Entries Tagged 'money challenges' ↓

Since paying credit card debt is usually done once a month, I’ll be doing the results updates twice a month. I started saving money for this goal since I announced the Zero Credit Card Debt Challenge. My target is to pay the whole $850 debt little by little. And, so far, here’s how I fared:

Money from blog monetization:

Text Link Ads - $35

AdSense - $156.29

Extra Contract Work payout:

Web Content Writing - $16

Total Extra Earnings for June: $207.29

Debt Balance:

$850 - $207.29 = 642.71

Tags: credit card debt, debt payment, extra income

After the emergency fund challenge, which was very successful in motivating me to become more well-disciplined in handling my finances and in being more productive with my time for the benefit of my finances, I’m launching another money challenge for myself, the Zero Credit Card Debt Challenge.

I am in the process of eliminating credit card debt chunk by chunk every month. The money I owe amounts to an approximate of $850. Why didn’t I use my emergency fund to get rid of this credit card debt? The reason’s here.

How do I plan to finish paying off all of that $850 and how much time am I giving myself? Same way as how I earned money for my emergency fund challenge - being thrifty and getting jobs for extra income. Those two are the methods that I found to be very effective, especially the extra job thing, so why not just rinse and repeat, right? However, this time I’m giving myself three months to come up with that extra $850. An extra $850 may not be that much of a money for you, but it is for me mainly because as I’ve mentioned on my response on a comment on the post about why I’m only needing $200k for my retirement fund, one dollar gets multiplied to about 45 times in my country - Philippines. So this should be a big feat if I accomplish it.

Join me?

Tags: credit card debt, debt challenge, pay debt

Things are getting rosier and rosier each day for me. Good karma from not being so stingy when it comes to sharing what you have occasionally is so speedy that I’m almost done with this challenge although I still have three weeks left to complete doubling my emergency fund of $500. Yeah, maybe that’s the reason why I’m not encountering as much difficulty as I’ve expected in surmounting this financial management challenge I’ve set up for myself. So what’s this jubilation all about?

The original plan is to get most of the funds from the two new blogging jobs I got and other blog monetization methods. What happened is just before the month of May ended, I was able to close deals with two new clients that have contacted me to do contract work - one data entry tasks and one on SEO content writing. So I can include my payout from them as extra income to boost my emergency fund savings!

Now take a look at my fifth week results for this Double My Emergency Fund Challenge compared to the fourth week results :

Continue reading →

This money saving, er, extra income searching challenge is halfway done since I’m reporting its 4th week results.

The money I was able to save this week will come from an old *AdBrite account where I found I haven’t opted to get paid yet. I gained two new advertisers on one of my blogs via *Text-Link-Ads, making me earn an extra few dollars this month.

From May 1 to this date, May 28, here’s how I fared compared to last week’s results:

Target = $500

Windfall = $36 (no change)

ReviewMe = $40 (+$15)

Temp Blogging = $45 (no change)

*Text-Link-Ads = $54.24 (+$25.12)

AdBrite = $14.85

Balance = $309.91 (-39.97)

Although I have only broken even with my Week 2 results, some event made me a bit sluggish again in making up for the losses.

After a two-day vacation, I splurged a bit again using my monthly splurge allowance which prevented me from dipping into my emergency fund savings.

However, because of the vacation, I wasn’t able to accomplish lots of additional income-generating activities such as the paid reviews that I planned on making the best out of so I can contribute more to my emergency fund. But I was able to work on two more reviews before I went on vacay. Another good thing’s that I was also able to receive the payout from one of the other blog monetization services I’m using - Text Link Ads. Here’s the sweet check: $29.12.

So here are the figures for the 3rd week results of this Double My Emergency Fund challenge:

Target = $500

Windfall = $36 (no change)

ReviewMe = $40 (+$15)

Temp Blogging = $45 (no change)

Text-Link-Ads = $29.12

Balance = $349.88 (-$44.12)

Credit score helps financial institutions determine whether a person deserves to get a loan or not.

Being credit score conscious pays and if you’re one of those people who have realized this earlier on and your one of the competitive ones, you might want to join the What’s My Credit Score Contest.

It requires participants to shoot a 30-second video on the theme “Why should a college student care about their credit score.”

What’s at stake?

