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How I earn $25 a month with the Best Cashback Credit Card

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Let me first state credit cards aren’t evil, credit card companies are. Your credit card isn’t going to crawl out one night and go on a Las Vegas spending spree with your ex-girlfriend laughing at you until you get your next statement. No, it’s a tool in your ninja financial tool belt and I’m going to explain how it makes $25 for me each month with the best cashback credit card, and how it can help you too.

Oh you heard me, this is me explaining how to have your credit card make YOU money. 99% of the of time, credit card companies make money off you because they think you’re stupid, well if you’re reading this, you’re not stupid. You want to learn how say ENOUGH and try something different.

My $6,000 Credit Card Debt Past:

Let’s just say I was a moron. I like most people, got their first credit card in college, well Wells Fargo in fact. They told me it was a good investment, they told me it would build my credit. They told me I would earn “points” each time I spent money and I could use those “points” to buy other things. I was going to buy things anyways, so why not earn “points” when I do. Sounds awesome right? I had this bank since high school, I invested my first summer job paycheck with this bank. They couldn’t steer me wrong.

Now I won’t bash Wells Fargo. I think everyone should do their own research and make their own call, but let me tell you what those “points” got me the last 9 years I had/used that credit card.

Keep in mind, this is me using my credit card cautiously, I heard the rumors about people with credit card debt, but everyone had debt. Why should I be different? In fact, I racked up $6,000 in debt for multiple years paying only the minimum (that’s only the interest boys and girls). It’s OK though, had SO many magical “points”. I could buy so much more stuff!

So here’s the thing they didn’t tell me with my “points” credit card.

  • There was a $20 annual membership fee
  • You can only use “points” in their own online store
  • Everything in their limited online store cost more than Amazon
  • Oh, and your points expire

WHAT THE FUCK!!! Did I mention I was a moron? In the last 4 of the 9 years, I kept checking the online market place and the best thing I could buy was a $40 putter. I (like you probably) thought, if I keep using my card, I can save enough points to buy the $50 putter. Wrong, when I checked back, my oldest points had expired. Plus did I mention the $20 annual fee? FUCK!

In the end, after all the debt, I cumulatively used the points (that hadn’t expired yet) on $75 worth of gift cards to Amazon. So in 9 years, I paid $180 ($20 annual fee x9) for $75 worth of Amazon gift cards. Again, I will reiterate, I was a moron.

When I Paid off my Credit Card Debt:

Exactly 1 year ago, I finally had a job that allowed me to pay off my credit card debt. (Hint: I paid off more than the minimum payment each month) Wahoo! I even celebrated by walking into Wells Fargo and giving them back their credit card. A purely ceremonial gesture. Apparently that’s not something most people do, most people just cut them with scissors and throw it away. I recommend this. Wells Fargo actually told me to keep it open and use it for small purchases to continue to “build my credit”. Seriously, the advice Wells Fargo had for me, was to keep this awful credit card open and keep spending money on it. Really? All bow down the mighty credit score.

I decided my credit score was good enough and haven’t used that card since. It’s been 1 year.

Wallet Squirrel - Excitement

I Did Research And Found The Best Cashback Credit Card For Me:

Now with a story like this, once I paid off my credit card debt, you think I would be done with credit cards forever. Right? Well, do you recall me saying credit cards aren’t evil, credit card companies are? I just needed to learn how to use my credit card responsibly and find the right card for me. Credit Cards are a dime a dozen and so they separate themselves by giving you “rewards” for using them. These can be broken into three categories:

Point Rewards: The more money you spend on your credit card, the more “points” you get to buy stuff. These points are only redeemable through their own custom online store and often at a markup or definitely not a discount. Simply, I think this is stupid, my experience has been awful. If you’ve had a positive experience with a “point” system, I’d love to hear about it.

Mileage Rewards: The more money you spend, the more “miles” you earn. So you can essentially earn a free airline trip. This is pretty cool, but you have to watch out for “blackout dates” where there are days you can’t use your points and usually you can only select from a few airlines, but hey free miles.

