My apologies in advance… this month’s net worth update isn’t terribly exciting!
Change: -$80 or -0.21 %
Down, but not too terribly much. It’s to be expected, since I’m still (yes, still) looking for a job and living off of freelance income from “side hustles” such as this blog, and knitting. Despite the small downturn (look how tiny it looks on the graph!), here are the upsides:
Savings: Untouched! I still have not broken into my Getting Established fund or my emergency fund for anything! In fact, my savings has grown; I met all of my current savings targets for the month. Next month will be a different story — I hope to still meet my savings targets, but since I’m getting close to “The Big Move,” I anticipate at least a few withdrawals from my Getting Established fund… since that’s what it’s there for!
Student Loans: Down! The balance is only down by $10, but that’s much more encouraging than last month, when it grew by $53. Even slow progress is progress! But I think this might be false progress, and the account just hasn’t updated the interest on my loan properly. I’ll take the small wins for now, anyway!
Side hustles including knitting? That’s interesting. Can you elaborate on how you are able to make a profit off of knitting?
Nicole, that depends on how to define profit! On a basis of (amount earned) – (amount paid for materials) = Profit!, I do pretty well, making about twice what I put into it. I make hats for the Southern California Browncoats (Browncats are fans of the canceled television show “Firefly”) to sell at San Diego Comic-Con every year. I pay about $7-7.50 for a materials to make one hat and the SoCal Browncoats sell them for $25 for me. I also have to pay to ship the hats out to California, which costs me about $1-2 per hat.
But, if you calculate my hourly wage, it’s pitiful. I’ve never bothered to calculate it out, though, because I knit these hats while I watch TV or do something else where I wouldn’t ordinarily be making money. If I streamlined the process, I could probably make a hat a week and sell 52 each year. As it is, I go through waves where I’ll knit like a fiend for a month or two, and then I won’t make any hats at all for a few months. Normally I wouldn’t have mentioned it at all in my side hustles, but Comic-Con is at the end of this month and I need to ship soon, so it’s on my mind…
All in all, I don’t recommend knitting as a side hustle, unless you’re super speedy at it, you like it A LOT, and/or you have a knitting machine to make the work much faster!
Wow, okay, I’m thinking the same thing nicole is thinking, HOw do you make a profit knitting? Maybe I need to do what you do! LOL but I encourage you to keep going. With the economic status we are all in, everyone is hustling. Have you thought about working for Associated Content as a writer. The pay isn’t that much, but you can make an easy $30-$40 a day. This is how I started out making money a day. You just have to be disciplined to write the articles everyday.
Or, maybe you could write some short articles and sell them on your blog? It seems your blog gets a nice amount of traffic, why not write some short articles, and put a sales page in your direct blog post? I’m guessing you get at least 200 visitors a day. THat is 1-2 sales right there! If you write an article pack for $50, that is $50-$100 a day! Hey, you never know unless you try.
Hi Sara – interesting ideas there. I occasionally write articles for other sites, but I like to focus on the things I am most passionate about, for which I have my own blogs!
I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean by selling articles on my blog? (Also, you don’t need to guess at how many visitors I get a day – the link to my sitemeter statistics is in the right sidebar!) What’s an article pack? That’s not a term I’m familiar with, and I’m curious about such a thing that 1-2 people who read my site each day would want to pay $50 for!
How’s this blog treating you as far as income Stephanie?
It varies, quite a bit. A few months ago, I pulled in more in one month than I had working 20+ hours per week at my on-campus jobs. June? Pocket change. It’s cool though – I roll with the punches 🙂
Slow and steady will get you there – good for you for not dipping into savings!