No long intro, just need to catch up with some Income Reports since I’ve been working on my startup Forever Donor.
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
Happy June!
I continue to share these income reports because it’s awesome seeing passive income in action. I haven’t touched Wallet Squirrel too much lately because I’ve been focused on my side project ForeverDonor.com. However, I still love sharing these income reports!
A majority of income comes through a few Bluehost Affiliate links which is nice, but it’s not very diversified. At least not in the sense of the amount of income. I actually have 9 passive income sources bringing in money each month which is awesome! Here’s what that looks like.
If you want to learn more about any of these income sources, just check out these hyperlinks to articles on each one!
Sources of Income This Month – $319.14
$200 – Bluehost Affiliate Income
$41.63– Cashback Credit Card
$26.91– Dividends
$20.25 – Interest Checking/Savings Account
$13.83– Wallet Squirrel AdSense
$7.32– Stock Photography
$4.39 – Seeking Alpha Articles
$3.68– Lending Club
$1.13 – Epic Niche Site Affiliate Marketing
This money is nice, but I don’t really spend it traditionally. Here is how I use this money every month.
1. I use that money to buy additional dividend stocks to continue to snowball my monthly stock income.
2. I use that money to pay for my web hosting and other services used to keep Wallet Squirrel going.
3. I use that money to help fund my passion projects, like my latest start-up ForeverDonor.com
Well I’m a little late to this income report so June is nearly over. (I feel really bad about being late)
The big thing is that it’s been hard for me to concentrate at home. I feel there are so many distractions like watching Netflix while working or friends reaching out to play video games. It’s nice to have that social time and down time, but it’s been killer on my productivity.
I’m going to try to work at new places around Denver, but most importantly not home. When I’m in an environment where I don’t have anything that can distract me, I’m at my best. We’ll see how this goes!
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
Hey everyone! April’s Income Report is another $300+ month!
First and foremost for new readers, I made a nice amount of passive income online and through passive means I’ve set up over the years from Stock Photography to investing in the stock market. Everything I make in these side hustles, I share in my monthly income reports.
It was another month where I received some Bluehost Affiliate Income but the big thing is my Interest Checking and Savings Account! This month I made $17 just from the money I had in my savings account and nearly a $1 from money in my checking account. It’s not a crazy amount, but that that is crazy larger than anything I ever made in my previous Wells Fargo savings account (I use Ally now). It’s just further proof that I did the right thing by switching banks! =)
Here is the rest of my Income Report.
Here is the full breakdown of my income sources and links to the articles I wrote about each of them.
Sources of Income This Month – $312.16
$200 – Bluehost Affiliate Income
$34.36– Dividends
$24.85– Cashback Credit Card
$17.74 – Interest Checking/Savings Account
$13.71– Stock Photography
$12.33– Wallet Squirrel AdSense
$3.82– Lending Club
$3.20 – Seeking Alpha Articles
$2.15 – Epic Niche Site Affiliate Marketing
It’s great to see a couple hundred come in every month, but I immediately reinvest it in my side businesses like Wallet Squirrel or my recent endeavor Forever Donor. Here is everything I do with the money I make.
Spoiler, I’m working on Forever Donor. Specifically, I’m creating a fun advertisement I can use to test out Facebook Ads and getting more into videos. Both video for Instagram and maybe some videos even for Wallet Squirrel. Essentially I’m going to go from full Blogger to Blogger/Vlogger. It seems like something fun to try and I like fun!
Other than that, I’m using SEMrush to build lots of backlinks to ForeverDonor.com and increase the SEO/Domain Authority. I have the hard launch coming up and I want everything to go well.
Thank you everyone who is reading this. I really appreciate the support!
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
Hi everyone! Happy March! I know in our Denver, Colorado area the weather is getting warmer and the sun is out later. It’s pretty great!
What’s also pretty great is another Wallet Squirrel Income Report. These income reports show all the income I make online and most of it is all passive. I enjoy showing these reports because it allows me to analyze what is working and enjoy passive income every month.
This month was great because I had a couple of people sign up for Bluehost through WalletSquirrel.com. I really do enjoy Bluehost for the most part. Every time I have an issue, they are very helpful and fix it immediately, so I’ll continue to recommend them.