Cashback Rewards: The more money you spend, the more cash you get back. Spoiler alert, this is what I prefer. Screw points and miles, when I get cash back, I use actual “cash” to buy anything I want on Amazon or buy my own plane ticket. No airline restrictions or “blackout dates”. Cash is King. Here is how I went about finding the best cashback credit card.

Let me say something about Cashback Credit Cards

Pay close attention to the amount you get back for different purchases. Some of the best cashback credit cards will give you 6% for groceries and 1% cash back for everything else. You may rightly think, damn 6% that’s awesome. Do your calculations! Here is what my finances look like with three different cashback credit cards. I used Mint.com to figure out my average spending.

Best Cashback Credit Card - Wallet Squirrel 01

Best Cashback Credit Card - Wallet Squirrel 02

Best Cashback Credit Card - Wallet Squirrel 03

With those numbers, I found the Citi Card Double Cashback to be the best cashback credit card for me. NerdWallet is a good resource for finding different credit card options.

How I make $25 a month with Citi Double Cash Back Credit Card

First and foremost, I never buy anything I can’t pay off at the end of the month. I have my account automatically pay off the entire balance each month, just in case I forget, but using my Mint app it keeps me aware of my remaining balance which I pay daily. I make most of my money by buying camping gear, contacts, new shoes and all those items are only considered 1% cashback from every other credit card, but 2% back with my Citi Cash Back Credit Card which is easily the best cashback credit card for me. Yes, if you don’t buy things, your savings far outway the 2% cashback, but these are for purchases I’m going to buy anyway and that I have budgeted for. It all adds up and $15.40 is just the minimum.

As you can see in my Income Reports, my credit card is my often my number one income producing passive income. This is on average around $25 a month. Most people pay interest on their credit cards, but if you’re smart, you can make your credit card company pay you. Here are the last couple months of additional income from what I consider the best cashback credit card.

Please know I am not paid to sponsor Citi Double Cash Back card, I just found it to be the best cashback credit card for my lifestyle.

In all, since I started with my new credit card in September. I have earned $176.05 in the last 7 months! I have earned money back from purchases I make every day. I don’t have to think about miles or blackout dates or if something is 6% or 3% today. Every purchase I make, I get 2% back. That is pretty unfreaking believable! It’s definitely better than when I used to pay $180 over the last 9 years just to have my old Wells Fargo credit card.

So now I use my credit card for EVERY purchase because I know I will get money back. I will continue to post my progress within my income reports and share exactly how this continues to pay up.

Question: Do you do use credit cards in a similiar way?

Lending Club Review, My Experience Investing With Them

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Traditionally if you wanted to get to loan to pay off credit card debt, loan consolidation or even build a pool in the backyard you’d have to go through a bank. You’d wait for a loan officer, fill out paperwork and then explain why you need the money.

Now Lending Club is something different. They use peer to peer lending to act as their own bank. They have two pools of people, borrowers (people who receive loans) and investors (people who lend the money). The idea is if you need $20,000 to consolidate a credit card bill at 21% interest, you can get a loan through Lending Club at 11% to save some money on your loan. You get a loan at a lower rate and Lending Club gets that interest off your new loan which is then distributed to the investors who supplied the money.

Here is my experience with Lending Club as an Investor:

Lending Club Logo

Signing Up

Getting started, it’s easy to sign up as an investor. Lending Club easily identifies a big button on their home page to start an account as an investor. You supply all the same info you would need to set up a brokerage account. This would include name, address, social, all that fun stuff. Keep in mind, always be worried about sharing your social, but Lending Club is a pretty established company so I felt comfortable with it.

Lending Club Homepage

Depositing Money into my Account

Once you get in, you’ll be asked to deposit money into your account to start funding loans. To simply test Lending Club, I threw in $300. I had it taken out of my checking account like how my brokerage account works (you seeing a theme?). It’s a lot like a brokerage account. The only crappy part is that it took up to 5 business days to get into my Lending Tree account. So if you’re hoping to hop right in, you’ll need to be patient.

