Happy Monday everyone! I hope you all had a great weekend. I had a lot to do this weekend. Went bridesmaid dress shopping for my friend’s wedding and that was a lot of fun. We also spent time with friends and started planning our New Orleans couples’ vacation for August. Anyone have any tips on what hotel we should stay at and places we MUST visit?
We haven’t really thought about houses this past week. Our house definitely isn’t ready to be put up for sale yet, and we are not in a rush to buy anytime soon for many reasons. We still like our current house and have other things we want to do with our money for the time being. But if that perfect house does come up for sale, then we are jumping on it since we are starting to think that it’s going to be difficult to find our perfect house.
We are thinking about possibly buying a house on a lake too. Any negatives for that? I’m sure there’s something that we just can’t think of…
I plan on doing an update post for my student loan payoff plan that I some months ago. We most likely won’t completely pay off my student loans this month. I calculated my payoff plan and if I paid off my student loans this month, then I don’t think I would be as comfortable with my emergency fund as it would take a larger chunk from that. I’m going to estimate that there is a 99% chance that I will have my student loans completely paid off by the end of April though.
Spending
I don’t think we did too much spending this past weekend, as I can’t even think of anything. We do plan on going shopping for new clothes for W, as lately he’s only been buying work clothes and doesn’t have much for Spring (or so he says…). I’m not sure how much we will spend but I estimate it’ll be somewhere around $200 to $300.
Also, have you ever heard of Save1? Here’s an excerpt from their website:
The company offers coupons and deals. Whenever you use one of their coupons or their deals, then your purchase also provides a meal to a child who needs it. Isn’t that awesome? I saw some other blogs talk about this company as well and I had to look further into it because it just seemed very interesting. Save1 offer many coupons and deals to a ton of retailers (most likely a retailer that you use a lot), so why not search through their website so that you can help someone else at the same time?
But how does this work? It says on their website that when they receive a commission for you using a coupon or deal through their website, that they in turn take a portion of this commission and donate it. So you save money and help others at the same time. AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME. Check them out now!
Extra Income (does not include salary from our jobs)
I received approximately $1,033 in payments so far for March. I also received $325 in rent from my sister for a total of $1,358 for the first 9 days of March. It’s kind of a slow start but I’m waiting on payments from several people still (and for a lo I get paid on a net-45 or net-60 basis) so that should bring March back up to where it normally is.
Affiliate income is still going really great and I’m glad I started working on this. I do have bigger plans for this and hope to see this area of my extra income to continually increase. It does stink that I have to wait so long for affiliate payments but I am fine with waiting 45 to 60 days 🙂 How have you been doing with your affiliate income? Are you trying to grow this?
Me and my friend are still working on our business plan but are stuck on a name for the business. We have been trying to think of a name for what seems like forever and I don’t know if we will ever think of one that we love!
Posts from last week
Food
Another meal plan this week! We’ve been doing AWESOME with eating in and have been loving it. We went out to eat the other day but had a gift card (thanks to my wonderful sister!) so it was essentially free. We also went out for drinks with friends over the weekend but that was surprisingly under $75 so we were pretty happy with that too. How are you doing with your food budget?! If you have any tasty looking recipes from last week, please share your blog post in the comments so that I can add it to my meal plan for future weeks 🙂
Wedding
Haven’t made any wedding plans lately. Haha I’m horrible with this! We really need to sit down with W’s family and start doing this. However, when I went bridesmaid dress shopping it really made me want to start planning things because I definitely fell in love with a couple of wedding dresses when we were looking around.
Being healthy
I have been doing great with being more healthy. As you can see in the first picture in this post, I am working on eating more fruits and vegetables. For snacks, I am working on eliminating all unhealthy foods (well, as much as I can. I love donuts and chocolate covered pretzels) and switching to plates of blueberries, strawberries and the like. I went to Aldi the other day and was able to get 12 kiwis, 2 boxes of cherry tomatoes, 2 boxes of blueberries, bananas and apples all for LESS THAN $10. Talk about awesome, right?!
I have also been running a lot lately and run at least a couple of miles everyday. The weather is starting to get nicer so I plan on running outside with my dog more also. I’m really wanting to become more healthy and honestly to look like my normal self. Need to lose probably 10 pounds of fat and gain a ton of muscle!
Have you been doing well with your extra income, spending and being healthy?