Otherwise, it was pretty cool to see my Google AdSense make nearly $20 this month. I only have one ad on my entire website, it’s on the sidebar of my blog pages (I really hate ads) so it’s impressive it made so much. I really appreciate all the traffic Wallet Squirrel continues to bring in!
Here is the full Income Report!
Here are the links to past articles I’ve done on each of these passive income sources.
Sources of Income This Month – $391.00
$300 – Bluehost Affiliate Income
$25.71 – Cashback Credit Card
$19.27 – Wallet Squirrel AdSense
$12.66 – Stock Photography
$12.38 – Interest Checking/Savings Account
$10.66 – Dividends
$4.35 – Seeking Alpha Articles
$3.61 – Lending Club
$2.36 – Affiliate Marketing
It’s great to see a couple hundred come in every month, but I’m not buying cars or TVs. I’m reinvesting that money in different ways.
If you’ve been following this blog in 2019, you know I’ve been working on an amazing start-up called Forever Donor that’s changing the world of Charitable Giving.
Quick Synopsis of Forever Donor: I always thought it was cool how millionaires had private foundations in their name for causes they cared about. That’s cool, but not everyone can do that. So I built Forever Donor. Now anyone can choose their favorite charity and make a one-time donation of $20 (or more). We generate interest from that contribution and donate that interest to your favorite charity every three months, forever, in your name. It creates your own legacy.
Big News: I did the soft launch (only to friends, family and you guys) 2 weeks ago and already raised nearly $1,000!!! That’s awesome because that money is constantly donating interest to charity (yay dividends) and reinvested to give more and more for charity. Over and over, with my goal being forever!
So THANK YOU Wallet Squirrel readers that donated to their favorite charity through Forever Donor! This month is dedicated to building some great blog posts, build links and get the word out organically about Forever Donor.
PS. If you want to actually see me live. I’ve been posting daily update videos on Instagram (@forever.donor) about this amazing start-up!
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
Hey Everyone! I’m excited to share another income report and some awesome news!
First, for those new to reading Wallet Squirrel. Every month I share my income reports of how much I make online through this website and other passive income streams. I break it down so other people interested can find ways to make extra money as well.
In February my income dipped a little, but that was to be expected since I haven’t done too much with some of these side hustles. Most of this income is passive from the time and energy I spent months ago. It just keeps trickling money in.
So in summary, most of the income in February was from my Cash Back Credit Card because I was spending lots of money (more on that later). Otherwise the second highest income source were my dividend stocks. That was pretty cool!
$47.53 – Cashback Credit Card
$26.85 – Dividends
$13.37 – Interest Checking/Savings Account
$7.54 – Wallet Squirrel AdSense
$6.12 – Stock Photography
$4.19 – Lending Club
$3.87 – Seeking Alpha Articles
$1.00 – Epic Niche Site Affiliate Marketing
Most of the money goes back to invest in additional dividend stocks. These make more money every quarter so it’s a snowball effect. In February I bought some more Disney stock because I’m convinced that Disney+ is going to be big! Otherwise this money helps pay for my website maintenance and my latest startup.
I have been teasing for months that I’ve been working on a top-secret startup. It’s been a roller-coaster of emotions but today I officially want to share it with all of you first! I’m calling this the “soft launch” and I’ll later have a press release to Fast Money, Entrepreneur Magazine and others for the “hard launch”.
I’ve always been obsessed with how the ultra-wealthy can have their own private charity foundations for causes important to them. Think the Bill & Melina Gates Foundation or the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (Mark Zuckerberg’s Foundation). However, regular people don’t have the opportunity to create their own private foundation.
So I created Forever Donor (ForeverDonor.com). A completely different charity donation website where you can choose your favorite charity (or multiple charities) and donate as little as $20. What’s unique about Forever Donor is we generate interest from that $20 every quarter (the dividends) and donate that interest to your charity along with a letter in your name. We do this again, and again, and again, essentially forever. At any time, you can log into your account and switch which charities recieve the interest from your account or add addtional charities. You’re in control. We’re only donating the dividends so you can create a lasting legacy of giving in your name.
