To maintain transparency, I've been reporting both on my income and my expenses this year.

My day job has been subsidizing my side hustles, which kind of play out as a time-consuming hobby.

My goal for 2025 was to turn this around. Working at my business regularly helps me to sleep better at night, but without profit it eventually will just be added stress.

I'm still kind of in the course-buying mode, looking for insights that will pay off or techniques that will help me to develop and sell products and services.

Which sources I'm reporting and which I'm not

Since I'm not posting anonymously, my W-2 income and my main investments won't be reported.

I'll report on income as I receive it, not when I earn it. In other words, I report on it when it hits my bank account.

I'll report on expenses in two ways. If I've bought an annual plan for something, I'll break the cost up per month and expense it as I go along. One-time purchases will be expensed the month I make the purchase.

With that, let's get going!

Inbox Dollars: $15.00

Inbox Dollars is a get-paid-to site that pays out cash for surveys, trials, sign-ups, and other activities.

Inbox Dollars pays 10% of my referrals' earnings for life. Most of the income comes from a couple of very active referrals, and it's been reliable for quite some time.

I earned $15.00 in payouts in December. To make things easier, I've been cashing out directly in Amazon gift cards.

EarnApp: $10.31

EarnApp is one of the most passive sources of income I have, aside from bank accounts and dividends!

They changed their payout structure from per MB to per hour, which isn't really good for most people. However, I still get some referral income from a handful of my 145 referrals.

Here are reviews of this app and a few other passive apps.

Website services: $28.46

I have a website design and maintenance client who's a poker player I met at the tables during a sit-and-go.

For hosting his website, I received a recurring $30/month, minus a $1.54 PayPal fee.

Atlas Earth: $5.00

This is kind of a dumb “game” that pays you to watch ads basically, but at this point I've been playing it long enough that I'm earning almost $0.03 per ad I view, and I can view one per hour if I want. I can view six in a row before I have to wait to view more of them.

The game does pay out pretty much instantly, and I cashed out $5.00 in December.

Freelance Writing: $300.00

In December I was paid to ghost-write a newsletter for another freelancer who's had an influx of work.

I was actually pretty surprised by this income stream, but I'm glad to be of service!

The great news about this is it paid for all of my tools in December, and then some.

AdSense: $103.12

AdSense income used to be a substantial amount but now it happens once in a while.

My accumulated earnings topped $100.00 in November, which means that I got a payout near the end of December.

Medium: $11.84

I broke the $10.00 threshold for earnings with the Medium Partner Program and got a payout of $11.84 in December.

Sales on eBay: $15.47

I sold a couple of cool serial number bills for $15.47 net.

TOTAL INCOME: $489.20

At least I ended 2025 on a high note. This was my highest income month for 2025.

But now for the expenses.

Services I mentioned last month: $157.19

Here's a summary of the services I mentioned last month that I'm carrying forward. I'll note that I let the Frase.io add-on I had go, so that's no longer an expense.

• My newsletter provider Kit: $27.99/month ($22/month less)
• Domains at NameCheap: $21.43/month
• Web host at [Hosting.com](): $14.99/month
• Tailwind, a Pinterest poster: $14.98/month
• Canva Pro, a graphic design tool: $10.00/month (I thought it was $15/month but it wasn't)
• Camtasia, video editing software: $5.33/month
• LinkWhisper, internal linking plugin for WordPress: $5.59/month
• CleanTalk spam protection: $2/month
• IFTTT Pro, automation engine: $2.99/month
• GeneratePress One, theme elements: $8.25/month
• UberSuggest SEO tool lifetime deal I'm expensing at $40.84/month
• Publer: social media posting software $2.80/month

Inventory for eBay: $1,314.14

OK, yeah, I bought 964 dollar bills for $1,314.14.

I saw some success selling a few of them this year. They've gone fairly slowly, but I've only listed about 100 of them over the course of the year.

The listings I bought on eBay were great deals as long as I can repeat the success I've had.

Still, selling a dollar for $15.00 is a rush. Even $7.00 is a rush!

And, in a way, I really only need to recoup $1,314.14 – $964.00 = $350.14, because worst case, I can spend the ones or deposit them!

This put me solidly in the red for 2025, but I'm set up for 2026.

