Alternative Income for May 2007

As I have posted on previously, I am working on supplementing my traditional employment income with "alternative income" through a variety of methods on the internet. I have been very successful in generating alternative income this past month, mainly through writing product review articles and how-to articles for Associated Content. I have been continuing to sell my unneeded books through the Amazon.com marketplace also, which is generating some cash although at a loss compared to the price I originally paid for the books on evil credit cards. Here is a quick summary of the income I have generated for myself via the internet during the month of May 2007:

Associated Content Articles: $225.19
Amazon.com Marketplace Sales: $140.56

Grand Total: $365.75

So what is my analysis of my efforts of the past month? One observation I immediately have is that writing articles for Associated Content is the most reliable means of making money online that I have tried thus far. The drawback is that it is time consuming to write article after article only to be paid a few dollars apiece. But this time consumption is offset by the extremely low mental effort it takes to write a 400-600 word product review when compared to the mental energy I expend working on my doctoral dissertation in philosophy. I am able to crank out a few Associated Content articles while I kick back on the couch and watch Star Trek, which I will be doing anyways whether I write articles or not. So I figure I might as well get paid for my down time!

The next observation I have is that I need to be much more consistent in terms of the number of articles I write for Associated Content per day. I would like to get to the point where I bring in $1000/month through Associated content as alternative income. With an average so far of $4.65 per article, it would take approximately 215 articles per month to get $1000 of extra income. 215 articles per month over 30 days is approximately seven to eight articles per day. I find this to be an incredibly realistic goal considering how little time and mental effort it takes for me to write each Associated Content article, even after having been working all day at my regular jobs.

If you yourself would like to give Associated Content a try, just click on the banner inside this post to sign up for a free account and to get started writing articles. As long as you can find new products or restaurants to be reviewing, or as long as you have some how-to articles you can write, I have found that Associated Content is a great way to supplement one's traditional income, as long as you are a relatively quick writer and typist. If you need a template to look at, here is a sample of my own articles so you can see the level of depth (or lack thereof) that Associated Content is looking for in their articles: Associated Content articles by Zachary Fruhling.

Unclaimed Property

Several months ago I was notified by the California State Controller's Office that the state was holding $175 for me in unpaid wages from Radio Shack, my employer throughout my college years. Needless to say, this caught me by surprise since I had not been employed at Radio Shack since July of 2001.

According to the instructions that came included with the notice, all I had to do was to send in photocopies of my drivers license and social security card along with a completed claim form to the state controller's office. So I quickly gathered my materials and sent off the form and have been anxiously awaiting my unclaimed $175 ever since. I knew that I might not receive the money soon because the form warned that it can take up to 180 days to process unclaimed property requests, so I was anxious but patient. To make a short story shorter, my $175 arrived in yesterdays mail, and I am splitting the money evenly between my summer savings fund and my Roth IRA. It was the easiest $175 that I already made, so I was happy to finally square my account with Radio Shack, so to speak.

Speaking of Radio Shack, however, I do have an interview this week with the local Radio Shack for summer employment, since I am largely out of work from the colleges this summer due to lack of course availability. I have always enjoyed Radio Shack, and I miss the simplicity of just trying to meet the sales goals and do a good job helping people. It is a much simpler work environment than what I have been doing for the last six years or so, and I am looking forward to using that simplicity to pay the bills while still having energy to write my dissertation this summer. It is hard not to feel like I am moving backwards in life by going back to Radio Shack, but I was always happy there and I am looking forward to a nice, mellow summer as a result!

Getting back to the unclaimed property bureau, if you are in California and you suspect that monies are being held for you by the state, you can visit this web site to search the State of California's unclaimed property and see if you are owed any money that you can claim: Bureau of Unclaimed Property. While this site is just for California residents/employees, your own state should have a similar method of searching for unclaimed property. A quick Google search for your state's name and "unclaimed property" should point you in the right direction.