Plus what’s incredible is every three months when we donate in your name, you also receive an email reminding you the good you’re doing in the background of your everyday life. So a one-time donation now will still be donating in your name 20, 30, and more years from now. Constantly building and funding the causes you care about!
This is my first startup ever and I’m so incredibly thrilled about what it can achieve for the world. However, it’s so brand new. I would LOVE if you tried it out! The money goes to charity and it creates a lifetime of good. Please visit ForeverDonor.com and tell me all about your experience. Please, please, please!
I’ll continue to track my progress of Forever Donor here on Wallet Squirrel. You’ll learn all about my wild entrepreneur ride as a new FinTech Start Up!
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
This post is late.
I’m so, so sorry.
Let me share some updates that’ll help explain where my entrepreneur mind has been.
Every month I share these income reports to show how a few passive income streams I started, continue to generate money. This is awesome and I love them. I currently have 11 income streams that generated money in the month of January. Some of them are a lot, some just a few cents but they all add up and required ZERO work from me in the month of January.
Here is the break down with links to articles where I show how I started each of these. It’s really not hard and all incredibly worth it!
$100 – Bluehost Affiliate Income
$47.53 – Cashback Credit Card
$38.84 – Dividends
$25 – Ebates
$13.02 – Stock Photography
$13.15 – Interest Checking/Savings Account
$9.93 – Epic Niche Site Affiliate Marketing
$8.78 – Wallet Squirrel AdSense
$4.52 – Seeking Alpha Articles
$4.24 – Robinhood App Affiliate Program
$3.48 – Lending Club
Most of the money every month gets reinvested into my stock portfolio which is made up of dividend stocks that continue to make more money every month. I’m slowly growing that snowball.
The rest of the money every month pays for upkeep such as hosting costs, software subscriptions and such. A tiny bit has been used to help fund my latest startup.
My original goal was to have my startup ready to go on January 20th. That was the goal. It didn’t happen.
See what I’m building is a financial technology company that’ll change the world. Big goals right. It’s really a simple concept I’ll get into later but it’s a big undertaking.
On my end, everything is about ready. I have the website designed and back end processes in place, however, there were two parts that are out of my control.
First I needed a bank that aligned with the business and not me personally, so I had to open a business checking account which was a HUGE hassle. My bank didn’t understand what I was building, so that took a lot of time explaining. However, once they understood, they loved the idea.
Then I also needed a brokerage account that was tied to the business and not me. This has taken the longest. The brokerage I went with first needed a lot more forms than I had, then they lost all my paperwork. Later the person helping me fill out the forms didn’t know much about a business brokerage account so we filled out the paperwork wrong and later had to resubmit. UGH. That’s where I’m at now, waiting for my brokerage to open my account. Then I’ll be ready!
That’s the short version, this is where my time has been focused but I can’t wait to share with you all when this is done. I love this new project and really believe it’ll change the world. Stay tuned!
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
Let’s start the new year!!!
I love starting the new year because it’s filled with so much potential. It’s a way to reinvent yourself with goals to be better or accomplish new things. For me personally, it’s the excitement of launching a new start-up at the end of this month, but I’ll get more into that later.
This income report is broken down into three parts. First I’d love to share the excitement of the income I made last month through passive income (WOOT WOOT). Second I wanted to share that I completed my random drawing of one of Wallet Squirrel’s subscribers and sent them $200 just for being on my email list. Third I’ll share the progress of my start-up!
It’s been another great month of using interest checking/savings accounts, outsmarting credit card companies to actually make money from cards and affiliate marketing. That all together earned me $222.49 this month and the best part is I can use that money to generate more dividends in my stock portfolio. Keep that snowball rolling!
Here is what my December Income Report looks like!
Yay Passive Income!
Sources of Income This Month – $222.49
$100 – Bluehost Affiliate Income
$42.72 – Cashback Credit Card
$29.89 – Dividends
$15.00 – Wallet Squirrel AdSense
$12.78 – Interest Checking/Savings Account
$8.64 – Stock Photography
$5.44 – Epic Niche Site Affiliate Marketing
$4.29 – Seeking Alpha Articles
$3.73 – Lending Club
You may have noticed that I had a little SLIDE-IN that showed up in the bottom left corner of the screen of the blog. It’s only supposed to show up once every 30 days. Despite me hating pop-ups, I wanted to have it to showcase a fun give away for people subscribed to my email list. At the end of the year I’d take my entire email list and randomly choose a winner to give $200 to have fun with investing.