TOTAL EXPENSES: $1,471.33

NET INCOME: -$982.13 (-$1,965.13 YTD)

So, I didn't make it in the black for 2025.

Looking forward, though, I'm in good shape.

I have a lot of inventory to carry forward and list.

Also, I'm done expensing my UberSuggest lifetime subscription, so that's $40.84 less each month I'm expensing.

That leaves $116 and change for my toolset each month going into 2026.

We can only start from where we are.

The best time to start earning side income was twenty years ago.

But the next best time is right now.

Let's encourage one another.

Let's do this together!

Visit Mighty Bargain Hunter for more articles on recognizing life's good deals!

To maintain transparency, I've been reporting both on my income and my expenses this year.

My day job has been subsidizing my side hustles, which kind of play out as a time-consuming hobby.

My goal this year is to turn this around. Working at my business regularly helps me to sleep better at night, but without profit it eventually will just be added stress.

I'm still kind of in the course-buying mode, looking for insights that will pay off or techniques that will help me to develop and sell products and services. With this in mind, I'm going to need to turn things around in a big way to be profitable for the year.

Which sources I'm reporting and which I'm not

Since I'm not posting anonymously, my W-2 income and my main investments won't be reported.

I'll report on income as I receive it, not when I earn it. In other words, I report on it when it hits my bank account.

I'll report on expenses in two ways. If I've bought an annual plan for something, I'll break the cost up per month and expense it as I go along. One-time purchases will be expensed the month I make the purchase.

With that, let's get going!

Inbox Dollars: $15.00

Inbox Dollars is a get-paid-to site that pays out cash for surveys, trials, sign-ups, and other activities.

Inbox Dollars pays 10% of my referrals' earnings for life. Most of the income comes from a couple of very active referrals, and it's been reliable for quite some time.

I earned $15.00 in payouts in November. To make things easier, I've been cashing out directly in Amazon gift cards.

Swagbucks: $5.00

Swagbucks is another get-paid-to site that pays out cash for surveys, trials, sign-ups, and other activities.

Swagbucks pays 10% of my referrals' earnings for life. My referrals aren't as active as on InboxDollars, but I get some. I do a daily poll (one multiple-choice question) to chip away at a $5.00 payout.

I earned a $5.00 payout in November, which I redeemed as an Amazon gift card.

EarnApp: $9.92

EarnApp is one of the most passive sources of income I have, aside from bank accounts and dividends!

They changed their payout structure from per MB to per hour, which isn't really good for most people. However, I still get some referral income from a handful of my 145 referrals.

Here are reviews of this app and a few other passive apps.

Website services: $28.46

I have a website design and maintenance client who's a poker player I met at the tables during a sit-and-go.

For hosting his website, I received a recurring $30/month, minus a $1.54 PayPal fee.

Atlas Earth: $21.00

This is kind of a dumb “game” that pays you to watch ads basically, but at this point I've been playing it long enough that I'm earning almost $0.03 per ad I view, and I can view one per hour if I want. I can view six in a row before I have to wait to view more of them.

The game does pay out pretty much instantly, and I cashed out $21.00 in November.

Freelance Writing: $300.00

And now, for my new income stream. This one came out of the blue.

A good friend of mine is a freelance writer and editor. He has the blessing of having more work than he can handle.

So he brought me on to ghost-write for him to help him out.

I was actually pretty surprised. But I'm glad to be of service!

The great news about this is it pays for all of my tools each month, and then some. As long as I keep the toolset I have now, I'm in the black each month!

TOTAL INCOME: $379.38

A good month. and December will be even better.

Services I mentioned last month: $157.19

Here's a summary of the services I mentioned last month that I'm carrying forward. I'll note that I let the Frase.io add-on I had go, so that's no longer an expense.

• My newsletter provider Kit: $27.99/month ($22/month less)
• Domains at NameCheap: $21.43/month
• Web host at [Hosting.com](): $14.99/month
• Tailwind, a Pinterest poster: $14.98/month
• Canva Pro, a graphic design tool: $10.00/month (I thought it was $15/month but it wasn't)
• Camtasia, video editing software: $5.33/month
• LinkWhisper, internal linking plugin for WordPress: $5.59/month
• CleanTalk spam protection: $2/month
• IFTTT Pro, automation engine: $2.99/month
• GeneratePress One, theme elements: $8.25/month
• UberSuggest SEO tool lifetime deal I'm expensing at $40.84/month
• Publer: social media posting software $2.80/month

TOTAL EXPENSES: $157.19

NET INCOME: +$222.19 (-$983.00 YTD)

We can only start from where we are.

