Disneysteve's Common Cents Blog

Well my wife is officially unemployed. Her last day was May 30. I ran the numbers and her average monthly take home pay was $385. On top of that, a total (with match) of $480 was going into her 401k, so $865 total that we're down as a result.

We're addressing that in a few ways. We are tightening up the spending particularly in the area of groceries and dining out. We have typically averaged about $300/month eating out. For the past few weeks, we have cut that back significantly and have been doing a lot more cooking at home. For example, I used to go straight from my office to our synagogue on nights when I had meetings and I'd stop and pick up dinner on the way. Now, I've been stopping at home and getting dinner there instead so that probably costs $2-3 instead of $8-10 when I'd eat out.

We've also started using coupons which I haven't really been in the habit of doing for a while. It saves $2-3/week but it all counts and all adds up.

I've been more careful about where I buy gas and have been paying cash a lot more since many stations charge more for credit. I used to stick to stations that charged the same for cash or credit. The problem has become that those stations are charging more. So instead of $3.33 for cash and credit, I'm going to the station that is $3.27 for cash and $3.37 for credit and paying cash. Again, not a big savings but it's something.

The main thing I'm doing is really focusing on my survey participation. It's probably too soon to make a dependable prediction but I've started tracking my actual surveys done. Previously, I only tracked the money when it actually comes in.

For the week of May 27, I did $291 worth of surveys.
For the week of June 3, I did $210 worth of surveys.
For the week of June 10, I've done $185 worth of surveys and the week isn't over yet.
I also do an ongoing survey that pays me $150/month which works out to $34/week.
So for the past 3 weeks, that means I've generated a total of $788. That's a weekly average of $262.66. Multiplied out for a year, that's $13,659. I realize I can't really extrapolate based on less than 3 weeks of data but there is certainly a high probability that I will earn more in 2013 than I was shooting for originally (8K). At that rate, I could earn almost 8K just from June to December and I already took in $3,000 through March, so 10-11K for the year is certainly doable.

This also includes only online surveys. I regularly get invited to do in-person studies but don't usually get to them for scheduling reasons. I'm paying more attention to those and trying to find ones that I can work around to do. Even if I could only do one every 2-3 months, it could add another thousand or more to my total.

On my wife's end, she is doing the sewing/quilting thing and has already sold 20 or more items. A friend bought 9 $5 tote bags from her yesterday for teacher gifts plus a $60 patchwork beach bag for herself. Our neighbor bought an iPad cover for a gift and a Kindle cover for herself. And there have been numerous other sales so that's doing well so far.

I'll post at the end of the month with the monthly survey total as always. I'm at $322 so far so it should be good.

Quick recap: I'm a family practice physician and have the opportunity to participate in many medical market research surveys. Doing so provides me a decent second income. These are not available to the general public, though I also do some general surveys like Pinecone, Harris, and Opinion Place and earnings from those are included in my totals given here.

For the month of May, I earned $640. Not bad at all though a bit below what I'd like to average this year.

As I've reported previously, my wife just left her job (Thursday was her last day). One of my goals is to make up a chunk of her income by increasing my survey income. During May, particularly the second half of the month, I really stepped it up and responded to every single invitation I received. Of course, there were some that I screened out of, but I got to do a lot of them, more than I typically would. I'm very optimistic about June's income since there is a lag of a few weeks between doing a survey and getting paid. Most of that May activity will equal June income. Stay tuned.

I posted a bit about this on the forums. My wife has decided to leave her job for various reasons and will be done at the end of the month. She works part time, usually 3 days per week, and brings home about $385/month on average. That will put a little kink in the budget but what I'll miss even more is the $500+/month that was going into her 401k between her contribution and the employer match. In her 6 years on the job, she's built up about $40,000 in her 401k account.

I'm striving to replace a chunk of her take home pay by upping my game with the medical surveys that I do. As I've posted many times, I'm not always consistent with responding to the invitations and doing everything that comes my way. With this new motivation, I'm really committed to taking advantage of as many offers as I possibly can. So far this week, I've done 5 surveys that paid a total of $295.