Investment Metaphor #8: World of Warcraft

For those of you who don't already know, I have become the very thing I never thought I would be: an online role playing gamer. The game that did it do me was World of Warcraft, a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG). World of Warcraft (WoW for short) is an online world consisting of orcs, trolls, elves, warriors, mages, etc. and in which you complete quests and fight battles for loot and for gold. You custom build your character and your character increases in skill level (from 1 to 70) as the game progresses. The first few levels are quite easy to obtain as one learns the ins and outs of the game with a few simple quests to complete.

When I first played the game, it quickly became obvious that getting my character up to the highest level would be a long-haul process. At that time the highest level was 60 (the recent Burning Crusade expansion pack raised the level cap to 70), which seemed like an unattainable goal someday. The good news, though, is that nearly a year later, my character has finally reached level 60. The unattainable goal has been attained (although there is much more to do in the game).

In reflecting on the past year's journey through the World of Warcraft, it occurred to me that there were the makings of an investment metaphor lurking in the World of Warcraft. For many, just like level 60 was for me when I began playing WoW, the goal of financial independence seems like an unattainable goal. Retirement seems too far off and the many hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of dollars it will take to retire well are so disconnected from the money one deals with on a day to day basis, that one cannot help but feel slightly pessimistic about one's retirement savings/planning when first becoming an investor.

The first thing to keep in mind is that retirement planning is a long-haul process, best achieved slowly over time. The same was true of my World of Warcraft goal. Level 60 seemed so far off and so unrealistic, but a year's worth of steady playing brought me to my goal without too much effort. Likewise, the key to success in investing is not to try to beat the market and get rich quick, but rather to invest a moderate portion of your time, energy, and capital over time to let the power of compound returns do the work for you. If I had let the sheer distance from level 1 to level 60 keep me from playing the game, then I would certainly never reach my goal. But I devoted what time and energy I had available (around the activities that make up the bulk of my life such as school and work), and now I have a level 60 character ready to fight some major World of Warcraft battles. The same should be true of your investing style. You should take a small percentage of your income, say 10-15%, and put it into long term investments. If you do this consistently every time you get paid, by the time you reach retirement you will be a wealthy person.

The downside of this style of investing is that it is boring. There is a lifetime of repetition involved in retirement planning. Similarly, in the World of Warcraft, sometimes to advance to the next level or to increase your character's proficiency in his/her trade skill (Yes, the characters have professions in the game. lol), you must spend some time "grinding," which is a term for the repetitive killing of creatures or monsters in the game to get experience points and force your character up to the next level. Grinding is a slow, repetitive, and boring process, but one does it for the greater good of moving the character forward.

Likewise in investing, often one keeps doing the same old thing (saving and investing, saving and investing, ad nauseum) for the sake of being well off in the future. Yes it is boring, but it is also highly reliable and successful. I am a firm believer that everyone should be following this model of investing rather than pursuing flashy get rick quick schemes or sexy day-trading. Rather than pursuing risky venture capital for a business idea that may flop, why not put your own hard-earned money to work for you making more money via long-term growth? True, you may get hit by a bus tomorrow and you would not be able to enjoy the fruits of your long-term strategy, but you could just as easily get hit by a bus tomorrow as a day-trader, so you might as well plan for the future just in case you make it that long!

In conclusion, stick to that long-term strategy (It is actually less important which strategy you choose than the fact that you have some long-term strategy at all!). If it is good enough for the World of Warcraft, then it is good enough for your portfolio. And if you haven't given WoW a try yet, you should give it a go; it may just change your mind about the value of online gaming if you were previously skeptical. You can visit the official World of Warcraft site here to start an account and download a trial copy of the game.