The best time to start earning side income was twenty years ago.

But the next best time is right now.

Let's encourage one another.

Let's do this together!

Visit Mighty Bargain Hunter for more articles on recognizing life's good deals!

Over the past few months, I've begun selling various items I've either bought, or been given, to make some extra money.

My strategy is to start small, with things I mostly understand, and equipment that makes the entire process a bit easier at the level I'm at.

Taking advantage of my no-insertion-fee listings

First off, eBay offers 250 no-insertion-fee listings per month.

What this means is that for the first 250 listings I make on eBay, I don't pay anything to list the items, as long as I don't add any features that make the listing cost money. (Things like listing upgrades and promoted listings.)

All of my listings so far are Buy It Now, Good ‘Til Canceled, meaning that they run continuously until I sell the item, or I take the listing down.

This is great, because I can list something once, for free, and it stays until I sell.

The fees only kick in if I sell the items.

It's a great situation to be in. No cost except my time and whatever I've paid for the items I'm selling.

Going easy on equipment and supplies

One mistake I've made in previous ventures is investing too much in equipment at the outset.

This time around, I've gone easy.

• I didn't get 1,000 envelopes to ship things, I got 50. They cost a little more, but I'll get the bigger quantity when I'm sure I'll need them.
• I got a thermal printer, but I'm making do with the starter pack of labels until I need more.
• I had a postal scale from a number of years ago already
• I don't have a storefront. I'm working my way up to listing enough to need one.

I'm looking to demonstrate sales at level 1 before I buy equipment like I'm at level 5.

Now for the eBay items I'm selling …

Cash

When I began selling on eBay again, I started by selling dollars with cool serial numbers.

This was something that I'd been immersed in for quite a while, mainly through my Cool Serial Facebook group.

After doing a bunch of pricing videos on the YouTube channel, and researching prices on eBay, I saw a few deals on eBay that were flipping opportunities.

Most of the listings for cool serial number bills I have up now are ZIP code bills. There is a market for people who collect bills that have serial numbers that are ZIP codes. For example, 00090210 is a ZIP code serial number.

These are the only items I've sold this year. I've sold eleven bills for a total revenue of $130.24. Considering these are all $1 bills that I bought for under $2, that's pretty good.

Catalogs

My hometown was long a place for the manufacture of fine lead crystal art glass.

My father and grandfather were both avid collectors of Steuben art glass, both the older colored pieces (Carder Steuben) and the later clear pieces.

My mother recently offered me a few dozen catalogs that my father and grandfather had collected. Some of these sold for good money on eBay, possibly for their pricing information or just because the pictures were very nice.

I've listed a number of these, but none have sold yet. My pricing might be a bit high, but there's still a lot of room for the price to come down, since the catalogs were gifted to me.

Crafts and Cables

This past week I got a couple of random lots of two kinds of items.

The first was 18 packages of two 1-to-3 fan splitter cables, used for distributing power to multiple cooling fans in desktop computer towers.

The second was 13 packages of ten clear acrylic blanks in the shape of a house. These can be etched for ornaments or keychains.

I've listed these in lots of two packages each. Haven't sold any yet.

Clothing?

Some time ago I received a couple of bags of mostly women's clothing in good shape.

I haven't listed these items yet, but will in the future.

List once and wait for sales

Selling on eBay can certainly be done in spare time.

After the listings go up, they stay there until someone buys or they're taken down.

Notification of a sale is a nice little surprise that can come at any time.

Here are my eBay listings!

Visit Mighty Bargain Hunter for more articles on recognizing life's good deals!

To maintain transparency, I've been reporting both on my income and my expenses this year.

My day job has been subsidizing my side hustles, which kind of play out as a time-consuming hobby.

My goal this year is to turn this around. Working at my business regularly helps me to sleep better at night, but without profit it eventually will just be added stress.