Of course, the supply of surveys isn't consistent or linear at all so I can't expect to earn that much every week, but I figure if I stay on track, I should be able to up my average monthly survey income by about $200 which would cover more than half of her take home pay and some months maybe even more. Time will tell but that's the plan.

The other thing is that she has started sewing and quilting and has already sold several items. We are picking up her new (used) sewing machine tomorrow which will allow her to work much better and more efficiently so that she can really start ramping up what she makes. The goal is to start doing some craft shows, community yard sales, bazaars, etc. and have her bring in some money that way. We don't really have a prediction yet for that business. It will all depend on how involved she gets with hit. She can also start selling items online to broaden her audience.

The thought at the moment is that she'll stay out of work over the summer and probably look for something new once school is back in session - unless the craft business really takes off and is bringing in enough to make that unneccesary.

Recap: I'm a family practice physician and have the opportunity to do a lot of medical market research surveys. These are not available to the general public.

For April, I earned $709 from survey programs. That was a lot better than I expected because as I've posted previously, I've been really busy and let a lot of invites go unanswered so I was pleased with that. The past couple of weeks I've managed to do several so I'm hoping May will be decent too. There is usually a lag of a couple of weeks between when I do a program and when I get paid, although some are instant or close to it.

Quick recap - I'm a family practice physician and get to do a lot of medical market research surveys. This serves as a second income for me and I track my earnings here.

For the month of March, as I expected, income was on the lower side: $450. Not bad certainly but I knew it wouldn't be higher as I've been extremely busy and just haven't had the time or energy to do as many surveys. April will probably be similarly low unless things slow down a bit at work and with my volunteer responsibilities as president of our synagogue (which I doubt). Still, an extra $450/month is nothing to complain about.

Our daughter is a junior in high school and in the process of exploring her college options. She is looking to go for mechanical engineering. Our first college visit was in November at Rochester Institute of Technology. That was and is her first choice. She loved the campus, the people, and the program. That's a good thing but it also makes subsequent visits tough as everything gets compared to RIT.

Anyway, we just got back from a trip to Univ. of Virginia. Nice campus, very impressive engineering program, well-equipped labs doing high end work, but the overall feel and experience just didn't do it for her (or us for that matter). We all agreed that it wouldn't be the right fit. In fact, we didn't even bother staying for a campus tour. Went and hiked a bit on the Appalachian Trail instead while we were in the neighborhood. By no means a wasted trip as she got to see another school, got some great advice on the whole college application process, and it is just as important to learn what you don't want as it is to learn what you do want.

We don't have anything else set up yet but Rensselaer Polytech, Univ. of MD, and Rutgers are among other schools on her list.

For the month of February, I made $428 from my medical surveys. Not a great month but not bad, plus it was a short month.

Once again, I've been really busy the past few weeks so March will probably be a low month but there are only so many hours in a day. It's all good though.

2013 has gotten off to a solid start as far as my survey income is concerned. For January, I earned $813. As always, it is very much effort-dependent. Next month will likely be somewhat lower as I was pretty busy this month and didn't get to do as many surveys but we will see. There's still time to impact the February numbers.

I've posted about the new app I'm using on my iPhone to track all of this. It continues to work well and make everything easier and clearer.

Why is an entry about an iPhone appropriate for a financial blog? Well, ultimately, everything we do has financial impact so why not. Besides, a device that simplifies your life and can even save you money definitely fits the topic.

Anyway, enough rationalization. I got an iPhone 3G in early 2009. At the time, I thought it was terrific. It could do all kinds of things - check email, get online, play games, take pictures, record video, etc.

The 3G had one major fault, though. It was agonizingly slow. Many of the apps available simply didn't live up to their potential usefulness because the phone was just too darn slow. Yes, it is nice to have a device in your pocket that can be phone, computer, camera, GPS, game player, movie viewer, and more, but if it is too slow to actually accomplish those things, it isn't quite as impressive.