Browse Loan Opportunities

Once I went through signing up, I was in. I could, at that time, access all the available loans that needed funding. There were a lot.  This part was pretty cool. You have a list of loans with each borrower’s info to help you select which loans to fund. You can’t see their name or social or anything to individually identify an someone but you can see their:

  • Loan Title and Purpose – Whether to Refinance Loans, Credit Card Payoff, Home Improvement, etc.
  • Loan Amount – Amount being requested by the borrower
  • Grade and Interest Rate – Borrower’s credit grade as assigned by Lending Club, as well as the loan’s interest rate
  • Funding – If a borrower is asking for $10,000 you don’t have to give all of that, you can only lend $25 and other people go in with you. This is how many people are currently in
  • Time Left – The amount of time remaining before the loan listing expires (loans are listed for 14 days)
  • Loan Details – detailed information about the borrower’s credit history as well as additional loan information is available once you click on each loan.

The idea is those with a good credit history are assigned with a lower interest rate since they are highly likely to be able to pay (less risk but less money they pay you) and those with a not so great credit score at a higher interest rate (higher risk, but better reward for investors).

Lending Club does state though 99.9% positive returns with diversified portfolios with over $2,500 invested. So I’m curious to see how my little $300 will do.

Manually Selecting Loans vs Automatic Selecting

You can both manually chose which loans you choose to fund as well as Lending Club offers an Automatic approach. The bonus of Auto Investing is that once any money is paid back into my account, the Auto Investing will automatically reinvest it in the criteria I select. For example, I can have it reinvest in A & B Grade loans so they have less of a chance to default. So the idea of Auto Investing is great, but it requires a minimum amount of $2,500 in your account and since I only have $300. I will manually invest.

How I Selected Loans to Invest in

Since I can only invest a minimum $25 per loan (diversity remember), with $300 I selected up to 12 loans to diversify. I chose:

  1. Credit Card Payoff – Lending Club Grade A @ 7.39%
  2. Credit Card Payoff – Lending Club Grade A @ 6.97%
  3. Loan Refinancing & Consolidation – Lending Club Grade A @ 7.89%
  4. Other – Lending Club Grade B @ 9.16%
  5. Credit Card Payoff – Lending Club Grade B @ 8.49%
  6. Loan Refinancing & Consolidation – Lending Club Grade B @ 9.75%
  7. Loan Refinancing & Consolidation – Lending Club Grade C @ 11.9%
  8. Loan Refinancing & Consolidation – Lending Club Grade C @ 12.9%
  9. Loan Refinancing & Consolidation – Lending Club Grade D @ 16.29%
  10. Other – Lending Club Grade E @ 20.75%
  11. Loan Refinancing & Consolidation – Lending Club Grade F @ 24.24%
  12. Credit Card Payoff – Lending Club Grade G @ 28.14%

These 12 notes have an average of 13.67% interest return . Now there is no way I can know for certain these borrowers will pay off these debts, but based on their credit history, they always pay up. However some loans were a bit sketchy like someone wanted to do a home renovation, but had $30,000 worth of debt. They could be trying to make an emergency repair, but I’m hesitant they wouldn’t try to pay their debt off before cosmetic renovations.

Selecting loans is hard work (I’d already prefer Auto Investing). The ones I selected have a good diversity of Grade Ratings as well I reviewed each person’s credit score, job status, monthly income and length of employment to get a good idea of the type of people I am working with. I am excited to see how these pan out monthly.

Lending Club Dashboard

Now – The Waiting Game

The only thing I don’t like about Lending Club vs the Stock Market is that my money is solidly invested. I can always sell stocks at anytime, but it’s not easy to sell your note (loan). You’re giving someone your money upfront and have to wait to collect it back in monthly checks (with interest of course). So since I funded those loans, I won’t get my money back until in some cases up to 3 years. The waiting game begins.

