Disneysteve's Common Cents Blog

I've continued my quest to replace as much of my wife's income as possible by doing more medical surveys (I'm a physician). For the month of July, I earned $799 making it my 2nd best month of the year. I was a little annoyed that I just missed the $800 mark but that's fine. My goal is to average $800/month from now on so I'm right on track.

We just got back from a week visiting a few colleges for our daughter who is a rising high school senior. Someone asked about it in another post on an unrelated topic but I thought I'd talk about it here in case others are interested.

Our daughter is interested in studying mechanical engineering. Prior to this week, we had attended an engineering open house at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in November and a general open house at Univ. of Virginia in April. She fell in love with RIT and it went right to #1 on her list. She didn't care for U. of VA and that got crossed off. It's just as important to know where you don't want to go so we were good with that.

This past week had us checking out 2 new schools and a return visit to RIT. We started in Troy, NY at Rensselaer Polytech. Great school, nice campus, but we just didn't feel it was a good fit. Kind of stuffy. Next was Univ. of Rochester. I knew nothing about the school and I was really blown away. Beautiful campus, great program, staff and students we interacted with were all very down to earth, friendly, had great senses of humor, and were clearly passionate about the school. DD didn't go into that visit expecting much and came away really liking it so it is staying on the list for sure.

Finally, it was back to RIT. Thursday and Friday was for a Woman in Engineering program and the Friday and Saturday was a College and Careers program (which also included an overnight stay in the dorms). There were parts of the programs that she found somewhat boring but overall, the 3 days there just cemented her love of the school and desire to go there.

There are still other schools on her list: Rutgers, Rowan, Lehigh, and more, but I doubt any will displace RIT from the top spot. Now we just have to hope she gets accepted - and figure out how to pay for it.

My wife had a 2000 Toyota Sienna that we bought used in 2002 after she wrecked the previous one. So we've had it just short of 11 years. It had 155,000 miles on it so we had certainly gotten our money's worth but it was starting to get costly to maintain so it was time to replace it.

We've been browsing online for about a month and not really finding a whole lot out there. Lots of 2011 and 2012 models but virtually nothing from 2008-2010. I was hoping to find something 3-4 years old as that is usually the sweet spot for price, condition, and mileage, but it just wasn't to be.

We decided to go exploring in person on Saturday and headed to one local Toyota dealer. They had 2 Siennas on the lot. One was silver so that was out (we won't buy white, black, silver, or gold). They also had one blue van - a 2011 LE. We took a look at it, took it out for a spin, went over some numbers, negotiated them down as best we could, and decided to take the plunge and buy it. We paid about 22K which was little more than I had hoped to spend had we been able to find a 2010 or 2009, but it was a reasonable price for a 2011 and it is in great shape. It has a lot of features that our older van didn't, like Bluetooth, reverse camera, DVD player, back windows that lower, 2 power doors, fold flat back seats (so I don't have to haul them out anymore), etc. Definitely an upgrade. Since we keep our cars for the long haul, it will be nice to have for the next 10 years.

We'll be hitting the road with it in about 2 weeks for a college visitation tour and then driving it to Florida next month so we'll get it all broken in.

As I reported last month, my wife recently left her job and my goal is to up my survey income to at least partly make up for the loss of her income. In late May, I got more focused on the surveys with the hope of increasing my monthly income by at least $200. There is a lag time of anywhere from a few days to 6 weeks between when I do a survey and when I get paid so I haven't fully seen the results of my efforts yet but it definitely made a difference.

For the month of June I earned $739 making it the second best month of the year. Not only that, but beginning the week of May 27, I also started tracking the surveys I do as I do them. For the past 4 weeks, I've done surveys that will pay me a total of $843. If things continue at that rate, July should be just fine. I would love to see my average for the remainder of the year be around $800/month as opposed to the $600/month I averaged for the first part of the year.

I posted this to the forum but I know some only hang out here and I think this is worth sharing.

Something possessed me to pull out my file of financial spreadsheets tonight. This file dates back to October 1992 when I had handwritten records that later transitioned to computer generated reports. At first, they were updated weekly, then monthly, then less often than that. Reviewing the numbers was like opening a financial time capsule of our lives.

These reports strictly tally our financial holdings - savings, checking, money market, stocks, and bonds (including mutual funds). It doesn't include other assets like our house, cars, etc. The reports also list our debts but I'll leave that part out of this post.

We were married on July 12, 1992.

The first report is from 10/15/92. Total assets = $8,195.21.
We first hit 5 figures on 2/14/93 with $10,098.46.
The next milestone was on 12/12/93 with $25,064.02.

We bought our house in spring of 1994 so on 5/1/94 we were back down to $11,720.47.

I finished residency and started in practice in July 1993.
By 12/12/93 we were back up to $32,502.16.

9/3/95 we broke 50K with $51,039.00.
5/17/98 we passed 100K with $104,912.72.
Then 150K on 12/31/99 with $152,896.84.
And 200K on 11/14/03 with $200,761.12.

300K came just over 2 years later on 2/10/06 with $300,096.47.
We peaked on 5/6/08 with $400,810.10.
Then came the crash.
On 12/31/08, we were down to $280,208.22.
But we didn't panic and run screaming for the exit.
We hung in there.
On 12/31/09, we were back up to $395,673.33.
We hit a new all time high soon after that despite the crash.

We topped 500K sometime in early 2012. I don't know exactly when.
But by 12/31/12, we were at $578,177.09.
And as of last week, we were at $634,130.87.

To add to the story, I also have a record of what % of income we were saving starting in 2001. I don't seem to have it recorded before then. The dates are when we upped the percentage.
5/01 - 10% of take home
1/02 - 12% of take home
1/03 - 12% of gross (all subsequent numbers are % of gross)
1/04 - 13%
1/05 - 16%
1/06 - 17%
7/07 - 18%
7/08 - 19%
1/09 - 20%
7/09 - 21%
7/10 - 22%
7/11 - 23%, which is where we remain today.

We started our lives together with next to nothing. Of that $8,000 in 10/92, a few thousand was from wedding presents and that was 3 months after we got married. The total was considerably lower on our wedding day. With careful spending and dedicated saving, our holdings have grown and grown through up markets and down markets, through debt repayment (over 100K in student loans for one thing), through buying our home, having a child, owning a few cars along the way, home repairs, medical bills, travel, parties, charitable giving, and everything else that life has brought us (or thrown at us). We've been able to steadily increase the percentage of income being set aside for savings from well below the recommended 15% of gross to well above it.

For those just starting out, don't get discouraged. Do what you can. Increase it as you are able. And just keep at it. Over time, it really does add up. Compounding is a wonderful thing.

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.