Enter the iphone 5. I got this just before Christmas when WalMart cut the prices. A phone that is $199 everywhere else was $127 at WalMart. I was planning to upgrade anyway and that made the decision even easier.

This phone is GREAT! It is lightning fast and all of those apps that had great potential before have actually now become useful in the real world. I've even started seeking out new apps for specific tasks which is something I rarely did on the old phone. This week, I got a running log app to record my treadmill time. I also got an app called Money Monitor that I've started using to record all of my medical survey income. I used to do that with pen and paper in my datebook. Then at the end of each month, I had to manually add up the total for the month. Now, each time I get a payment, I enter it on the app and anytime I want, I can quickly see how much I've earned so far that month (or year to date as the year progresses).

Sorry to sound like an iPhone commercial but for anyone thinking about it, now is definitely the time to go for it, or upgrade if you have an older model like I did.

December turned out to be a very good month, actually the best of the year. I really focused on doing as many surveys as I could. I still missed a bunch but did a much better job overall. The number was also helped tremendously by an invitation the week before last to do an in-person interview for $350. Fortunately, it was at a time that I was free to attend.

For the month of December, I earned $972 bringing my total for 2012 to $7,158. I had set a goal of $7,000 for the year so I managed to reach that despite a couple of lousy months.

I think I actually have all of my year-end data in place as of now so I can review how our finances weathered 2012.

Our total invested assets including non-retirement, retirement, and college savings accounts increased by 18.2%. That number would have been higher but I did dip into savings to replace my 1998 car at the end of June. If not for that, the portfolio would have been up by over 20%.

On the debt side of the balance sheet, our mortgage balance dropped by about $7,150 or a little over 10% of the balance on 1/1/12. As noted, I also bought a car. In addition to the down payment, I did take a loan for about 13K and have already repaid over $5,300 of that since July. I don't intend to keep that loan for more than a year or so.

So assets up 18.2%, mortgage down 10%, and a new car loan that is already more than 41% repaid in less than 6 months. Overall, I think that was a pretty decent year.

As you know if you follow my blog, I'm a physician and do a lot of medical surveys. These pay well but lately, one aspect of doing them has become a bit of a nuisance. They used to almost all pay by check. Very simple. Deposit it into my account and I'm done.

More and more of them, however, are now paying with prepaid Visa cards. I used to get one of those occasionally and it wasn't a big deal. I would just stick it in my wallet and use it at the grocery store usually. I don't want to sound ungrateful, but now it is getting kind of annoying. In the past week alone, I've gotten three of them: one for $48, one for $100, and one for $350. That's in addition to others that I've gotten previously and not used yet.

My dresser now has a little stack of Visa cards. Not that it is a bad thing to have the money, but I'd rather not have it all sitting on my dresser both for safety reasons and liquidity reasons. Also, the cards do have expiration dates so not only do I need to keep track of which cards I've used and what balances remain on them, I also need to organize the order the cards get used to avoid having them expire. When you're getting 2 or 3 of these cards per week, that becomes a bit of a challenge.

I'm guessing that for some reason, issuing these cards is cheaper and more convenient for the companies than sending checks, but for the recipients, it can be a bit of a pain.

I had a good month in November earning $807 from medical surveys. That was helped a lot by one in-person interview I did for $200. I get invited to a lot of those but they aren't usually at times when I can attend. So overall, a good month.

Once again, I've been away from the blog for a while. Survey income has still been down partly from being busy, partly from being lazy. Not really lazy so much as exhausted. When I do have the time to do them, I often just want to do something mindless to relax, not something that requires thought and attention.

Anyway, to update my list:

August $636
September $451
October $351

Not terrific but not bad. As always, I'm working on doing a better job and not letting opportunities pass by as much.

I keep realizing that I haven't updated this blog for months. I see that my last entry was with my March survey income., so let me catch up from there.

