For the newbies: I'm a physician and get to participate in a bunch of medical surveys and market research programs. These are for doctors only, not open to the general public. I also do some general surveys like Pinecone but the bulk of my survey income is medical.

For the month of October, I earned $781 which makes it my second best month of the year after July. I'm very happy with that. That brings me to $6,071.75 for the year, well above my goal of $5,000 and we still have two more months to go. I should end the year somewhere past $7,000.

I've been thinking about refinancing for ages, ever since the rates bottomed out, but just kept procrastinating even though I knew it would save us thousands. Not really sure why except that I see the whole process as a bit of a hassle and didn't want to deal with it.

I finally took the plunge today and applied for the refi.

We will be going from a 25-year loan with 17 years, 7 months remaining at 5.875% to a new 15-year loan at 3.99%. I haven't attempted to calculate the savings we will realize over the life of the loan but I know it is a significant number.

We have been paying extra on our mortgage and will continue to do so so I don't expect to have the new loan for 15 years. Most likely, we'll be rid of it in less than 10 years if things go well. Dropping the interest rate 2 points will make that even easier.

For the newbies: I'm a physician and get to do a lot of medical market research surveys, mostly online, that are for physicians only. My goal for 2010 was to earn $5,000 this year through these surveys. I also do a couple of non-medical surveys like Pinecone and Opinion Place so my numbers include everything, but 99% of it is medical.

For September, I earned $602.50. It was down from the past few months but I expected that because I was away for 2 weeks in August and 1 week in July so I wasn't able to do many of the surveys I was invited for. Still, I'm not complaining about $600.

That brings my total for the year to $4,776.75, just $223.25 short of my goal for the year. And today, October 1, I received $195.00 in payments, so I'm really only $28.25 from my goal. I should hit that within a week. I guess I needed to set the bar higher.