Finance Friday: MTurk

Hey, so I totally missed Fiber Friday last week. For good reason though, I had a shawl blocking, but my dad also happened to be in the same state as me. So he and I got to sort of hang out and introduce the future in-laws. Fiber Friday should be back next week, hopefully it will be a good one ;)

Do you love Amazon? Do you have an Amazon wishlist a mile long, but an empty wallet? Here's a solution-ish. While I'm yet to see great returns from this, it has helped here and there with some extra dollars.

There's this place called Amazon Mechanical Turk, found at mturk.com . It's run by Amazon, and will link to your Amazon Payments account.

So what is it? Well, it's surveys and tasks. I stick mostly with the surveys because some of the 'tasks' are sketchy like "Download this program and test it". Ummmm.... viruses and hard drive malfunctions anyone?

A lot of the surveys I take seem to be preliminary research for graduate students getting ready for their thesis and such. Some are really short, like 5-10 minutes. But some are over an hour long. (I'm yet to actually take the entire hour to complete the survey though, I'm a fast reader.) And often have quality control questions in them to make sure you are actually paying attention.

The only downfall to this is you have to 'qualify' in order to get higher paying tasks. For the first few months I used this, I could only qualify for tasks that paid $.01- $.50. But, it does add up over time. And when you do start to qualify, you can make a few bucks per completed task.

Then, as you shop on Amazon, during checkout it will ask if you want to use your Payment Account balance, letting you know how much is in there, for your purchase. So, you don't have to charge your card or bank account if you have enough.

If you want the cash, I know that you can cash out the balance, as long as it's over $1.00. Personally I like to set a goal and work to it before withdrawing so it really makes a difference if/when I do withdraw.

This is a great way to get some extra cash during commercial breaks, or during your lunch breaks, even for an hour or two on weekends!

Good luck and happy earnings!

Dave Ramsey Talking in an Understanable Way

Okay. I had the good intentions to do a regular post each Friday and Sunday, but life (aka Grad School) got in the way there. But I'm back (hopefully)!

Since my last post, I think it was Oddly Enough about selling Box Tops for Education on Ebay. (It really works, at least it did for me), I've been trying to squeeze in some financially based reading. I've seen Dave Ramsey mentioned over and over, and I found a decent deal on one of his books, so the next few Finance Friday posts may be a little Ramsey heavy.

I will admit I don't watch his tv show, because, well.... it's annoying. But the book I'm currently reading is very user friendly and easy to understand.

Today's Financial Gem:
" (Make) a decision about looking good versus being good. Looking good is when your broke friends are impressed by what you drive, and being good is having more money than they have."

Thank you, Dave Ramsey!

Car Free Friday! (Or Saturday)

When it comes to saving money, I like to look at big things and little things. In the past week, I've filled up my gas tank twice. Once on Friday, and then again on Tuesday. In the three days between gas prices went up 11 cents per gallon. And over the course of a month that can add up to a couple of dollars.($3.96 for me if I fill up three times a month, that's more than it costs for me to get some dinner at Taco Bell.)

I'm into saving dollars and cents here and there, because over time they will add up to something amazing (like the down payment on a house).

Now this got me thinking about life back in Utah. At USU there was a campaign for "Car Free Fridays" in hope of making a difference in the air quality in Cache Valley, especially during those winter inversion months.

It was ridiculously easy for me to go car free in Logan, I mean, I lived a mile and a half away from campus where I both worked and studied. I could bike, or use one of the two free public transit systems that operated in my neighborhood.  I only really NEEDED a car on Sundays to get to church down the hill.

While it really is a small financial difference, I still have a designated car free day where I am now. It's Saturday. And on weeks like this week, Fall Break, I make it a point to try to have more than one car-free day. Less driving means less gas consumption, and less wear and tear on the car, so car bills are slightly lower.

 So, my tip for this week is for you to look at your week, figure out which day you really could get by with not using your car. This may mean rearranging times when you shop or run certain errands (I shop on my way home from work one night instead of doing it Saturdays), or running errands closer to home so you can walk or bike, but you can do it.

It might also help if you set up a reward for yourself for not driving that one day a week. I exchange that day for driving out to Knit Night.

Remember, it's those pennies that count when it comes to savings!

Two Words

Manager's Special

(Just because it's a little dented, or the box is bent a little doesn't mean it's going to kill you when you eat it. And only paying 50% or less of the retail price? You will be saving like crazy!)

Getting a Picture of Your Financial Situation: Mint.com

"You can't hit a target you can't see." 

Brian Tracy

I'd like to add that you can't pick a target unless you know where you're standing. 

So, before I get into things like making smart financial choices, saving money, and all that sort of thing, we need to get you to a point where you know exactly where you stand financially. Over the next couple of weeks I'll share some different ways to keep track of your finances, because different people operate different ways. What works for me, might not be so great or useful for you, and vice versa. Feel free to add anything you have tried that works for you because you never know what will work for what person.

This week is a very brief, but helpful post to introduce you to a useful online tool. (Most of you probably have heard of it already, and may even be using it.)It's a website called Mint.com. 

What Mint.com does is it links up all of your accounts that you have online access to. Credit cards, loans, savings, stocks, etc. And it adds everything up and gives you a total "Net Worth" (or how much money you actually have after taking into account all your debt). 

Mint also keeps track of things like unusual spending, unexplained fees, when bills are due, and low balances in accounts. Now this can be useful, but honestly I find it annoying at times. Mint doesn't understand the automatic identity protection program I use and that it's not a 'fee' charged to my card for using my card. It also lets me know that my bank accounts have 'low' balances when they reach something like $200, which for a starving grad school student really isn't a 'low' balance.

What I like most about Mint is it has tools to help you calculate how much you need to save for retirement. It also has a tool that shows how long it will take to pay off a debt and allows you to enter in different payment amounts. It even calculates how much you'll save on interest with each payment option you try out. 

My favorite however, is that Mint allows you to set financial goals for savings (like the retirement one), and links to an account. I set up a "House" account for a down payment on a house. Mint calculates how much I would need for a down payment, then keeps track of where I'm at on progressing toward that goal. 

And I'm all about setting and reaching goals, and I think that's the best part of Mint, it gives you a visual look at how you are progressing on goals, and what you need to do in order to meet them. 

(We WILL talk about setting financial goals later. Right now just focus on figuring out where you stand now, so you can set better goals later.)

Friday... A Regular Post?

I stalk blogs. I just do. I want to be a better blogger and so I stalk people who blog to see what they do that I might be able to do something similar. But in my own way because I don't think it would be nice to blatantly copy someone, unless it's a really really good idea.

So, maybe, just maybe I might start doing a weekly tip post on Fridays. Maybe.

We're gonna give it a try okay?

I have a hobby of sorts. It spawns from the same motivation that David Bach gives in his book, "Smart Women Finish Rich". Every woman has a right to be educated about finances. That way if she never gets married, or is somehow left single later in life, she does not flounder financially. She knows what's what, how to manage money, what a retirement account is, how to make investments, and how to calculate things like mortgages and how much to save.

My little tidbit for today? Well, a lot of financial advice things that I've seen in the past say that you should try to be saving at least 10% of your income in some sort of retirement fund. However, for women, you should be saving 12-15% of your income. Why?

Because, on average women live longer than men by 5 years. So if as a woman, you are saving 10%, for the last five of years of your life, what are you living on? Not much, that's for sure.

So, how do we go about saving this money? Well, we can get into that over the next few weeks, I guess. Rally, women! We can be financially educated!