$587 April
$121 May
$737 June
$461 July

August isn't quite over but I know I'm over $500 so far. Still, that puts me behind on reaching my goal of $7,000 for the year. I have been really busy, especially since I became president of our synagogue July 1 (and the work for that started a month or two before that date). But I'm still doing the surveys and I'll be happy with whatever I do earn.

For the newbies, I'm a family practice physician and have the opportunity to participate in a lot of medical surveys and market research programs and advisory panels. Some are fun, most are fairly tedious, but they pay well. I get in and out of the habit of doing them regularly but try to keep myself on track by recording my earnings to encourage me to keep at it.

For the month of March 2012, I did quite well. I earned $932! That is among my best months ever. I'm not really sure how it got to be that high as I usually only accomplish that when I do an in-person program, not just online surveys, but that's what it is so I'm certainly not complaining. It definitely gives me some added motivation to respond to as many of the invitations as I can.

For the newbies: I am a family practice physician. I participate in numerous medical survey and market research panels. They pay well but can be pretty tedious to do. My participation rate waxes and wanes as I get busy with other things or just get tired of doing them but I try to stay on track since the money is so good.

For the month of February 2012, I earned $500 from the surveys. Not bad but not great. I know I've missed a lot of opportunities but I keep trying to stick with it.

My wife and I have always been theater fans. We both did theater work in college and beyond. In fact, it is because of theater that we got back together in 1989 and ultimately got married. I was working as a lighting designer and invited her to come be on my lighting crew.

Despite our love of theater, a love we have also passed on to our daughter, we don't often go to see live shows. The cost is a definite factor.

My daughter recently heard about a new show on Broadway called "Seminar" starring Alan Rickman (Professor Snape from Harry Potter). We decided we'd go up and see it. I ordered tickets today for next Saturday for the low, low price of $404.75 for 3 tickets. Of course, that doesn't include transportation to and from NYC, parking, meals, subway passes, etc. We are also planning to spend the night. Fortunately, we're using Marriott reward points for the hotel so no out of pocket cost but they still have monetary value. So by the time we're done, we'll probably spend at least $800 for an overnight stay and the show.

I'm happy to do it, and my daughter is thrilled, but it is a lot of money. Yes, we could see a touring company production of a show in Philadelphia which wouldn't be quite as pricey and wouldn't have the travel costs, but it isn't the same and if you want to see a new production, like this, NYC is your only choice. My wife and I did see "Rain" 2 weeks ago in Philly and it was great but still wasn't cheap. I think we paid over $90/person for that.

Any other Broadway/theater fans here?

I realized I didn't post at the end of the month.

For January, I earned $603 from surveys. Not a bad start to the year at all.

It is getting tougher to keep up with them as I get busier at work and with my volunteer obligations but I'll do my best. The money definitely comes in handy.

If you read my November entry, you'll know that I had really slacked off on keeping up with the medical surveys I have available to me and had vowed to get back on track to boost my income.

I think I did a darn good job as in the month of December, I earned $1,058 making it the second best month of the year. That gave me a total for 2011 of $7,828. Not bad at all. For those wondering if I do anything special with that money, I do report it as self-employment income which allows me to fund a SEP-IRA that I started a couple of years ago. The rest just goes into general spending. I figure it covers our annual Disney World vacation and then some.

For the newbies - I'm a physician and get to do a lot of medical market research suverys (mostly online). I post my monthly income totals here in part to try and keep myself motivated as I tend to fall off the wagon and not keep up with the invitations and then I kick myself when I realize how much more I could have made.

For November, I earned $432. Looking at my sidebar, I see that was within $1 of tying for my worst month this year. I knew it would be bad. I've missed many, many opportunities. Sometimes it was because I was busy but honestly sometimes it was because I was spending time on the forums or facebook or doing other stuff that wasn't making me any money.

Once again, I'm trying to get back on track. I did a few surveys this past week and I'm going to try and keep at it more regularly and get back up to the $600/month range on a routine basis.

I took my wife's van in for service today. It needed an oil change and I also knew one of the window motors needed to be replaced so I was expecting a big bill. But then 2 days ago, the check engine light came on. I know many different things can cause that.