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Great job on switching out the junk food for fruit. Aldi's has great produce and great prices. I need to work on building Affiliate income.
Thanks Lisa! And yes Aldi is super cheap.
My recent post $1,358 in Extra Income and Awesome Life Updates
My spending wasn't too bad despite going to an out of town wedding. What killed me was a HUGE speeding ticket (apparently they are more expensive across the border than here in MN….) that really was just a dumb move on my part. Paying it off this week and moving on as quickly as I can.
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OH NO! Speeding tickets suck 🙁
My recent post $1,358 in Extra Income and Awesome Life Updates
Great job on everything as usually!
In New Orleans, I like to stay on Royal Street so that I can be a block away from Bourbon if I need to use the bathroom. Sounds crazy but Bourbon street has very few bathrooms and the ones that are there are insanely gross. I love visiting the old cemeteries!
Good to think about! We definitely want to stay within walking distance.
My recent post $1,358 in Extra Income and Awesome Life Updates
Another good reason to stay nearby is to make your own drinks. (if you drink) You can bring your drink in anywhere on Bourbon street so Greg and I just make our own giant sippy cup drinks instead of buying drinks at all the clubs. We've saved a ton of money that way. Drinks are expensive!
Great week once again Michelle! My affiliate income has really picked up over the last week or so and just makes me wonder why I waited to start doing it. The waiting 45-60 days does suck some, but it's better than not getting it at all. 😉
That's good that your affiliate income is picking up! I love how passive it is.
My recent post $1,358 in Extra Income and Awesome Life Updates
I've also recently started shopping at Aldis and can't believe i haven't done it sooner…2.5lbs of bananas, 5 apples, 3 lbs of oranges, a carton of strawberries, frozen broccoli, brown rice, and some other odds and ends for $14. Pretty great,
Yup, that's pretty awesome! They have great prices.
My recent post $1,358 in Extra Income and Awesome Life Updates
My diet and exercise always goes WAY downhill when traveling.
My recent post $1,358 in Extra Income and Awesome Life Updates
Thanks! And we need the perfect name because of the industry we are getting into. The name means everything since it will be plastered everywhere.
My recent post $1,358 in Extra Income and Awesome Life Updates
Thanks Glen! It definitely was super tasty 🙂
My recent post $1,358 in Extra Income and Awesome Life Updates
I'd love to visit New Orleans one day too. I can't wait to hear about it from you after your trip (the cost break down will be of a great interest). Sorry~ I don't have any tip since I've never been._It's so great that you're making extra money and I'll have to pick your brain later when I decide to do that also~^^
I will definitely do a cost breakdown 🙂
Congrats on making that much so far in March. I am trying to follow your lead as I brought in about $2,600 last month and I am on track to do more than that this month. Thanks for being an inspiration!
$2,600 is AWESOME!
well this week started off good! I went to the gym for an hour, and afterwards I stopped by the grocery store to splurge on delicious, fresh fruit! So now my fridge is filled with two kinds of apples, oranges and bananas. This week I`m going to do good! I really need to loose some weight. In 2010/2011 I lost over 20 pounds, but recently I`ve been noticing that my clothes has been feeling a bit tight, and I`m not about to let it all back on. So here`s to a fresh, healthy spring! And to fitting into that beautiful dress that`s been hanging in my closet for almost a year…
Yes I need to be more healthy also. I plan on going home tonight and running and working out for as long as I can 🙂
I'm always so impressed by your weekly income updates. I love the idea of doing all these extra things to make money, but the actual process of doing them seems to elude me. I do make a couple hundred bucks a month from my blog, but I'll have to check into some of the other things you've been mentioning in some other posts.
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That's great that you are getting in more exercise! I am too, although there are days when I have to push myself to exercise, but after the first 5 minutes, I'm glad I did 🙂
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Thanks! And haha I agree.
That breakfast looks outstanding! The Mrs and I have been on a major health kick. We've been doing killer ab routines and other various exercises. We've got to get Summer ready!
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Looks awesome Michelle. Does most of your income come from affiliate income and rent from your sister? I would be interested in learning where you derive most of your income from.
As for my income it's a nice part time income but no where near what you are earning. Typically I earn around $500 to $600 a month. But I'm looking for ways to increase this with affiliate income but I haven't really found anything to work that well for me yet.
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I'm focusing on affiliate income for now and I hope to make that at least 50% of my monthly income. $500 to $600 is still a good amount 🙂