I will add any interest I receive each month in my monthly Income Reports to give you an idea how much you can really make with Lending Club.

Adme App Review – Get paid to unlock your phone screen

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Adme is an app that pays you each time you unlock your phone. Cool right? Here at Wallet Squirrel, I’ve tested it and it’s not too bad. Adme throws up an ad whenever I unlock my phone and I just swipe to get rid of the ad to access my phone. It’s fairly painless and builds up cash. If you’re a heavy phone user, you can earn up to $0.50 a day.

Setting up:

There are two Ways to build cash. You can select Content Feed ($$), Full Screen Ad ($$) or both($$$$). The idea is that both ad options give you cash, but you can combine them to get double the cash. Here’s what they are.

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Content Feed: When you unlock your phone, you will be sent to the Adme Dashboard where it shows popular stories and sponsored content. It’s not too obtrusive and easily swiped away to your regular phone.

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Fullscreen Ad: This is a typical full size ad that takes up your full screen. You can easily press your home screen button to get rid of this or hit the “x” on the top right.

Pros:

1. It’s very simple, no questions or effort on your part.
2. There is no additional money if you click on the ads or not, so you don’t have to worry about that. You get paid just that they are there and it doesn’t matter how long they are up.
3. Paypal cash out at $10

Cons:

1. If you hate ads this isn’t for you (I’m personally not a big fan, but they do pay)

Summary:

It’s pretty cool for the fact that it pays you every time you unlock phone, but I personally hate ads so I uninstalled it. If you’re someone who doesn’t mind them, this could make you a nice $15 a month.

Toluna Review, How I almost made $30 answering surveys

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Toluna LogoSummary

Toluna is a survey site. The more surveys you answer, the more points you can earn. The minimum payout for cash is $30 via PayPal rewarded after 90,000 points. Now after 4 hours of surveys I only made 8,020 points. Sigh. So to make $30 I would need to spend 45 hours answering questions. That’s roughly $0.66 per hour. Not worth it.

Toluna Review

What is Toluna: Toluna is purely a survey site where anyone can answer online surveys (via website or mobile app) and receive cash for their answers. Toluna can do this because they are paid by marketing companies to get the opinions of the public for specific questions. Toluna has the audience and marketing companies will pay to tap that audience for information.

Signing up: Toluna was incredibly easy to set up, all it needs is an email and password.

Pros:

  • It pays cash via PayPal. While they give a lot of gift card options early on, if you save, there is a PayPal option. Cash is king.
  • They have plenty of surveys. I’ve come across some survey sites that only have 1-2 surveys a day, but with Toluna that was not the case.
  • Online webpage is very simple to use. The surveys and rewards are easy to see and access.

Cons:

  • If a survey will tell you it takes 20 minutes to complete, always double or triple that time.
  • The mobile app is frustrating. I will say they recognize this and have made attempts to improve but it hasn’t done the job. My two complaints are for one (1.) They mix in paid surveys with user polls, where any user can post questions to the general audience and since they are mixed in, you sometimes can spend time answering user polls that  don’t pay you. My second (2.) when you select a survey it takes you to a website outside of the app and I once spent 20 min answering a survey before it bugged out not giving me any credit. I forever used my computer from then on.
  • A lot of surveys will start with preliminary questions such as race, age, sex and general questions such as do you drive to work. After 5 min of answering this generic questions it will then tell you, that you are not qualified to take this survey. Again time wasted.
  • In regards to the above con, being a white, male will eliminate you from a lot of surveys. This is just my experience with many different types of survey sites.
  • Most importantly it only pays $0.66 per hour if you choose the PayPal option. That is a little low.

Personal note: For $0.66 an hour, I would be better off taking a 8 hour car ride to Kansas City (City of Fountains) to walk around the streets picking up loose change from water fountains for 29 hours and still make it back with more money than I could have made with Toluna. Oh those surveys were mind numbing.