Bringing Money In: April

Photo courtesy of Daniel Y. Go

Wow–this month has been busy. Crazy crazy busy, but apparently it was worth it. There was $1,307.32 in extra income in April, a new record! Here’s where the extra money came from:

• Gift Cards: I redeemed $55 in Amazon GCs through Swagbucks. I used the credit to buy waterproof mattress pads and shoes for the kids, to my husband’s dismay. He wants video games. If you haven’t using Swagbucks, you really should!
• Coinstar: The kids helped me find every bit of loose change in the couch cushions, laundry room and rest of the house, to the tune of $23.20. If you select the gift card option at a Coinstar machine, you don’t pay a fee, and it gives you an actual plastic gift card. You can pick Old Navy, JCPenney, and other great choices!
• Refunds: I mentioned last month that we bundled our phone/internet/satellite services back in January. I finally got back the credit from the old phone and internet companies, for a total of $68.92.
• Yard Sale & Craigslist: Whew! This was huge, but it was not easy. It took a month’s worth of work (more, really) and a very hot morning (92 degrees!) but I sold a lot of stuff, netting $534.
• AmEx Cashback: We have one credit card–an American Express card–because you have to pay the balance off each month. We use it to pay for everything, then pay off the balance each month. Instead of their points card, we’ve opted for the cash back card, and you can earn up to 5% back on regular purchases like groceries and gas. They credited our account with $478.94 for the past year.
• Blog Income: As I’ve said before, this is so variable. I received a check from BlogHer for $42.28, and finally got a payout from Google AdSense. The $104.98 was great, but it’s from the past nine months. I know a lot of bloggers do very well with Google AdSense, but I’m not one of them.

All in all, I’m thrilled with the extra income this month, and it would have been even higher but we did donate quite a bit to the March of Dimes. There was also a non-monetary gain; I bartered with my neighbor to do some landscaping/building in the front yard in exchange for me selling his clutter at the yard sale. That saved me over $500 in labor costs if I’d had to hire someone to do it, and he got a clean basement and $200 cash from all the items I sold at the yard sale.