Disneysteve's Common Cents Blog

For a combination of reasons, we've accumulated an unusually large amount in our checking account. July 1, I increased the percentage of my pay going to savings from 20% to 21%. DW's surgeries didn't cost us nearly as much out of pocket as I had anticipated especially thanks to the 50% discount she got for being a hospital employee. We didn't do any particularly costly travel this year. We paid off our HELOC last year and DD's braces came off. And overall, I think our spending has been down in general.

Anyway, the end result is we're sitting on a fair amount of cash that really isn't needed for any particular purpose.

Normally, I fund our Roths every 2 weeks with a portion of my pay, beginning with my first check in January and usually maxing them at 5K each by June. As it stands right now, I plan to send in $3,100 to the Roths on January 1 as soon as we're eligible to make 2010 contributions. That should put us on track to max them for the year by the end of April or maybe first check of May, at least a month earlier than usual.

The other thing I want to do with spare cash is start chipping away at our mortgage more aggressively. I've been paying an extra $100/month for a while, but if we stay on track the way we've been, I could potentially pay off as much as 8-10K extra in 2010 if I choose to do so.

I have just started all the year-end financial review stuff so my 2010 plans aren't all firmed up yet, but this is where I am right now.

It started snowing about 6 am Saturday and forgot to stop. By the time it was done, we had recorded the record high snowfall for the month of December beating the record set in 1909. We also got the 2nd highest snowfall ever after the storm of 1996.

Needless to say I've spent a good part of the past 2 days snowblowing and shoveling snow. I'm done now. Well, not done in the sense that all the snow is cleared but done in the sense that I'm not going out there again. I've got my car shoveled out. The van is mostly cleared but needs a little more work. I'll probably do that tomorrow night after work and DW and DD can work on it tomorrow, too.

It has been a long time we've seen snow like this (13 years to be exact). I just hope this isn't a sign of things to come this winter.

We got a nice surprise today. Before my wife's first surgery on 10/23, the office required us to make an upfront payment of $316 which I assume represented the percentage of the bill they anticipated wouldn't be covered by insurance.

Today, my wife got the mail and saw what she thought was another bill from the practice and wondered why because she thought we had paid everything. It turned out to be a check refunding the $316 because insurance had covered everything.

Today is her birthday so that was a nice little bonus gift.

As I reported a couple of weeks ago, we've been working on some house cleaning lately. The first round turned up some monetary rewards by finding stuff to sell on ebay.

This week, cleaning actually turned up money. Wednesday night, I was cleaning in the basement. I came across a file box of papers from when my wife and I ran the Girl Scout cookie sale for our daughter's troop 3 years ago. I realized there was no reason to still have that stuff and started pulling everything out to recycle. In one of the folders, I found a $20 bill. I'm certain that we handed over all money due to the troop so this $20 probably belonged to us for some reason, but I have no idea why it would have been in that file. So the next day, I stopped at the Girl Scout office and told them the story and to give the money to her troop (she's not a scout anymore).

Today, my daughter found a $20 bookstore gift card and $8 cash plus some change while cleaning.

So that's almost $50 turned up in a few days. Get rid of your clutter and get organized. It may pay off more than you realize.

I'm a physician and get to do a lot of online and occasionally in-person market research projects and surveys. Here in my blog, I report my monthly income from these. I also do Pinecone and Opinion Place and that is included in the total.

For the month of November, I received $441 to survey income, a pretty decent month. I'll keep at it and keep shooting for at least $400/month.

All 3 of us got on a cleaning binge this weekend. As has happened before, that has resulted in me listing some items on ebay. Yesterday, my wife came across a book/CD set from a work seminar. An identical set sold last week for $22.50 so I listed her set.

Today, my daughter unearthed her Game Boy Advance. I searched and they have been selling for $20-$30 for the player alone and DD also has a lighted grip thing that should add a few dollars to the value, so I listed that.

In the process, I also listed 5 other items that I didn't find due to cleaning but it put me in the mood to unload some things.

So I've listed 7 items in 2 days. Three items already have bids and I know from experience that most bids happen on the final day so I'm sure some of the others will sell, too. So cleaning the house may bring in $50-$100 in sales if we're lucky.

I haven't listed anything on ebay for months, despite my own ebay challenge for the year. As the sidebar shows, I made nothing in July or August. September was great with book sale on Half.com and a little came in in October and November.