I'm still kind of in the course-buying mode, looking for insights that will pay off or techniques that will help me to develop and sell products and services. With this in mind, I'm going to need to turn things around in a big way to be profitable for the year.

Which side hustle sources I'm reporting and which I'm not

Since I'm not posting anonymously, my W-2 income and my main investments won't be reported.

I'll report on income as I receive it, not when I earn it. In other words, I report on it when it hits my bank account.

I'll report on expenses in two ways. If I've bought an annual plan for something, I'll break the cost up per month and expense it as I go along. One-time purchases will be expensed the month I make the purchase.

With that, let's get going!

Inbox Dollars: $10.00

Inbox Dollars is a get-paid-to site that pays out cash for surveys, trials, sign-ups, and other activities.

Inbox Dollars pays 10% of my referrals' earnings for life. Most of the income comes from a couple of very active referrals, and it's been reliable for quite some time.

I earned $10.00 in payouts in October. To make things easier, I've been cashing out directly in Amazon gift cards.

EarnApp: $10.21

EarnApp is one of the most passive sources of income I have, aside from bank accounts and dividends!

They changed their payout structure from per MB to per hour, which isn't really good for most people. However, I still get some referral income from a handful of my 144 referrals.

Here are reviews of this app and a few other passive apps.

Website services: $28.46

I have a website design and maintenance client who's a poker player I met at the tables during a sit-and-go.

For hosting his website, I received a recurring $30/month, minus a $1.54 PayPal fee.

Atlas Earth: $15.00

This is kind of a dumb “game” that pays you to watch ads basically, but at this point I've been playing it long enough that I'm earning almost $0.03 per ad I view, and I can view one per hour if I want. I can view six in a row before I have to wait to view more of them.

The game does pay out pretty much instantly, and I cashed out $15.00 in October.

TOTAL INCOME: $63.67

I'll take it.

November's income will be much higher. My best month this year.

And if I work out a deal with my newsletter client, December will be about the same.

And now … for the expenses.

Services I mentioned last month: $157.19

Here's a summary of the services I mentioned last month that I'm carrying forward. I'll note that I let the Frase.io add-on I had go, so that's no longer an expense.

• My newsletter provider Kit: $27.99/month ($22/month less)
• Domains at NameCheap: $21.43/month
• Web host at [Hosting.com](): $14.99/month
• Tailwind, a Pinterest poster: $14.98/month
• Canva Pro, a graphic design tool: $10.00/month (I thought it was $15/month but it wasn't)
• Camtasia, video editing software: $5.33/month
• LinkWhisper, internal linking plugin for WordPress: $5.59/month
• CleanTalk spam protection: $2/month
• IFTTT Pro, automation engine: $2.99/month
• GeneratePress One, theme elements: $8.25/month
• UberSuggest SEO tool lifetime deal I'm expensing at $40.84/month
• Publer: social media posting software $2.80/month

Oops, overexpensed Canva: -$45.00

I had thought Canva Pro was $15/month, but it's actually only $10/month. So I'll adjust this month's expenses down by $45 ($5/month times 9 months).

TOTAL EXPENSES: $112.19

NET INCOME: -$48.52 (-$1,205.19 YTD)

We can only start from where we are.

The best time to start earning side income was twenty years ago.

But the next best time is right now.

Let's encourage one another.

Let's do this together!

Visit Mighty Bargain Hunter for more articles on recognizing life's good deals!

In November 2025, awareness of 50-year mortgages hit the national airwaves following some statements of proposal by President Trump.

What are the implications of a 50-year mortgage to homebuyers? We'll discuss some of the implications below.

The 30-year mortgage we all “know and love”

Conventional residential loans have largely been no longer than 30 years since the years following World War II. They were authorized by Congress for new home construction in 1948, and for existing homes in 1954. By the 1960s, they were the standard.

Borrowers can pay off a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage with 360 equal monthly payments over 30 years.

Let's take a reasonable example from numbers current as of November 2025.

A house slightly above the US median price is $500,000. Current average 30-year fixed mortgage rates are a bit above 6% but we'll call it 6%.

If a family pays 20% down on this house, they would borrow $400,000.

The monthly payment on this, from a mortgage calculator I've used for more than 20 years, is $2,398.20, not including taxes or insurance.