See below for previous installments in my series on investment metaphors:

Investment Metaphor #7: Commuters
Investment Metaphor #6: Live 24/7 Webcasting
Investment Metaphor #5: Johann Sebastian Bach
Investment Metaphor #4: Investment Blogging
Investment Metaphor #3: Potatoes Revisited
Investment Metaphor #2: Fractals
Investment Metaphor #1: Cane Toads

Advantage Energy Dividend

This morning I received my monthly distribution from my holdings of Advantage Energy Income Fund (AAV). Since the fund is a Canadian Royalty Trust (CANROY), there was a $0.17 foreign tax deducted from the distribution. But I still received a healthy $0.94 which was reinvested back into AAV for an additional 0.0803 shares. This brings my current holdings of AAV to 8.2548 shares at $12.30/share for a total of $101.53. Not bad considering I originally purchased eight even shares of AAV at $10.86/share. So far AAV has turned a nice miniature profit for me. In retrospect, I probably would not have bought AAV at all, but I must admit that I do enjoy seeing the monthly dividends come rolling in and increasing.

Apartment Hunting

The great apartment hunt begins. Since we heard that my wife did not receive the job in Ohio, it looks like we'll be remaining in California's central coast for a while longer, since that is where our jobs are, without anything immediate on the horizon. The immediate concern is now to try to scrounge up enough cash to afford to move into a new apartment, since our current apartment complex is going condo later this year.

I have been steadily pumping money for the past few months into a summer savings fund, which now has a balance of about $1600.00. Unfortunately this falls a bit short of what we will need to get us moved into a new apartment, since in this area landlords typically ask for a rather hefty deposit (often greater than one month's rent), the first month's rent, and often the last month's rent as well. When the rent on a two bedroom apartment is going for $1400-1600/month, this adds up to upwards of $4500 to move into a new place.

The good news is that our current complex is generously paying the tenants a month and a half of rent (about $2100 total) as compensation for being vacated, but unfortunately we will receive this money back along with our original security deposit once we have moved out. So while this is very generous of our current place, it does not help us get all settled into a new apartment. The $2100 will be great for getting through the summer, especially considering my pathetic lack of teaching work this summer; but I am in search of a brilliant solution about how to get us into a new apartment in the near future so that we can use that money in the summer itself.

One idea, which rubs against the grain of my finance guru part of my brain, is to use my new Capital One credit card to help get us moved into a new place. This is precisely what I had hoped to avoid when I finally qualified for a new credit card, especially since it would set our net worth back ever further than it already is. It is true that I could use the $2100 to pay back the credit card immediately, so perhaps this would not be a bad solution after all, as long as I retain the self-discipline to immediately pay back the charged balance rather than to let the balance sit on the card for any great length of time.

On the one hand, I can't help but feel that it was providential that I received a new credit card for the first time in many years immediately before a period of financial hardship. But on the other hand, the temptation to use the new credit card and take the easy way out rather than struggling through this trial the old fashioned way and trust in God's provision feels uncannily like a temptation of the enemy rather than a hand from above.

Alternative Income

I have been trying to supplement my income with several sources of alternative income. Anything that produced income outside of a traditional job is what I would consider to be alternative income. While I have done any number of odd activities in the past (e.g. dumpster diving) to eek out a living, I am on a constant quest to produce a steady stream of alternative income via the internet. Below is a list of my current activities and projects that I am using to supplement my traditional income:


1) Selling off my unneeded books on Amazon.com. While I am by no means recapturing the original purchase price for these many books, I am clearing off some much needed shelf space and padding my emergency/summer fund in the process. If you yourself have any media items such as books, DVDs or music that you would like to sell, follow this link to sell your stuff on Amazon.com.

2) Writing articles for Associated Content. Associated Content will pay you anywhere from $3.00 to $20.00 for keyword heavy exclusive content. They will pay for anything from restaurant reviews and how-to articles to product comparisons and news reports. I have only completed two articles for Associated Content so far, but I was paid a total of $11.92 for them. Each article took approximately 20 minutes, which works out to $17.88/hour. Not bad at all, I'd say for something that takes approximately no intellectual effort. If you'd like to see some sample articles of mine and even give it a try yourself, click here or on the Associated Content button in this post to get started. I'm going to be pursuing this much further in the very near future (not at the expense of my readers here, though; not to worry!).

