Extra income report – March 2018.
It seems so odd to say that a whole month has gone by since our house move. For me, setting up our new home and trying to keep normal life together was the priority, so side hustles got shelved. However, for my husband, our new home meant starting his side hustle game from scratch!
Here’s a breakdown of our passive and side hustle income for March.
- Sales – £21.93
- Coupons – £20.04
- Online Earnings – £6.54
- Cashback – £100.42
- Interest – £12.78
Total: £161.71
My rules for calculating our extra income.
What do we include?
Cashback, bank interest and incentives, dividends, bonuses, competition wins, discounts earned through loyalty points, voucher codes or special activity, found money (substantial amounts), gifts, tax refunds that would otherwise be unclaimed, earnings from online or offline sales, as well as earnings from surveys, apps and freelance writing work.
What doesn’t qualify?
Our salaries, regular sale refunds (such as buying something and then returning it), discounts on items in store or online that are available to all, general estimates of what we could have spent but didn’t – such as reducing a bill and calculating what the difference would have been.
Here’s our income in detail:
Sales
I spent a little time showing Lord Balders how to create listings on eBay, and basically left him to it. He has been doing a fantastic job since then! It hasn’t been an entirely one-sided affair though, as I’ve helped with some listings and with packaging, but on the whole, eBay sales is his domain from now on.
I am so relieved!
He’s earned £21.93 profit in his first two weeks, and now that he knows the ropes, his eBay empire might just be a recurring feature here…
Interest
There’s been a slump in interest payments, but that would be because we gave the bank a huge chunk of our money! Well, it had to be done. The emergency fund is still there and the rest will have to be built up again.
Read about Lee's extra income in March 2018! Click To Tweet
Cashback
My TSB credit card has given us £0.42 – not much but we deliberately tried not to use our credit cards much in the run up to the mortgage application. And I’m pleased that I’ll be able to pay the council tax by credit card after all to sweep up even more free cashback!
We did get a welcome £100 cashback as part of our mortgage deal. Not a lot of wheeling and dealing on our part to get it, thankfully.
Coupons
Usually, coupons take a back seat for us, but last month, they helped out quite a lot. We used:
- £15.25 Tesco Clubcard Points
- £0.92 APG
- £3.87 Manufacturers’ coupons
Now just bring on the cat food coupons, please. We definitely need those!
Online earnings
After signing up to Prolific Academic last month I did a few quick surveys and was promptly paid £6.54. Considering the fact that I just haven’t been inclined to try with surveys recently, I think that’s a great result! I can honestly recommend Prolific for surveys and I’ll be sticking with them in the months to come.
That’s all…
Or is it?
See, I was wondering whether I should add my house sale to the mix. After all, we fully intended to fix our old house up and sell it on for a profit, but we just ended up doing it a lot sooner than I expected. If I add the profit from that sale, it would skew the month’s earnings… but then again, we did earn it… but then again, it was immediately put into a new house, so should it be counted at all?
Flipping our house was a LOT of hard work, so yes, it could be seen as extra income from a side hustle. But maybe I should leave that for a separate post – I want this series to be about small things that anyone can do to bring in a little extra income, and let’s face it, not everyone can fix up a house to sell on.
Over to you.
What side hustles have you tried this month? Let me know in the comments!
Read last month’s extra income.
How did this year compare to last year?