Some fun facts about this mortgage:

• Out of the first payment, $2,000.00 goes toward interest and $398.20 goes toward principal. The interest part is more than five times the principal part.
• After seven years of payments, the principal has been reduced $41,442.25 to $358,557.75, or a little over 10% of the original amount.
• During the same time, the interest paid is $160,006.55, almost four times the principal reduction.
• The mortgage is half paid-off in month 252, or 21 years into the mortgage.
• The total interest paid at this point is a bit over $400,000, slightly more than the original borrowed amount.
• At payoff, the total interest paid on the $400,000 mortgage is $463,354.04, or 116% the borrowed amount.
• On the plus side, though, that $2,398.20 payment would feel more like an $1,100 payment due to inflation.

50-year mortgages are not new, by the way.

I first ran across them in 2006.

It was a bit of a different time back then. This was a time of very easy mortgage approvals, which soon after saw large default rates in 2008 and a consequent bank bailout of hundreds of billions of dollars.

I recall being a bit jealous at the time of people I knew buying and selling their houses for six-figure profits, basically doing absolutely nothing. I guess the same thing could be said about any appreciating asset, so my jealousy was misplaced.

Anyway, these are my characteristically-flippant thoughts from back then.

Original post from 2006

It's Your Money posted on this one. Yet one more extremely “creative” mortgage for homeowners in California:

50-Year Mortgage Debuts in California

If we look at a 6% interest rate on a $500k loan, your P&I payment is about $3,000, the interest paid over the life of the loan is $579k, and you have about $35k of the principal paid off in 5 years. With a 6%, 50-year loan, the payment is about $2,630, you pay over a million dollars in interest, and have only paid about $10k of the principal in five years.

According to the article, some 50-year mortgages offered are even adjustable rate!

This really smells like a bottom-of-the-ninth attempt for bankers to get just a little bit more in loan origination fees in an already overtapped and overleveraged market, and pass off the falling knife “debt investment” to someone else. I can think of absolutely no good reason, in what is clearly an inflated housing market and a tightening interest rate policy, why someone would lend out money at a fixed rate for 50 years if they intended to keep the mortgage note. Forget about the debtor being gone in 50 years — the house could be gone in 50 years! Especially if it's in suburbia.

30-year vs. 50-year mortgages and what the math says

Let's consider the same $500,000 house, but apply a hypothetical 50-year mortgage to it.

Analysts expect that a 50-year mortgage will carry around a 0.5% higher rate than a similar 30-year mortgage.

So, with the same 20% down and the same borrower, the rate would be around 6.5%. Longer mortgage terms carry a higher interest rate because there is more interest rate risk as we go further into the future.

I'll put the information side by side in a table for a quicker comparison.

Some observations about this comparison:

First, the monthly payment is lower by $143.33. If the monthly payment is the measure, the 50-year mortgage makes the $500,000 house more affordable.

Every other measure, though, shows the 50-year mortgage to be more costly than the 30-year:

• More of the payment goes to interest each month, every month.
• Less goes toward reducing principal each month, every month.
• It takes two full years for the principal part of the payment to exceed $100.
• The percentage of interest paid is higher.
• The borrower has less equity in the house year for year.
• After 7 years, the principal hasn't decreased even $10,000.
• $20,000 more in interest than the 30-year has been paid, though.
• The total interest paid over the entire loan is more than twice that for a 30-year mortgage.

50-year mortgages are Ex. Pens. Ive.

To be fair, the introduction of the 30-year mortgage was a similar jump in expense from what was offered before. Paying nearly twice for the house in the 30-year example isn't cheap.

So when I say that the 50-year is expensive, it's more expensive than something that's already quite expensive.

Expensiver, if you will.

Buyer beware.

Photo by Dillon Kydd on Unsplash

Visit Mighty Bargain Hunter for more articles on recognizing life's good deals!

This year, my main goal is to be profitable.

To maintain transparency, I've been reporting both on my income and my expenses this year.

My day job has been subsidizing my side hustles, which kind of play out as a time-consuming hobby.

My goal this year is to turn this around. Working at my business regularly helps me to sleep better at night, but without profit it eventually will just be added stress.

I'm still kind of in the course-buying mode, looking for insights that will pay off or techniques that will help me to develop and sell products and services. With this in mind, I'm going to need to turn things around in a big way to be profitable for the year.

