Out of the Gate with a crutch
Task #1
So if you’re starting out with zero cash and you’re trying to make $500 in 31 days where do you start? You can’t start flipping iphones or buy the next Gamestop(GME). Just because I don’t have any cash doesn’t mean I don’t have any assets. I have my life experience (debatable valuation) and a reluctantly supportive spouse (Alpine wife) but for me I had to rely on some existing skills and pull out a really old school approach from my youth.
When I was a young fella on the farm I had a lot less opportunities to make extra money but I had all sorts of time to try and think of ways to do it. Back then there was no internet, smart phones and social media influencers so I had to do things like read actual books for inspiration and ideas. It’s hard to imagine for some of the younger readers who now have all the world’s knowledge in the palm of their hand. When I was 9-10 years old Googling something involved looking in a book called an……….encyclopedia. As a result my money making activities were not super sophisticated.
I don’t remember how it started but during the summer months I would get on my bike and ride up and down all the local gravel roads with my eyes fixed on the adjacent ditches looking for empty beer and pop bottles. I would then gather these up in my backpack and once I had at least a dozen I would head to the local bar(only one in town) and turn backpack bounty. For a dozen beer I would get a whooping $1…. yes read that correctly a single dollar for 12 empty beer bottles. Now you might be thinking that the math doesn’t add up; 12 bottles X $.10 deposit per bottle = $1.20. You are correct but the thing was the local bar owner was collecting the 20 cents as a service fee since he was actually taking these to the recycling depot in the biggest nearby city. This is probably the early symptoms of what the Alpine Wife says is my biggest addiction….working. Can you imagine burning all those calories for $2-3 a day?
In fact remembering this has inspired me to reach out to Peloton, you know the at-home stationary bike company, and float this as a potential workout routine. I can see my royalty cheques already, anyway I digress, back to what the 2021 version of this did for me this month. I did not head to open roads on my bike but instead just gathered up all the empty cans and bottles around the house. Then while out at the car wash I would see some empties in the wash bay and throw those in the truck or at the local grocery store parking lot and I would see couple pop bottles on the ground and yes… in the truck they went. Now you might want to look at me judging and start calling me a “bottle gypsy” like the Alpine Wife but I think of myself as more of a “money seed farmer”. A farmer going around town collecting little 5 and 10 cent money seeds to take and plant in more fertile soil for a harvest later on in the year. This added up to an impressive total of $25 and my 9 year old self would be mind blown at the returns I’m getting now without having to ride a bike.
Task #2
The second thing I did this month is reach out to my network and see if anyone was in the market for my skills. I am a journeyman carpenter and I always have a lot of renovation work lined up but the pay is pretty meager when you math in the “Friends and Family” discount. So this wasn’t going to be an ideal option, but a buddy in town named Adam is building a new house and fortunately for me he needed help. I had a few days off before going back to work after the New Year. Now before I get into the details of what I did for Adam and how much he paid me I want to talk about how we met and became friends.
A year and half ago I was between jobs in my actual 9-5 career. I was doing all the typical online application stuff to get onto a new project for my line of work but while I was waiting on application deadlines to close and other delays in the hiring process I knew needed to keep busy. I jumped in the truck and started driving around to all the areas where new houses were being built or where it looked like major renovations were happening. I stopped in at the sites, introduced myself to whoever looked like they were in charge and told them I was looking for some work to stay busy during my job hunt. I was told about Adam that he was the best in town at exterior finishing and was always looking for help. Well as it turned out he was busy and had me working within a few days. The reason I want to mention this seemingly meaningless interlude is that nowadays certain people think that the best way to get working is to apply to as many things online as possible. This does have its place but in my experience the best opportunities have come from being able to shake a potential employers hand and look them in the eye.
Anyway Adam had drywallers scheduled to start but was running out time get the house ready. Now the best part about working for a guy building their own house is they like to save money and I’m all to happy to give a cash discount.
Task #3
The last thing I did is actually click on a link from an add on Instagram. I don’t remember what exactly it said but it was something along the lines of “Get paid for simple online tasks”. This is the stuff that online money making dreams are made of so of course signed up to User Testing Club and gave I it a try. Turns out it’s basically a paid internet traffic operation for online casino review sites. You get an email with instructions that tell you exactly what to search like “Highest payouts online casino” then it tells you which Google search result to click on and which page on the casino review site to go to find a “secret phrase”. Once I nailed down the “secret phrase” I logged into the User Testing Club website and input the secret phrase and if it was correct I got paid $1 into my Paypal account. This is definitely not the thing of online income dreams but similar to collecting the empty bottles I view it as collecting money seeds. The strange thing is that the emails with tasks just stopped at the end of the month. I guess I was taking too long to give in to the temptation to signup to one of the online casinos.
Month end summary
Freelance carpentry over 3.5 days.
The pot of empties at the end of the rainbow.
Online casino traffic money
Since this operation is run on a shoestring budget but also tech forward I have put together a highly detailed spreadsheet table below to summarize the numbers below. Please note the bolding of the total in the bottom right cell.
Thoughts on the month
The saying goes that “Your 9-5 will make you a living and your 5-9 will make you wealthy”. I get that $500 isn’t going to be a life changing amount but the hope and dream is that this is money that can be rolled into an opportunity that contribute a small percentage to monthly goal. That’s why I started with something I knew and can get some of that seed money germinating as early as possible.
I’ll try to get a bit more out of my comfort zone next month and see what happens even though I have no idea what I’m going to do. Either way I want to keep building the seed money and looking out for some new opportunities.