My wife actually spurred me to get back on ebay. We've been doing some housecleaning this weekend and she handed me a book/CD set she got at a work seminar last year and asked if I could sell it on ebay. I just listed it and found that an identical set sold last week for $22.50. I've be happy to get even my starting bid of $14.99.

Now I'm going to go down to my stock area and prepare some listings for Christmas collectible items. This week is prime time for selling that stuff.

Right now, my monthly average is only just over $70, not nearly the $100 goal I set for myself, but it's my own fault. Without this self-imposed challenge, though, I doubt I would have done anywhere near that much in sales so it certainly wasn't a failure.

I'll post a year-end summary at the end of next month. If anyone else took on this challenge, make sure you post your final numbers, too.

I'm typically one of the regulars on the forums who advises investing first, pre-paying the mortgage second (if at all). I find that my view is slowly changing. I think it is partly due to my mortgage balance shrinking and partly due to my getting ever closer to retirement. I've still got about 17 years before my goal of retiring at 62, but that is close enough that some planning needs to be done.

Last year, I started adding $100/month to the mortgage payment for extra principal. That was done after we made the last payment for our daughter's braces. That payment was $150/month. I figured we were living fine without that money for 18 months. We could keep living fine without it, so I put most of it toward the mortgage. Our regular payment (principal and interest) is just under $700, so that means almost 2 extra payments per year. Also, a couple of times when some other extra money came in, I added more to that month's payment.

There is a medical survey program that I do. It is an ongoing study and I do data entry almost daily. Unlike the other survey programs I do, this one doesn't pay each time I do it or even monthly but just one payment per year of $1,000. I've decided that when that payment comes in (I'm not exactly sure when my year is up) I will send that $1,000 all to the mortgage. It is totally found money and isn't needed in any other area of our budget or savings plan.

I have not sat down and run numbers to see when we could be mortgage free but I see no reason why we can't knock off at least 3 years. That would have us paid off when I'm about 60, though I know that as the balance gets smaller, I'll want to just write one big check and get rid of it, so we'll probably be done before that. That would give us a solid 2-3 years (or more) to sock away cash in anticipation of retirement.

Recap for the newbies: I am a family practice doctor and I have the opportunity to do a lot of medical surveys and market research programs, mostly online but occasionally in person (focus groups and such). Each month, I post the total I've earned from surveys for that month.

As I've posted in recent months, I tend to get in slumps where I pass up a lot of the survey opportunities that come my way. A couple of months ago, I got back on track and focused on doing as many of them as I could. That turned out well with my income turning around from $171 in August to $428 in September. I figure if I can consistently bring in $400 or more, that's an extra $5,000 a year in income, enough to pay for a couple of weeks vacation for my family.

Well, October turned out to be a gold mine for me. I received payments for 17 surveys plus got to do 2 in-person programs. I collected a grand total of almost a grand - $986.00! Of course, I am quite happy with that. If that doesn't motivate me to keep doing the surveys, I don't know what will.

As you know, I do a lot of online medical surveys (I'm a physician) and earn a good amount of money doing so. One thing I've also done periodically in the past is participate in survey and market research programs in person. There are 3 or 4 companies in my area that do this. I used to do them more often and stopped simply because I've been busy in the office and haven't had the time or energy (they are often in the evening and after a full day of work, the last thing I want to do is sit in some conference room for 2 hours answering questions).

Anyway, I got a couple of invitations recently and decided that with the upcoming medical bills (see my previous post - my wife is having surgery shortly), perhaps I should go do a few of these programs. They are reasonably easy and enjoyable and pay very well.

As it worked out, I was able to schedule 2 of them for this coming Thursday - one at 3:30pm and one at 7:30pm. The first pays $130 and the second pays $225, so in one day, I'll pick up an extra $355 in a matter of about 2 hours. Both places are located about 15 minutes from home in office buildings so travel and parking aren't an issue. I have a feeling I'll be paying more attention to those invites from now on.

And things were rolling along so well this year...

My wife has been having some gynecological issues which her doctor has been trying to correct with medication without success. So she is going in on Tuesday for a D&C/Hysteroscopy. Once that is done, they will be scheduling her for a total hysterectomy in the near future.

Obviously, my first concern is that she get better soon as she really has been miserable lately, but there will be a significant financial impact to her surgery, too. We have insurance but there is a deductible and co-insurance to deal with. Her gallbladder surgery a few years back cost us about $3,000 as I recall. I suspect this ordeal will run more than that between the 2 procedures. I'm guessing about $5,000. She is supposed to get a discount of some sort because she works for the hospital but I don't know what that will amount to.