Which sources I'm reporting and which I'm not

Since I'm not posting anonymously, my W-2 income and my main investments won't be reported.

I'll report on income as I receive it, not when I earn it. In other words, I report on it when it hits my bank account.

I'll report on expenses in two ways. If I've bought an annual plan for something, I'll break the cost up per month and expense it as I go along. One-time purchases will be expensed the month I make the purchase.

With that, let's get going!

Inbox Dollars: $5.00

Inbox Dollars is a get-paid-to site that pays out cash for surveys, trials, sign-ups, and other activities.

Inbox Dollars pays 10% of my referrals' earnings for life. Most of the income comes from a couple of very active referrals, and it's been reliable for quite some time.

I earned $5.00 in payouts in September. To make things easier, I've been cashing out directly in Amazon gift cards.

EarnApp: $9.85

EarnApp is one of the most passive sources of income I have, aside from bank accounts and dividends!

They changed their payout structure from per MB to per hour, which isn't really good for most people. However, I still get some referral income from a handful of my 144 referrals.

Here are reviews of this app and a few other passive apps.

Website services: $28.46

I have a website design and maintenance client who's a poker player I met at the tables during a sit-and-go.

For hosting his website, I received a recurring $30/month, minus a $1.54 PayPal fee.

Atlas Earth: $15.00

This is kind of a dumb “game” that pays you to watch ads basically, but at this point I've been playing it long enough that I'm earning almost $0.03 per ad I view, and I can view one per hour if I want. I can view six in a row before I have to wait to view more of them.

The game does pay out pretty much instantly, and I cashed out $15.00 in September.

AWin: $21.00

This one was a bit of a surprise!

ShareASale merged with AWin and I think what happened is that they cleared their books and paid out balances to people. So that's what I had in ShareASale from whenever.

Medium: $28.82

Finally, after almost a year, I got a payment from Medium in September!

TOTAL INCOME: $108.13

I'll take it.

And now … for the expenses.

Services I mentioned last month: $183.37

Here's a summary of the services I mentioned last month that I'm carrying forward. I'll note that I let the Frase.io add-on I had go, so that's no longer an expense.

• My newsletter provider Kit: $49.17/month
• Domains at NameCheap: $21.43/month
• Web host at Hosting.com: $14.99/month
• Tailwind, a Pinterest poster: $14.98/month
• Canva Pro, a graphic design tool: $15.00/month
• Camtasia, video editing software: $5.33/month
• LinkWhisper, internal linking plugin for WordPress: $5.59/month
• CleanTalk spam protection: $2/month
• IFTTT Pro, automation engine: $2.99/month
• Frase.io SEO tool: was $17.49/month, CANCELLED
• GeneratePress One, theme elements: $8.25/month
• UberSuggest SEO tool lifetime deal I'm expensing at $40.84/month
• Publer: social media posting software $2.80/month

eBay Inventory: $74.42

I bought another 40 low serial number bills to resell on eBay.

TOTAL EXPENSES: $257.79

NET INCOME: -$149.96 (-$1,156.67 YTD)

We can only start from where we are.

The best time to start earning side income was twenty years ago.

But the next best time is right now.

Let's encourage one another.

Let's do this together!

Check out my overall progress here!

Visit Mighty Bargain Hunter for more articles on recognizing life's good deals!

The Unknown Professor of Financial Rounds is a blogging colleague from “the old days,” also known as the mid-2000s decade. His blog is still up and running in 2025 as I write this, which is extraordinary. (I also have no clue who he is, so I'll assume he's still around and speak of him in the present tense.)

He posted waaay back when on one of the world's rarest and most expensive coffee bean.

At the time of the post (end of 2005), Kopi Luwak coffee was horrendously expensive, at $175 per pound. In 2025 dollars, that's pushing $300/pound!

Why kopi luwak coffee is so expensive

The method of harvesting the coffee is what likely accounts for the price. It's more involved than simply picking the coffee from the plant.

The Asian palm civet pre-processes the coffee a bit in a way that is difficult to duplicate: It eats it and poops it out.

The palm civet cannot fully digest the coffee cherries, and they pass through partially digested. This fermentation process is what ends up giving the coffee beans their distinctive taste.