3) Affiliate income from my other website Toysofthe80s.com. I have always been a child of the 80s, and for the past couple of years I have been using Ebay's affiliate marketing program to make some cash by directing shoppers of vintage toys via my website to Ebay. I have not been actively maintaining the site, but it does produce a steady albeit small stream of supplementary cash. The nice thing is that the site is automatically updated with current products listed on Ebay, so it takes exactly zero work to maintain the site. It just churns away and I collect the money each month.

Roth IRA Report For 5/10/07

This past Tuesday I made my monthly contribution to my Roth IRA. Unfortunately as the summer of non-employment draws nigh, I am forced to put more of my money into my emergency/summer fund to make sure that we can afford to pay the rent all summer while I am low on teaching work. So the end result is that I was only able to make a $200 contribution to my IRA this month. It is a little anti-climactic after several good months of stashing away $400/month, but finances, like life, certainly have their ups and downs. So here is a summary of my current Roth IRA investments:

• SPDRs S&P 500 Index ETF (SPY): 2.478 shares @ $150.48/share = $372.89
• iShares Russell 2000 Index ETF (IWM): 5.403 shares @ $81.93/share = $442.67
• iShares Euro-Asia Index ETF (EFA): 5.5603 shares @ $79.66/share = $442.93
• Powershares High Yield Dividend ETF (PEY): 27.6168 shares @ $16.06/share = $443.53
• Money Market Fund: $0.69

Roth IRA Total: $1702.71

Personal Finance on Ebay

Out of curiosity, I did a search for "personal finance" on Ebay, just to see what kind of wares are for sale to help better one's personal finance. Take a look for yourself:

"Personal Finance" on Ebay

There seem to be quite a few software programs and books available by the personal finance gurus, but my conviction is that one is better off by saving the money one might spend on such trinkets and pump that money into a basic investment portfolio. Here is a link I have posted before, but I recommend it very highly for researching how to set up a simple retirement portfolio: The Kirk Report Lazy Portfolio Archive.

Don't waste your money on personal finance books/software when you could simply come to www.seemegetrich.com for free advice that will never lead you astray! Avoid the hype, save and invest more, and think long-term. In fact for the ultimate in lazy investing, you could simply mirror my own portfolio. Take a look here if you need some inspiration: Zachary's Roth IRA portfolio. While there is no real one-size-fits-all solution to investing, a basic portfolio like this will serve as a solid foundation that you can then modify to fit your own particular situation.

Stay tuned for "Zachary's Complete Guide to Becoming an Investor" to be posted later this week. It will cover all the basics on going from living month-to-month to becoming financially independent. More to come....

Zero Cost Weekend

Fortunately this weekend is shaping up to be a zero cost weekend. For starters, both my wife and I have been sick with sore throats and stuffy heads for a couple of days now (the unfortunate part). So today I am sitting at home drinking green tea with Zicam, trying to nip this illness in the bud. I have a ton of dissertation work to do this weekend, too, so tomorrow I will probably forgo church for the sake of making some real progress in my writing in response to the recent research I have been pursuing. I have to clean the fish tank (very badly) and the mice's cage, and do some laundry, but all of that will be my morning projects tomorrow. We did our grocery shopping a couple of days ago, so I don't really need to spend any money on food; so I think I can get away with spending no money whatsoever this weekend!

I have been wanting to get some good Ham Radio time in, too, so if I am feeling inspired later I may run up to my office at the community college, grab my equipment, and set it up here at home. I like to keep my radio equipment in my office so I can make a few contacts when my office hours are slow, but it will be nice to have it at home so I can geek out with my radio rather than go out and spend money unnecessarily. Ham Radio is a wonderfully cheap hobby once the initial cost of acquiring the equipment is laid out. And perfectly satisfactory radio equipment can be obtained second-hand without too much cash from local Ham Radio operators (most Ham Radio operators are pack rats by nature, saving anything that could possibly be useful later).