Then there are lost wages. I'll probably lose about $1,500 in income from taking off. She will probably lose another $1,000-$1,500 depending on how long she has to be out of work.

So all together, we're probably looking at about $8,000 in unexpected costs. We have the money, fortunately, but it is still a lot, not that you can put a price on your health.

I am a physician and have the opportunity to do many online (and occasional in-person) surveys and market research programs. They can be fairly quick and easy or they can be quite long, boring and tedious, but in either case, they pay quite well, on the order of $100/hour or more sometimes. Here in my blog, I report the income I received during the month from doing surveys. It is not the amount generated during the month as there is a lag of several weeks between survey and payment.

For the month of September, I collected $428. I'm quite pleased with that. If you have been following my blog, you'll know that the past few months I had been slacking off and not doing all the surveys I got offered. No reason. Just laziness. So in August I only made $171. In July, I made $160. September was my best month since June (actually $2 more than June). I'm planning to stay on track doing what comes my way and keep the monthly total up over the $400 mark.

I usually save my monthly medical survey update for the end of the month but I had a particularly good week. As I posted last month, I had gotten out of the habit of doing all the surveys I get offered and my survey income had really dropped off as a result. So I hunkered down and started doing as many as I could again. There is some lag time between when I do a survey and when I get paid so that renewed commitment is starting to show up in the mail.

This week, I received one survey check each day from Monday through Friday for payments that totaled $210. There are still 4 more mailing days in September so I can't give a monthly total yet but this week alone I've earned more than in all of August or all of July. It is just totally stupid when I don't do these surveys. I need someone to smack me when I get in those ruts.

I had a big half.com sale today, a medical text for $29.95. My price was well below the next lowest price. I did that on purpose. I got the book for free and figured if I could get $30 for it, I'd be very happy. That brings me to 16 sales and $158.86 for the month. I'm quite happy with that.

As I've reported before, and as my sidebar shows, I got off track with my Ebay Challenge for a while in late spring and summer, earning absolutely nothing for July and August.

This month, I listed a bunch of books on half.com. I love that site. It is simple to use and stuff sells very well. The best thing is that almost all of the books that I sell are things that I get for free by doing surveys and online pharmaceutical details, so it is is pure profit.

I have sold 15 books so far this month for a total of $128.91. That puts me over my $100/month goal, though I have to exceed that to make the average for the year $100 since I didn't do much for 4 months. RIght now, my average over 9 months is only $78.18/month.

I still haven't gotten back on ebay. That is more time consuming and I just haven't had the get up and go to do it. Maybe after the Jewish holidays are over.

I posted about this on the forums, but wanted to elaborate here. I have sold books on half.com for some time and it really seems to go in waves. I'll sell nothing for weeks and weeks and then all of a sudden, I'll have a slew of sales.

Last Sunday night, I listed 9 copies of a medical book I had gotten doing surveys online. By Friday, all 9 copies had sold. Not only that, but since then, 2 other books that I had listed weeks ago also sold. So that's 11 sales in 8 days.

For those who have books lying around that you don't need, this is a simple place to try and sell them. There is no cost unless the item sells. Half.com handles all the details and collects from the buyer and sends you a payment on your account twice each month automatically. It is much simpler than ebay.

For the newbies - I'm a physician and get to do a lot of online surveys. They pay pretty well though they can be rather boring and tedious to complete. I tend to go through phases where I do everyone I get invited to and then slack off and fall off track. I'm trying to get back on track now.

My total survey income for August was $171 which is lousy but it reflects the period where I was slacking off. I'm hoping September will be much better.

I also do some surveys or e-details that "pay" me with some medically relevant item like a textbook, anatomic model, etc. When I get those, I generally try and sell them on half.com or ebay. I just made a sale on half.com today for $7.95 but I'll count that in September when I actually receive the money.

4 days from now, we'll be on the road on our way to Disney World! We'll leave Friday afternoon, hopefully by 3pm. We'll drive until about 10pm or so and stop for the night. We'll get back on the road about 8am Saturday morning and arrive at our rental house in Kissimmee by around 6pm if all goes smoothly.

Then we'll have two whole weeks to enjoy ourselves. We've been to Disney World many, many times but one thing we've never done is gone for 2 weeks. We're looking forward to having time to do some stuff we don't usually do. We have tickets to see Cirque du Soleil. We plan to do an airboat ride in the swamp and lots of other fun stuff besides all the usual Disney stuff.