The harvesting, then, is not from the coffee plants, but from the ground. (Ground coffee beans, in the truest sense!) Workers harvest the palm civet droppings for further processing, which adds to the expense.

Differences in kopi luwak harvesting

In my journey on Amazon to try some kopi luwak coffee, I found several brands with substantially different prices.

The more affordable kinds harvest the palm civet droppings with them in captivity. The coffee cherries are harvested and fed to them.

The more expensive kinds come from wild foraging of the scat, which amounts to going where the palm civets are. There's more labor, but the coffee is arguably better because the palm civets will choose which coffee cherries they eat, rather than settling for what they're given.

Trying kopi luwak coffee for myself

I got some MATINÉE Wild Kopi Luwak coffee beans to see what all the fuss is about.

I ground the beans in my Cuisinart burr grinder to the same coarseness I normally grind the Colombian beans we get at Costco.

Then we brewed a pot of kopi luwak in our OXO Brew, which has been our primary coffee maker for a couple of years now.

(Here's a review of the OXO Brew.)

The first pot was … an experiment.

We were a bit impatient and wanted to try the coffee as soon as possible. As a result, we drank it hotter than we normally do. We might have dulled our taste buds. (We bought the OXO Brew because it offered a consistent brewing temperature, so hot coffee is a feature, not a bug.)

It was hard to tell whether the coffee was weak or just really, really smooth. I was sure that I brewed with the same amount of coffee I usually do, but my wife told me I may have used too little.

Fared better the next day

The next day I tried again, but used more coffee for the pot. I also let it cool a bit before drinking it.

There was definitely more flavor this time around. The best way to describe it would be “understated.”

Not bitter at all but not strong, and I had to hunt for the taste a bit.

Overall …

I'm glad I tried “the world's most expensive coffee.”

In doing so I found that I like a bit stronger taste in my coffee than what the kopi luwak offered.

(This post was originally published December 31st, 2005, and has been updated. Header image credit)

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This year, my main goal is to be profitable.

To maintain transparency, I've been reporting both on my income and my expenses this year.

My day job has been subsidizing my side hustles. All this does is make my online efforts play out as a time-consuming hobby.

My goal this year is to turn this around.

Working at my business regularly helps me to sleep better at night. But without profit it eventually will just be added stress.

I'm getting myself out of the course-buying mode. That's been a big expense for me. I have enough information right now to last several lifetimes.

I'm going to need to turn things around in a big way to be profitable for the year.

Which sources I'm reporting and which I'm not

Since I'm not posting anonymously, my W-2 income and my main investments won't be reported.

I'll report on income as I receive it, not when I earn it. In other words, I report on it when it hits my bank account.

I'll report on expenses in two ways. If I've bought an annual plan for something, I'll break the cost up per month and expense it as I go along. One-time purchases will be expensed the month I make the purchase.

With that, let's get going!

Inbox Dollars: $10.00

Inbox Dollars is a get-paid-to site that pays out cash for surveys, trials, sign-ups, and other activities.

Inbox Dollars pays 10% of my referrals' earnings for life. Most of the income comes from a couple of very active referrals, and it's been reliable for quite some time.

I earned $10.00 in payouts in August. To make things easier, I've been cashing out directly in Amazon gift cards.

EarnApp: $20.73

EarnApp is one of the most passive sources of income I have, aside from bank accounts and dividends!

They recently changed their compensation plan from per GB to per month. So this will cut into my earnings a bit. I did cash out twice to the tune of $20.73.

Here are reviews of this app and a few other passive apps.

HoneyGain: $18.27

HoneyGain is similar to EarnApp. Very passive income.

This one was slow for a bit, but it's picked up. I made the $20 payout threshold in August and received $18.27 after the fee.

Bytelixir: $10.25

Bytelixir is another internet-sharing app I've been trying out.

In August I withdrew $10.25 in USDC (a stablecoin backed by the US dollar) into my Robinhood account.

Website services: $28.46

I have a website design and maintenance client who's a poker player I met at the tables during a sit-and-go.

For hosting his website, I received a recurring $30/month, minus a $1.54 PayPal fee.

Atlas Earth: $18.00

This is kind of a dumb “game” that pays you to watch ads.

