May was a great month for side hustlin’. As you can see, my May side income pretty much kicked ass. It’s definitely my best month yet for side income, beating out my high in March.
If you read my last post, you may have guessed where a large chunk of that came from: the trash. Yep! Nothing like getting lucky on trash day in a rich neighborhood! Regardless of where that chunk of side income came from, I’m grateful, and even without it, I still had a great month.
May Highlights
One of the great things about living on a boat is obviously meeting people from all over. We had a really lovely couple from Istanbul on our dock for awhile. There was a language barrier, so for awhile we didn’t speak much – just smiled and said hello each day, but one night me and my guy were sitting outside drinking wine. Let’s just say that wine definitely has the ability to bring people together, even if you can’t understand one another. And what do you do when you run out of wine? You break out the scotch and rum of course! We drank, told stories, and laughed until about 1 AM that night.
We paid for it the next day. But it was worth it.
Another evening, we joined them again where she prepared a four-course Turkish meal for us that was just to-die-for! So many wonderful pairings and delicious new ways to eat couscous. One of my favorite samplings was a cold soup that was made with cucumber and Greek yogurt. It sounds weird, but it was truly the most refreshing thing on a hot night. We finished it off with Turkish tea with brown sugar and I’m so thrilled that we made such nice friends. They’ve since left to sail back to Turkey, and they want us to come visit them one day. I hope we do.
Other Reunions
I also had a couple of other reunions with friends I haven’t seen in awhile. Melissa, a friend of mine from Dallas, was in Miami visiting a friend so we got to get together and go have sushi. It was awesome to see her – it had been almost 8 years since our last hang, and I wish we could have hung out longer.
I also got to see my good friend Jessica from MJ Sailing for the first time in over a year. She and her husband sailed to Europe last year and just got back a couple of months ago. They just bought a new (to them) aluminum boat and have her on the hard as they fix her up for some future sailing in the northern latitudes. She and I met up for an afternoon in Palm Beach for some Mexican grub. The place we found was the real deal and so good! After our lunch, we drove up to the beach and walked up and down the shoreline while taking photos, people watching, catching up on our lives, travels, etc. We had a great time.
Summer Plans
In other news, we are heading up to St. Simons Island, GA for the duration of hurricane season. Our insurance doesn’t cover us in Florida unless we pay an addendum, and frankly, we just want to try a new spot for awhile. We moved onto the boat so we could travel and see new places, and after a few months, Fort Lauderdale gets a little kooky, so it’s always nice to go somewhere that operates at a slower pace for awhile. We are going to miss our friends here, though, but time flies and I’m sure we’ll be back in November.
Side Income Summary – May 2015
So again, my May side income rocked. If you’ve read my side income posts before, you know that my side income posted is just that – money made from what some call “side hustles”, meaning money I’ve made on the side, minus any expenses/payouts directly related to my side income such as affiliate payouts to others, PayPal fees, etc. This doesn’t include my income from my full time job (which I do remotely from the boat) or my fiance’s freelance income or income from his music and book sales.
The below numbers are an accurate depiction of what I’ve made on the side, bad or good, compared to the previous month.
Webmaster/Web Design Stuff: $339.25
Online Sales: $1050.76
Affiliate Income: $147.23
Adsense: $7.87
Writing Gigs: $0
Misc: $38.43
TOTAL: $1583.54 in extra income (UP 697.19 from previous month!)
I did ok in the webmaster department. I tweaked a few things on a couple of clients’ websites, and did some general website maintenance but no real big projects. As you can see, the majority of my income was from selling stuff online. This includes the golf clubs I found that were being thrown away (I sold them on eBay and about half of my “online sales” were from that). The other half was from sales on my Maggie & Milly shop.
What I’m actually pretty excited about is my affiliate income. That took a big jump from my average monthly affiliate income. I learned a few things and while it might take awhile to get up to that level on a regular basis, I have a focus now on what works and what doesn’t, so it will be interesting to see how I end up doing with it in the future.
Miscellaneous income is from random extras such as cashback rewards from my credit card, or other similar things.
Savings with Digit
I haven’t posted anything about Digit since my original post on the money saving app, but let me just say that I love it! What it does is connect to your bank account and, using it’s super smart algorithm to determine what amounts of money you won’t miss, it does legally what some hedge fund managers do illegally – it simply transfers those small increments from your bank into a savings account for you automatically (instead of some offshore account for some “financial adviser”).
It was slow going at first because my bank kept blocking it’s attempt to access my account (thank you, Regions for looking out for me, but screw you for making saving money such a pain in my ass at first). It’s all good now though, Digit and Regions are playing nice, and it has managed to save $159.90 for me so far. Not too shabby.
On the Horizon
I still have a few things I have to wrap up before I can really dig my heels into my future projects that I really want to focus on, such as writing a book (or actually a series of them), and a few other things. For now, we’re focusing on getting up to St. Simons, relaxing for a week (I’ve taken a week’s vacation), and then finalizing our plans for our honeymoon (details on that later). June has been really busy so far, and I’m stoked about it, so I’ll be filling everyone in soon!
Hope y’all are hustlin’ that side income, but most importantly, I hope you’re enjoying life. It’s awful short, so live it up!
Peace!
M.