But as for now I'm going to kick back with my tea, watch a movie or two, and try to get healthy. Now that we have this new laptop that my father-in-law gave us for Christmas, I can blog from the couch or from bed, so I might try to get some good blog reading/writing in today also. A quick question for my readers out there: what do you do for cheap entertainment or for a zero-cost weekend? Post any tips you have in the comments section.

Investment Metaphor #7: Commuters

This installment in my series on investment metaphors comes courtesy of Scott over at The Deprived Investor. Scott emailed me today with a suggestion for an investment metaphor that he noticed while commuting home from work. He noticed that the surrounding fellow commuters often behave exactly like investors:

"Essentially I was looking at the way some people will switch lanes pretty frequently, moving into whichever lane happens to be moving faster at that particular point in time. Sometimes it works for them, and they get ahead of me. Other times they get over and that lane slows down and I pass them by. Made me think of investors who buy a hot stock but sell it the first time the price drops, and move into another hot stock. Sometimes it works for them, but sometimes the stock rebounds way beyond where it was when they first bought it, and they miss out because they had sold it (or changed lanes)" - Scott from The Deprived Investor

Switching lanes at the hope of getting home from work a little faster is directly analogous to stock chasing in the hopes of making it rich quick. With commuting the downsides to this approach are immediately obvious: one is more likely to get stuck farther up the road, and more accident prone due to careless driving. Yes, the chances for success are there, too, but do the risks really outweigh the rewards? I suppose for some people it does, just as it does for the numerous "investors" who follow the day trading method rather than a long-term investment method.

The risks are just as clear for the flashy (i.e. sexier) day trader: day trading has greater potential for huge returns, but the risks of losing your shirt increase dramatically also when day trading rather than investing. Along with this potential for great returns/losses comes a very high degree of stress. Picture the contrast between the stressed out commuter who is darting in and out of traffic trying to get home and the commuter who is able to kick back, enjoy the tunes on the radio, and get home at a leisurely pace. Who is having the better time? Yes it may take the latter commuter longer to get home, but I'll bet his blood pressure is significantly lower as a result. It reminds me of that old Disney cartoon with Mr. Walker / Mr. Wheeler (see the video above). Likewise, day trading creates an extraordinary amount of stress on a day to day basis, as one is constantly glued to his or her portfolio, often as if hanging on for dear life.

I see this in the personal finance blogs all the time. Those, like I, who are following a long-term buy-and-hold investing strategy have relatively mellow blogs and are content to kick back and let their money make them rich in the long-term. Those bloggers who are day traders admittedly have sexier blogs; and although they may be rejoicing in the here and now when the market is on an upswing, those same rejoicers become nail-biters at the slightest hint of a downward trend in the market.

If you are finding yourself to be a bit too similar to Mr. Wheeler, whether in your driving or in your investing, try slowing down the pace and give long-term investing a try. It may not be as sexy as Mr. Wheeler, but you will have the cool-headed sanity of Mr. Walker in its place, and you will get rich in the long term!


Thanks again to Scott at The Deprived Investor for this investment metaphor. See below for previous installments in my series on investment metaphors:

Investment Metaphor #6: Live 24/7 Webcasting
Investment Metaphor #5: Johann Sebastian Bach
Investment Metaphor #4: Investment Blogging
Investment Metaphor #3: Potatoes Revisited
Investment Metaphor #2: Fractals
Investment Metaphor #1: Cane Toads

$1 Million Gold Coin

Would you like anchovies with that?

Yesterday the Royal Canadian Mint unveiled a pizza-sized gold bullion coin with a denomination of C$1 Million. The coin is 21 inches in diameter and 1.2 inches thick, and is made of 99.999% pure gold bullion at a weight of 100 kg. Although the denomination is C$1 Million, the coin is worth more than double that due to the current spot price of gold bullion ($686.90 USD). Needless to say, these novelty coins are being produced in extremely small quantities, as I can't imagine the market for them is very big. It sure would be nifty to own one, though.