How I did this.
I exported my entire email list from Mail Chimp (yup, that’s who I use for emailing because it’s free for up to 2,000 subscribers). So I then had my entire list in excel. Each email address was on a row and Excel automatically numbers each row. I had a total of 754 rows. Well 755, but I’m not including the title row.
I then pulled up the Google Random Number Generator (yes you can just Google this) and entered 1 to 754 and selected “Generate”. This is what that looked like.
I then found the associated number on my email list and just emailed the person to notify them and sent them $200. It was pretty easy. If you’re that person and reading this. Feel free to share this article on social media! I’m mainly just excited to hear what you’re going to do with the $200. Something peer-to-peer lending like Lending Club or traditional like buying a stock? What about buying a new camera and selling your photos as stock photography? That would be really cool too! I’m excited and want to hear about it! Good Luck!
Oh, man, has this been a roller-coaster of emotions. I went from excitement over my idea to paralysis by everything I had to get done. Then I got a little more excited as I started tackling things but soul crushed as things didn’t work the way they were supposed to. That was the worst.
What I thought was a simple idea required A LOT more work than I thought, but I guess that’s the life of an entrepreneur.
I’m now in the home stretch with SO MUCH left to do and I’m launching end of January. However, it’s happening! I’m doing everything I can to have at least some product for launch and I’ll keep editing and tweaking as I go. It’s not going to be perfect but it’s going to be awesome and it’s going to be real, not long just an idea in my head. I’ve met with multiple people and they love the idea. I just need to launch and that’s my intention the end of this month.
Yay for creating a real company while I slowly die of sleep deprivation. =)
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
I’ve slowed down. I know.
In the past I have written articles every week and shared my income reports with the world. While I’ve continued to share my Income Reports, I have slowed down writing weekly articles. This is because my start-up launching January 20th. It’s taken up my entire world of free time, but I think it’s worth it!
While I’ve slowed down, Wallet Squirrel continues to be an important part of me because it tells the story of my favorite thing, passive income. I haven’t done much with Wallet Squirrel lately (I’m sorry), but it shows that I continue to earn passive income from all the past experiments I’ve run on the side. Anyone can do any of these and maybe see the same results or better. I will continue to share these income reports because it’s a great reflection on the power of passive income.
As the year winds down, these passive income sources continue to chug along.
Here is the breakdown with links to articles I’ve done on each of these passive income sources.
Sources of Income This Month – $298.90
$200 – Bluehost Affiliate Income
$21.88 – Wallet Squirrel AdSense
$20.40 – Cashback Credit Card
$16.62 – Stock Photography
$12.60 – Interest Checking/Savings Account
$9.81 – Epic Niche Site Affiliate Marketing
$8.01 – Dividends
$5.84 – Seeking Alpha Articles
$3.74 – Lending Club
It doesn’t take too much to run a website like this. Maybe $300 a year. So I first pay off my web servers and any fancy plugins I have. The rest of the money every month is transferred to my stock portfolio that earns dividends (or more passive income). This last month I continued to buy Intermountain Realty (IRM), 3 shares exactly at $30.87 per share. You may notice it’s come back up since then. While cool, all I care about is that dividend. However I think I’ve hit my max of IRM, so I’ll be buying something else in the future. =)
As I mentioned before, I’m working on a wicked cool startup idea and I’m looking to launch January 20th. That is the soft launch date, I’ll share early access with family, friends and of course you! The hard launch (the rest of the world) will be late March. I really love the idea, but tempering my expectations in case failing miserably, (It won’t do that though lol). Who knows. All I know is I will continue to try to do awesome things in the world. Thanks for sharing this journey with me!
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
Hi everyone!
I’m excited to share my October Income Report to continue to track the progress I’m making with passive income streams. Every month I share these reports to show it’s possible to make extra money online and how I invest it to create additional income. It’s a really fun process and I’m always excited to share!
In October I had about $274.53 in passive income, but I’ll admit $150 of that came from TurboTax renewing a link I had in a previous article. I mentioned TurboTax and they came back and offered to pay me to turn that mention into a hyperlink, and now renew that link every year.
