit your account directly for every email you click on. So far, they seem to be averaging about $.04 per email. You can cash it out after $30 I think. They also send quite a few emails every week.

There's a good review of shopping rebate sites here