I'll be online the whole time so I'll post reports.

I admit it. I've failed at my own challenge. At the beginning of the year, I posted the ebay challenge, to have average monthly sales of $100. I got off to a strong start as you can see on my sidebar. Then I just dropped off to nothing.

So now I'm determined to get back on track. We leave for vacation on Friday and when I get back, I'm getting back to business. I just figured out that I need to earn $625.27 by the end of the year to have my monthly average be $100. I've got 4 months so that's $156.32/month. That's a challenge, for sure, but I'll do my best. Before, I was usually listing 5 items per week. I'll have to do more than that to reach my goal.

Edited to correct "5 items per month" to "5 items per week".

I kind of fell out of the blogging habit and I realize I didn't do my usual monthly post about my survey income, so I thought I'd post now and update the last 3 months.

Along with not blogging, I also got off track yet again with doing surveys. I blame Facebook and that darn poker game. It is totally addictive.

Anyway, for the newbies, I'm a doctor and get to do a lot of medical surveys and market research programs, mostly online. They are fairly tedious and boring but pay quite well. These are not open to the general public, though I do also do Opinion Place and Pinecone (and those earnings are included in these totals).

May 2009: $227.00
June 2009: $426.00
July 2009: $160.00

So May wasn't too terrible. June was very good and then July was lousy. I know $160 sounds like a lot of money, but trust me, it isn't. Just this morning, I did one survey for $125 and that is not unusual, so making only $160 for an entire month means I really didn't pay attention to most offers that came through my in box. I'm trying to do better again. August should be decent though there is a bit of a lag between when I do them and when I get the money.

ETA: Today alone, I've gotten faxed invitations to 3 surveys: $30, $55 and $60. That's in addition to the $125 survey I did via an e-mail invitation earlier today. As I said, the pay is good, but sometimes the volume of surveys gets overwhelming and I shut down and don't do them for a while. Then I realize how stupid it is to be throwing away money like that.

Several months ago (January, I think) I posted an entry entitled, "Our house is falling apart."

Six months later, we've fixed several things on that list, though not all of them. In the meantime, a few new ones have cropped up.

We had to have our oven repaired not long ago. I went to bake pizzas one night and the oven warmed up but didn't get to anywhere close to 450 degrees, so we ended up with warm but not fully cooked pizza. When the repairman came out, he was able to fix it but advised us that it is 20 years old and it probably won't last much longer.

We've had a recurring problem with carpenter ants and have had the house treated a few times over the years. This being ant season, they came back last week. The exterminator came out and retreated but discovered some moisture damage in the wall where the paneling is bowing and cracking. So now we need to have a contractor come out, rip out that paneling, see what kind of damage exists behind it and fix whatever needs to be fixed.

Now, our stovetop, which is just as old as the oven, is on the fritz. I was helping DD cook some potstickers last night and even though the burner was only set on medium, it got red hot and burned the food.

So it looks like we need to go shopping for a new oven AND stovetop. Oh, and replacing the oven means having the contractor rebuild the wall (it is a built-in model) because our oven is 26" and the standard now is 27" so it won't fit where the current one is. Also, the current unit is a combined oven and microwave (that died a couple of years ago) so we want to rebuild the wall to fit a new oven and build a cubby to put our free-standing microwave and get it off our countertop (that will be nice). Besides, we've always hated our stovetop. It has 4 burners, 2 small and 2 large, but they are too close together so you can't actually have 4 decent size pots going at the same time. I'm sure the end result will be a more functional kitchen, but we just weren't planning on spending any big bucks on renovations at this point in time.

Oh well, such is life.

Hi. I haven't blogged much lately. Just haven't felt like it. Thought I'd report on a nice casino trip today, though.

My wife and I went to Harrah's Chester for a few hours. A few days ago, I had a dream that I was at a casino and won $4,500 on a slot machine. Now I'm not into supernatural stuff or astrology or any of that nonsense, so I didn't take the dream as any kind of omen or sign that I had to go gamble, but we went anyway.

While I didn't win $4,500, I did win pretty much every thing I played. I played video blackjack, video poker, video roulette and slots. I won at all of them, though shortly before leaving I played poker a 2nd time and lost what I had initially won. Surprisingly, I did best on the slot machine (usually blackjack is my most successful game). In two session on the same machine, I won a total $98.00.