Now I use that $150, like I do all my passive income streams to invest and create additional passive income. It works too because my second highest income this month were my Dividends at $35.87 this month. That is actually the highest dividends I’ve ever had, and it’s great knowing it’ll only continue to increase!!!
While the graph is great, here is another breakdown on each of the passive income streams and links to the articles where I dive down into a deeper understanding.
Sources of Income This Month – $274.53
$150 – TurboTax Link Renewal
$35.87 – Dividends
$25 – Ebates
$19.29 – Wallet Squirrel AdSense
$14.83 – Cashback Credit Card
$11.55 – Interest Checking/Savings Account
$7.29 – Seeking Alpha Articles
$5.72 – Stock Photography
$3.74 – Lending Club
$1.27 – Epic Niche Site Affiliate Marketing
Every month I throw that money into my Emergency Fund because having that extra cash on hand is a great reassurance if anything happens and gives you a little confidence. However my Emergency Fund is currently full, so all that extra money goes into my Investment Portfolio.
I buy dividend stocks every month and this month was no different. I continued to buy shares of Iron Mountain Realty (IRM) while the stock was down. I ended up buying 16 shares around $31 per share. I really enjoy this stock and it has a healthy dividend that continues to produce.
This month as been a whirlwind of activity around my new start-up. I’ve been meeting with an accountant to figure out the best tax structure, a lawyer to help with my disclosure/privacy policy pages and now on the lookout for a developer to help me with some of the coding I need. It’s both exciting and a bit nervous coordinating this all before I go live. I just need to have confidence that this idea will work.
I launch the start-up at the end of January!
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
Every month I’m stoked to share these income reports. A journal of everything I make and how it works. My goal is to find new ways to make extra money on the side and create passive income streams to invest with. It’s a cool plan.
While it was awesome I had an affiliate sale for Bluehost, what was impressive was how the 10 additional income sources added up for over $116. It just goes to show that every little thing you do adds up!
Sad Fact: My second highest income for September was the 2% I get back from my cash back credit card. While it’s nice knowing I made back $30.96 from my purchases, it’s a little sad that I spent that much. Ugh.
Sources of Income This Month – $216.36
$100 – Bluehost Affiliate Income
$30.96 – Cashback Credit Card
$21.48 – Wallet Squirrel Affiliate Marketing
$15.11 – Wallet Squirrel AdSense
$12.75 – Stock Photography
$10.63 – Interest Checking/Savings Account
$8.94 – Dividends
$7.04 – Seeking Alpha Articles
$3.91 – Robinhood App Affiliate Program
$3.50 – Lending Club
$2.04 – Epic Niche Site Affiliate Marketing
Every month I’m earning a couple hundred dollars which is awesome! That money goes to paying for the website including the website server, dotmain name and marketing tools. It adds up to about $71 per month to maintain Wallet Squirrel. Not including my time, but I’ve yet figured out how much my time is worth.
That extra money left over I use to buy dividend stocks (yay). This last month I bought 6 shares of Iron Mountain Realty (IRM) at $35.42 per share. It’s now at $33.89 per share so a better price so I continue to buy a few shares.
So with a 6.85% dividend, those 6 shares add $14.55 in additional yearly dividend income. Very cool!
For those who are new, I’m working at creating a start-up. I’ve been fiddling with an idea for the last 2 years and decided I should just do it.
It’s kind of a long-term plan so I’ve developed a business plan (my first ever) and using all the free resources available to people including the Colorado Small Business Association and SCORE (Senior Core of Retired Executives) to help me fine tune my idea. This has included long nights at my desk, early morning in café’s working and even meeting at local Starbucks with consultants. It’s a lot of work.
Now that I’ve fine-tuned the business plan, I need to figure out some legal and tax things that I’ve never had to worry about before with the blog here. So I’ve been calling law firms that a nice enough to talk to me and scheduling consultations with a tax professional to hammer out my last “professional” needed questions.
When this is through (maybe next month!), I can finish building the new site for the start-up (part of it is done already!). It’s exciting to see this idea come to life and become more concrete every day but also a crazy headache seeing things move so slowly in comparison to starting a blog.
Baby steps…
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