Once upon a time I was hoarding up silver and gold bullion on a much smaller scale, but I have since turned my attention to the stock market due to the couple of decades between now and my retirement and the stock market's higher potential for gains. Precious metals are just plain cool to own, though, and once in a while I wish I hadn't sold my bullion coins, even if I did turn a pretty nifty profit on them because of the low price of metals when I originally purchased them. Plus my family has always had a bit of a survivalist mentality, so having bullion coins around eases my sense of impending doom about the potential collapse of our civilization (Okay, that sounded a bit overdramatic). I suppose if our whole society were to collapse, though, I would have bigger problems than whether I had any gold coins stashed away like a chipmunk! I do think about adding a gold or silver ETF to my portfolio from time to time, but I always try to overcome the urge for novelty in my portfolio and would rather just stick to my current long-term strategy.

Dividends To Date

I have been wanting to start compiling a list of all the dividend payments I have received to date. That way I can just add to the list to keep track of increasing dividend payments over time. And since there is no time like the present, without further ado, here are all the dividend payments I have received since I became an investor in January of this year:


Roth IRA Dividends:

2/21/07: Money Market Dividend ($0.47)
3/21/07: Money Market Dividend ($0.53)
3/29/07: IWM Dividend ($0.64)
4/23/07: Money Market Dividend ($0.64)
4/30/07: SPY Dividend ($1.27)
4/30/07: PEY Dividend ($1.11)


Taxable Account / Emergency Fund Dividends:

2/21/07: Money Market Dividend ($0.35)
3/19/07: AAV Dividend ($0.87)
3/21/07: Money Market Dividend ($1.55)
4/18/07: AAV Dividend ($0.91)
4/23/07: Money Market Dividend ($3.25)


Even though I have only been at this since January, I am seeing a noticeable difference in the size of the dividends/distributions I am receiving. I suppose, having been a math major at one point, that the power of compounding should not surprise me quite as much as it does. I don't think I will ever stop getting a kick out of watching the dividend payments come rolling in for absolutely no extra work on my part. Definitely the neatest thing since sliced bread.

What's In Your Wallet?

There is a meme going around the personal finance blog scene about posting the contents of one's wallet. I do not usually go in for these meme things (except on Fark.com), but this one sounded like fun, so here it goes. Let's see what I have in my wallet and what I can learn about my finance habits from those contents.

My wallet's contents:

1) Driver's License
2) University Graduate Student ID
3) Social Security Card
4) A business card from Caffe Dolce, the coffee shop I used to work for
5) ATM Card
6) Proof of Auto Insurance
7) Ham Radio License
8) Safeway Club Card
9) U-Haul Storage Accesss Card
10) Sprint Prepaid Phone Card
11) Sears Credit Card
12) Health Insurance Card
13) USAA Membership Card
14) Gamestop Membership Card
15) Costco Membership Card
16) Dental Insurance Card
17) Community College Faculty ID
18) Expired Bath & Body Works Coupon Card (just chucked it)
19) University Copy Center Card
20) Capital One Credit Card
21) Carlos Torano Cigar Label
22) Assorted Business Cards
23) Recipts for Photo Processing (from a two years past camping trip)
24) Shooting Range Gift Certificate

Wow! My first thought after looking at the above list is to wonder how on Earth I am able to fit all of this stuff inside of one wallet (don't even get me started on my key ring). The good news is that most of the above stuff is completely harmless financially. The Gamestop membership was probably a complete waste of money, and I must admit that I seldom use the Costco account. I have not followed my own advice to freeze the credit cards, but I seem to have overcome the urge to use credit cards on a day-to-day basis like I used to when I was in college. Other thoughts I have are that I need to spend more time with the activities I love (e.g. the Ham Radio license, and the shooting range gift certificate). The dental insurance card reminds me that I need to get my teeth cleaned (oh, chore of chores!). Overall, I'd say that there is not too much to sabotage myself financially within the inner sanctum of my wallet. I probably need to pare this list down to the bare essentials so my wallet doesn't explode. But it could be worse: I could have been born female and have to carry a purse. Now that would be a lot of stuff to cart around!