For the trip all together, I won $174.50. My wife ended up behind, but not that much, so we were still ahead for the day, had fun, had a nice lunch and stopped at our favorite bakery on the way home for a special treat.

I realize I haven't blogged for a while. Just haven't been in the mood. I thought I should post that I just sent in the final 2009 contributions to our ROTHs so each is fully funded for $5,000.

Now I need to decide what to do with that portion of our savings for the rest of the year. I think it is all going to go to build up our cash reserve. The list of home repairs that need to be done is growing steadily and we really need to start tackling some projects so I want to start setting aside money.

I realized today I hadn't done my monthly post about survey income. For the newbies, I'm a physician and get to do various online surveys on medical topics. I also do Pinecone and Opinion Place.

For April, I earned $433 from surveys. Not my best month. Not my worst month. Solidly in the middle of the road. I haven't been keeping up with all the invites lately (damn Facebook poker - LOL) and need to get back on track. I fall off the wagon now and then.

Today is a beautiful spring day, the first we've really had this year. I spent a couple of hours attacking the disaster area we call our garage. I managed to make some progress, get rid of some trash, put some stuff in the recycling bin and condense some of what remains. I also made a trip to the Goodwill donation center with 3 boxes containing 3 sets of dishes, 1 box of children's books and 1 old computer monitor. That cleared some space in the garage.

I also located a number of items that I will list on ebay, hopefully starting tomorrow. So my decluttering may yield some cash, too, and help my ebay challenge numbers. We'll see.

I finally got back to ebay this week. I had 4 items ready to list (photographed, descriptions written) but when I did a quick search, I discovered that 2 of the 4 weren't worth listing. They don't sell well or bring enough to be worth trying. I did list the other 2 items. As of right now, both have bids ($9.99 and $7.99) so I will be adding a minimum of $17.98 to my April total. I will be out tonight and tomorrow night so the soonest I can list anything else is Saturday or Sunday. I'll probably try and prep a few things on Saturday and list on Sunday. I probably won't hit the $100 goal this month unless I can dig up some good stuff to sell next week or I get some more half.com sales.

I transferred $1,000 to my wife's Roth last night. This is part of the tax refund money. I haven't sent all of that money in yet because I ended up lending my mom some money. Her taxes ended up being more than expected due to some investment gains and it made more sense for us to lend her the money rather than her having to cash out some other investment. We'll get it back in a couple of weeks when a CD matures. Then that money ($1,500) will go to the Roths also. Plus, the remainder of the tax refund will go shortly.

That puts us at $5,165 to the Roths YTD so we're over the half-way point. My goal is always to max them in the first half of the year so we are right on track.

A couple of days ago, I went to lock the front door deadbolt and when I turned the knob, nothing happened. The knob turned but the bolt didn't move. I'm no home improvement whiz but I knew that wasn't what was supposed to happen. Fortunately, the door has 2 locks so I didn't have to rush right out and fix it.

When we first installed that door, we put in a better quality (more expensive) lock set. I don't remember exactly when that was, but it was somewhere around 8 years ago. I certainly expected it to last a lot longer than 8 years given what it cost. When I took it apart, I saw the problem. The metal ring around the shaft had just broken apart. So much for better quality.

I stopped at Home Depot today and bought a basic set. If the more costly ones aren't going to hold up any better than the cheaper ones, why spend the extra bucks. This one doesn't feel quite as nice in your hand, but big deal. It will do the job and if it breaks in a few years, I won't feel like I got ripped off.

I haven't posted an update recently mainly because I had nothing to say. I haven't listed on ebay for 2 weeks so I've gotten off-track with my challenge.

Fortunately, half.com, which had been dead for a couple of months, picked back up. I've sold 2 books this week. One for $4.25 and one for $29.99.

That gives me $34.24 for April.

I do have a few items ready to be listed on ebay and just haven't done it yet. Perhaps I'll actually get them on this weekend.

Today is my last day of work until April 13. I always take off for the week that Passover begins because we have so much to do at home. Lots of cleaning, shopping and cooking. So it isn't a vacation in the "sit on the beach and relax" sense, but it is time away from the office. It also gives me a few days when I can actually sleep past 7am. We've really been on a treadmill of activity lately so I'm looking forward to the break in routine, even if there is still a lot of work involved while I'm off. Plus, after Wednesday, the work will be done and I'll have a few days to actually relax.

So I'll wish an early Happy Passover to my Jewish friends and Happy Easter to those of you who celebrate that.