Grand Prize is $5000

First Prize is $3000

Second Prize is $2000

How Judging Works:
Judging of qualified submissions takes place between May 16, 2007 and July 31, 2007. A panel of judges will review each submission using the following criteria:

Originality - Uniqueness (30%)
Clarity of expression (30%)
Relevance to theme of communicating to a college audience the importance of their credit score (40%)
The highest scoring entry will be declared the Grand Prize winner, subject to verification.

Learn more about this contest

Tags: credit score, contest, whats my credit score

Was able to go to the mall this week but only to run some errands that again didn’t allow me to indulge myself. This emergency fund challenge is definitely boosting my self-control!

However, Mother’s Day is so today and I allowed myself to spend a maximum of $70 for a full-body spa for my mom and a nice hair treatment for the two of us. Hey, it’s mother-daughter bonding time! I planned to treat the whole family to the beach for a weekend getaway slash mother’s day bash but the weather’s not cooperating. I’ve set aside about $200 for that beach vacay, so whatta big savings the weather blessed me with, right? Should I call it a blessing in disguise or a windfall? Hehe.

Since I’m getting Mother’s Day celebration expenses from my supposed-to-be-emergency-fund since I received some blessings I didn’t expect since last week, see results from last week, I’m not expecting to be able to contribute as much as I was able to for my emergency fund challenge this week. But I already started with the paid reviews to make up for the loss. So, here it goes:

Target = $500

Windfall = $106 - $70 (Mother’s Day spa day for Mom) = $36

ReviewMe = $25 (payout this June)

Temp Blogging = $45

Balance = $394

It’s holidays like these that I fail to prepare for that makes saving money not so much of a cinch for me. But I’m not at any rate pissed because I’m more than willing to work doubly hard to get back on track. Also, it’s a lesson learned in a not so hurtful way. Hello, a spa day with my mom, hurtful?

Happy Mothers’ Day to all Moms out there!

To celebrate its second year anniversary, Five Cent Nickel, a personal finance blog, is giving away prices. One of the two ways to enter the contest is to write a review of the site. Well, here goes my shot and hoping to win the Ipod Nano.

The Good Stuff

The things that first caught my attention at the FCN site are the free stuffs - from credit card sign up bonuses to free credit card miles. Let’s take this contest for example, you only need to leave a comment at the end of the anniversary contest post, and promise to tell at least one friend about it and voila! You now have 1 entry to enter the contest, and a chance to win the cool prizes they have like ipod nano, usb microdrive and more. Cool huh! These free stuffs make the site very appealing to readers and make them come back for more, plus advertising through word of mouth.

Other than the free stuff, the major thing I like about FCN is that is very good in giving financial advice in an easy to understand way. If you have not checked the site before, it’s never too late, and I assure you that it is worth your time. The site is full of information about everything that deals with money and finances.

What to perk up

Just because the site is dedicated on the topic of money and finances, it doesn’t mean the site should also appear so formal and wordy. In my opinion, the site needs a little more color and some graphics, to make it appear lively and attractive to the eyes. But don’t get me wrong, just because the site is too text-y does not mean that the site is boring, I am just judging on the appearance of the site.

Many would think that I’m too giddy over this project that I’d even give you a report of how did I fare with my first week.

It was an uber-busy week that I didn’t get to have some time off to do my favorite past time - being a mall rat. So, you guessed it right! I didn’t blew off any money on any impulse purchases, which is one small victory for me in pursuing this emergency fund saving challenge.

Another interesting financial highlight is that I received a windfall money amounting to $106, which is so unbelievable, right? It’s from someone whom I lent money to a few months ago, which I didn’t expect would pay anytime soon.

I didn’t get to start with the ReviewMe reviews yet, which is so frustrating. But I’ll work on them this week.

So here’s a summary of my Double My Emergency Fund first week result:

Target = $500

Windfall = $106

Balance = $394

Building an emergency fund is not an easy task for me. I’m used to running to my parents for financial aid. But thanks to some emergency situations that I ran into these past few months, yeah, I had to learn my lesson the hard way, I now know I had to clean up my act and improve my financial management.

Starting with this challenge of doubling my emergency fund within two months hopefully will jumpstart things.

So how do I plan to get things going in making this emergency fund saving challenge successful?

Continue reading →