Turned out that two sensor banks were bad related to emissions. So the sensors and the emissions stuff all needed work. Also needs spark plugs, rear brakes and a couple of other things. All together, the work would come to over $2,000.

The van is a 2000 and has about 140,000 miles. I think putting that kind of money out at this point is going down a costly slope. I wasn't expecting to keep it much past 150K anyway. I just thought it would make it through the winter at least.

So time to start hunting. I'll scour the web this weekend. We'd like another Sienna but I don't know if I want to spend that much, especially since my car is even older and we don't know when that'll die.

My medical survey income for October came in at $527. Not bad considering how little I feel I actually did. I can live with that even though I know I could be doing a lot better.

For the newbies, I'm a family practice physician and get to do a lot of medical market research programs. I post here what I've earned each month from doing this. These are not open to the general public (though I also do Pinecone which is).

As expected, my income for September was down because I was away for two weeks in August. Still, I managed to earn $431 which isn't that bad although it is the least I've earned in a month this year.

I'm trying to get back on track but I've been incredibly busy so I've passed up a lot of opportunities.

I realized I haven't posted this yet.

For August, I earned $668 from medical surveys. I was quite pleased with that. I expected it to be lower since I was on vacation for one week in July. I'm waiting to see how September goes because I was away for 2 weeks in August and I know I skipped a bunch of opportunities.

My doctor/medical survey income for July was $605, a decent month. I expect August to be on the lower side as I know I slacked off a bit keeping up with the invitations plus I was away for a week and didn't do much. I'm trying to get back on track but I'm away for 2 weeks this month so it will be difficult.

For the newbies, I'm a family practice physician and get to do a lot of medical market research surveys. These are not available to the general public. They can be fairly straightforward or quite tedious, but they pay well.

For the month of June, I earned $644 from surveys, a good month.

Total for the month was $701, a nice rebound from April. I'm doing my best to keep on top of all of the invitations but I can't ever do them all. Wish I could but I'm quite happy with $701.

For the newbies: I am a family practice physician and get to do a lot of online (and occasionally in-person) surveys and market research programs for doctors only. These are not available to the general public. They pay well but can be very tedious to complete.

April was a slow month. I've been very busy at work because my partner has been out of the country for an extended period due to personal issues. As a result, I haven't had as much time, or energy, to sit and do surveys. For the month, I earned $465. While that certainly isn't a bad thing, it is $200 less than last month and almost $700 less than the month before (which was a fluke on the high side). I'm trying to refocus my limited spare time on doing the surveys as so many of them get ignored due to my schedule. I could do better though if I'd stop spending so much darn time on the forums and other tasks when I could be making some good money.

A conversation in the forum got me feeling somewhat defensive of my iPhone. I used to think they were a huge extravagance, and I suppose when they first came out and the price was sky high, they were. I think has time has passed, though, the price has dropped dramatically but many people still have the image of them being hundreds of dollars. So when you see someone who may not have a lot of money sporting a smart phone, you might think they are blowing money that could be going to better things.

Assuming you already have a cell phone plan with AT&T, you can get an iPhone for $49 and the cheapest data plan for $15/month. That's hardly a wild purchase for most people, even folks with relatively modest incomes. $180/year for the service isn't likely to make or break anyone's budget.

So why get a smart phone anyway? Here's the list I posted on the discussion thread:

My phone is:
A telephone with free long distance
A computer with full Internet access
A camera for still photos
A video camera
A video game player
A tv and movie viewer
A radio
An mp3 player
A calculator (regular or scientific)
An educational device
A GPS unit

I think that used intelligently, a smart phone could actually eliminate the need for various other devices, thus saving money overall. We don't need GPS in the car - we have our phones. We don't need a video camera - we've got our phones. We don't need iPods - they are built into our phones. You get the idea.

Certainly, if someone is truly struggling, a smart phone remains a luxury item, but if someone is doing basically okay, having or not having a smart phone isn't going to be the deciding factor in whether or not they are making it financially.