Posts Tagged ‘Snowflake’

Another Snowflake For January

Another day at -18C, another snowflake to add to my pile for the month. This one comes courtesy of my friend M, with whom I am doing the change challenge. She owed me some money for our Vancouver 2010 Olympic tickets, and handed over the cheque to me this week. I will be depositing it later on this afternoon. Thanks M!

How I Create Snowflakes From My Monthly Bills

An easy way to create snowflakes for yourself is to use a cash back credit card. I use mine for all of my monthly bills, so that I only have to pay one bill a month instead of 4 or 5 spread throughout the month. That’s the only thing I use this card for, is my monthly bills, and I earn a tiered cash back amount depending on the amount I spend in a year. I’m normally not a fan of the tiered cash back, as it essentially encourages you to spend more on your card, to spend more than maybe you can afford, but since I only use this card for my monthly bills, it’s money that’s already in my budget, so I’m comfortable doing that.

Some cards give you a cheque once a year with your cash back amount, others ask you what you’d like to do with it (get a cheque or apply it to your balance), and others simply apply it to your current balance. My card applies it to my balance once a month, in January. So this year I earned $112.43, which is great! It gets applied to my card, which means that it pays for almost all of my cable bill, or insurance bill, or, well, you get the idea. It decreases the amount I have to spend on my monthly bills this month, PLUS, I can then take that $112.43 and put it down on one of my other debts.

How’s that for a snowflake?

Snowflake Idea: Selling My Used Books

Today is Internet Sunday chez moi, and I’ve spent most of the day doing things online. Everything from working on my freelance website to listing used books I have for sale on Amazon.ca. This last one is a new idea I had just this week. I was originally going to bring the books to a used bookstore, but I was lazy and didn’t want to bring the box down to the car. So instead today I remembered that I can list things on Amazon.ca as well, so I just spent the last 40 minutes and listed about 15 items on there. A few of them are books from my university career that I no longer want, the rest are just books I’ve accumulated along the way. Again, they’re all books that I don’t want any more. The books currently in my library are ones that I want to keep, but not this box. I’m excited at the prospect of selling them, although I do realize that most of them will probably not sell at all. But I figure I’ll keep them up for 4-6 months, and if they don’t sell by then, I’ll make the trip to the used book store.

Have any of you had any success selling used books on Amazon?

Creating Your Own Snowflakes

As I sat here working from home today because the roads were too slippery to make it into the office, I was admiring all the snow that was falling. It was quite pleasant to watch, and got me thinking about snowflaking and my debt. One good thing about working from home today was the fact that I saved on gas. I was going to have to fill up the tank today, so staying home meant I got to postpone that till tomorrow.

But the real snowflakes got me thinking about my debt snowflakes, and how I need to get a few together to start that whole debt snowball thing. I’ve actually been trying to get a bit of freelance work on the side partly because I want to transition to full-time freelance work in the long-term, but of course it has the short-term effect of lowering my debt. Initially the freelancing money would go 100% towards my debt, but I think once I was able to cover minimum payments on all my current debts, then I might start putting any excess towards topping up my emergency fund. Once that was topped up to my “comfortable” level, I’d start divvying some of it up towards my “fun” savings accounts.

To that end over the weekend I sent out a few emails in response to some job postings I’d found. I’d also installed Google Analytics on my freelance website, and when I checked today, I was happy to see that I’d gotten a few clicks. I’ve started leaving comments on a few freelancing websites with my site in my signature, so it was nice to see that the traffic is slowly starting to trickle in. My main focus will be freelance technical writing, as that’s what I do for my day job. It’s specific enough that I can focus pretty well  on those specific jobs. But I’d also like to branch out into other types of freelance writing, as I do consider myself a writer first, and a computer geek second.The next step is for me to start practicing other types of writing as well, so that I can market myself in those avenues as well, and increase my chances at earning a decent enough income to eventually do it full-time.

I don’t expect the money to start rolling in quickly, but like the snowflakes that built themselves up into a snowdrift on my balcony during today’s storm, I’m hoping that the money will slowly trickle in. Slow and steady is what I’m looking for. The old adage is cliched, but true: slow & steady wins the race.