Mapgirl’s Fiscal Challenge

Saturday afternoon in a haze of painkillers, I contemplate my income. I see that PF Bloggers are making money doing marketing surveys and whatnot, things like Deal Barbie, Pay Per Post, tc.

I, for one, have always been reluctant to give away my personal information. It’s never been something that interested me. I hate getting scads of junk mail. I’m the one who has to truck it out to the dumpster, so I’d rather not have the mailman bring it to me. Ever since I asked the Direct Marketing Association to remove me from their mailing lists, I have not received any junk mail beyond the catalogs I already use and a local coupon flyer.

But I digress. I really wanted to write about other income streams. I have monetized this blog. I succumbed and I have ads. I have made a little money from it, enough to pay for my domain name. (For that eventual move to WordPress.) However, for family reasons, I stopped working a second job on Sundays. I also don’t cram this site full of ads to make even more money off of people’s eyeballs.

I don’t sell stuff on eBay. I actually don’t like eBay. I don’t buy anything there either. I had two experiments there and one set of books sold, the other did not. I wasn’t sure that it was worth the money in the end. But I see how it’s appealing to run stuff on eBay versus holding a yard sale.

Now that I’m getting serious about throwing stuff away in the house, I am inviting friends to pick through my stash of yarns and buy any from me that they want. Two of my knitter friends came over on Friday to keep me company and bought some yarns from me. I made $28.00 selling yarns that I easily purchased for $30 or more. (That’s the beauty of stash. You keep it for so long, you forget what you paid.)

I have some ideas about selling crafts and turning my hobbies into businesses. I would love to be able to blog full time and make money teaching knitting and spinning., but I don’t think I’d be able to make the kind of money I am accustomed to spending. I think part of my problem is that I subbornly refuse to economize. I am not a lavish spender. I don’t own a tv. I don’t buy lots of DVD’s or video games. Dining out, books, and my annual vacation trip are probably my biggest extravagances.

As things with my family’s situation settle down, I guess I’m still thinking about getting a second job. It’s really kind of insane. There are people who would be thrilled to make the salary that I do. But for some reason, I feel like it’s not enough. I want to make more so I can save more.

Like the ant that’s toiled all summer, I am looking forward to the fruits of my labor this autumn and winter. As the weather grows cold, I will be able to look upon my summer savings and know that I am comfortable.

Looking for passive, residual income is great. But I guess looking at my interest growth on savings is what’s keeping me going right now.

Sure I could look for another job and make more money. I get restless and bored very easily with work. I need fresh intellectual challenges all the time. I could make the investment in a certification course and use that as leverage to find another job which pays $10-20K more than the one I currently have. I could finally bite the bullet and go to business school and ask for $30K more, but be saddled with crazy student loan debts.

I guess the answer is no, I am not making enough money as I could be. I’m early to mid-career in a good career. I could easily take myself to the next level, but I am hating the adage, “You have to spend money to make money.” It’s not doing anything for me to reduce my credit card debt, that’s for sure. I struggle with the idea of making more but working less. I could make more by working more, that’s easy. I know how to do that. THis other stuff, collecting passive income? I don’t know. I feel like I need to sock away more savings to make that really work for me.

I’ve been wandering into the idea of purchasing more dividend paying stocks. My uncle worked a long time for P&G. He’s retired now and doing quite well. I think a lot about that. He was a company man at P&G. Over 30 years, I bet he bought a lot of their stock at an employee discount. I’d never buy my company’s stock, but what if I diligently started buying P&G and Coca-Cola and never stopped buying it for 30 years? I think I’d probably do ok.

Alrighty. Enough rambly thoughts. It’s time to pull out another ice pack and get away from the keyboard.