I always appreciate when others are transparent with their finances since it helps me understand what I am having a deficit on streams of income with my own.
Where do I make money?
1.) Primary Income Job – $3496.38
2.) Stoked Wallet Shop – $1704.00
3.) Stoked Wallet Ads and Affilate Revenue – $0
4.) Storj Node – $2.04
5.) Etsy – $0
6.) Ebay – $20.63
7.) Recycling – $0
8.) Cryptocurrencty Mining – $0
9.) Dividends – $36.51
Bonus
10.) Credit Card Cashback – $48.57
Total $5,308.13
My Job
Working in a foundry is hard work, but it is an honest paycheck that produces products which people rely on to operate safely everyday so in some small way it is fulfilling. In August I had quite a few days off so I’m hoping to increase this income in Q4 when many Americans start going into the red preparing for the holidays.
Stoked Wallet
I do not regret taking a chance and spending a significant amount of time and a couple hundred dollars on building this site. I am approaching the one year anniversary of Stoked Wallet’s creation and I could not be happier with how many people have not only found the blog, but found useful advice to apply to their financial stability. I am okay that I am not making money from ads or affiliate links, because I know these things will take care of themselves if I keep delivering good content to give people more “oil wells” to diversify where their income is coming from. As far as the shop goes I need to add more products and diversify the inventory available. I want to learn to make actual leather wallets so I can sell an actual “Stoked Wallet”, but more on that later …much later. Did I mention you can get a free stock by going to Public with my link?
Storj Node
When I was running a profitable cryptocurrency mining computer this venture made sense in a “the computer is already on so who cares kinda way”, but now it’s probably costing me money to extract this $2 of value. Could be classified as a hobby.
Etsy
Admittedly I have not put enough effort into my Etsy shop for Twitch, Youtube, and Discord Emotes. I’ll have to dedicate more time to this and once I have more than twelve listings see if in 6 months if this venture is best left to the people already making money doing it.
Ebay
I am reselling some miscellaneous grocery items here which were in short supply due to supply chain failures. Not really something to get excited about, but I am happy to be building a reputation on this platform, since previously I couldn’t even sell products on there (weird soft gating).
Recycling
I was too lazy to take all my aluminum cans to the recycling centers. Now that the European smelters (i.e. Alcoa) are down I don’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing for my $10 in cans lol.
Cryptocurrency Mining
With the Ethereum merge upcoming and the drastic decline in cryptocurrency mining is just not profitable with my electricity prices. I am still long term bullish on Bitcoin, but direct purchasing instead of PoW creation is the name of the game here.
Dividends
A few stocks in my ROTH IRA account paid out this month. This is all for my retirement so it pretty much doesn’t effect my day to day income.
Credit Card Cashback
This card is mainly for gas purchases (3%) and food club purchases (2%). This month I will have a 5% card for gas with 3% on dining/takeout, and I will switch my other 3% card to online purchases. To all the Dave Ramsey acolytes just pay your card off and use it like cash.
In Summary
Out of my 9 sources of income only 5 produced for me and only 2 did in a significant way. All the little gains do add up and with saving/investing can compound over time, but focusing on big wins is important for financial peace. I am very blessed to have so many different ways to make money, but I need to further diversify (i.e. rental income, mineral rights, etc.) to provide additional stability for me and my family. I will continue to work on the site when I can and hope this exploratory dive into last month’s finances gives you either some ideas or inspiration or even what not to do haha.