At this point I've been playing it long enough that I'm earning 2.75 cents per ad, and I can view one per hour if I want. I can view six in a row before I have to wait to view more of them.

The game does pay out pretty much instantly, and I cashed out $18.00 in August.

Online Poker: $219.67

I play online poker mainly for fun at very low stakes.

However, this month I withdrew almost everything from my accounts and have essentially stopped. I still keep the accounts active but I'm not playing anywhere near like I used to. The payback for the amount of time I put in isn't where I want to be. It's 100% trading time for money, and not a lot of money.

I withdrew $219.67 from Global Poker and Clubs Poker in August.

TOTAL INCOME: $325.38

Quite a bit better than last month.

And now … for the expenses.

Services I mentioned last month: $200.86

Here's a summary of the services I mentioned last month that I'm carrying forward:

• My newsletter provider Kit: $49.17/month
• Domains at NameCheap: $21.43/month
• Web host at Hosting.com: $14.99/month
• Tailwind, a Pinterest poster: $14.98/month
• Canva Pro, a graphic design tool: $15.00/month
• Camtasia, video editing software: $5.33/month
• LinkWhisper, internal linking plugin for WordPress: $5.59/month
• CleanTalk spam protection: $2/month
• IFTTT Pro, automation engine: $2.99/month
• Frase.io SEO tool: $17.49/month
• GeneratePress One, theme elements: $8.25/month
• UberSuggest SEO tool lifetime deal I'm expensing at $40.84/month
• Publer: social media posting software $2.80/month

In August, I did take action on a couple of services, and will have less expense next month by about $42/month.

TOTAL EXPENSES: $200.86

NET INCOME: +$124.52 (-$1,007.01 YTD)

I was in the black this month!

I still have a four-figure deficit to overcome.

We can only start from where we are.

The best time to start earning side income was twenty years ago.

But the next best time is right now.

Let's encourage one another.

Let's do this together!

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I picked up online poker at the start of the pandemic.

I had played (free) Zynga Poker on Facebook, and thought that I was good enough at that to profit in online cash games.

What I didn't know at the time was that people play very differently when there's real money on the line.

It doesn't matter that the “real money” was only a $0.25 buy-in to a six-person knockout tournament.

So I learned playing weekly freeroll tournaments and micro-stakes.

For five years I played. Sometimes several hours a night.

Over 3,100 games.

I will say it was fun. This was always play money. If I lost it, I wouldn't be in trouble.

For the playing I did, I usually could withdraw $50 a month, maybe $100 or more if it was a good month (or if I played a lot).

There's a reason it's called a grind, though.

People who make a living playing poker call it “grinding at the tables.”

They're playing much higher stakes than I ever did.

At the end of the day, it's a job. You show up and play cards.

You might end up for the day, or the week, or you might be down.

But nothing good will happen if you don't show up.

You don't lose any money, but you don't gain any money, either.

You're trading time for (the possibility of earning) money.

Well … maybe you don't.

But I did.

And that's exactly why this kind of side hustle isn't scalable.

There are only so many hours in the day.

The stakes only go so high, and it gets harder to be profitable each time you go up in stakes.

Fifty bucks a month worked out to less than a buck an hour.

I had moved up to slightly higher-stakes games ($5 range) and was about breakeven.

By playing more, studying more, I could probably become profitable.

Even then, I'd be looking at $300/month income. Still really small.

And I have to keep playing to make that.

The math isn't really mathing.

I finally saw it for what it was.

It wasn't a side hustle.

It was a distraction.

It was an appealing, fun, slightly profitable dopamine factory.

So … I cashed out my chips.

Last night I cashed out my accounts.

Fifty bucks from one site, and around $170 from another.

There's nothing left.

I'd either have to pay in again, or slowly build up things with free chips each day.

Either way, I don't have the funds in the accounts to play much.

I'll probably miss it.

But I'll be getting an hour a day back.

I'll have an extra hour to work on things that are scalable.

Things that have the potential to earn even when I'm not present.

Photo by Michal Parzuchowski on Unsplash

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There's only so much you can keep going at once.

I'm convinced, though, that you can have more side hustles going on if they're mostly “set and forget.”

Nice surprises

The kind of side hustle that gives you a nice surprise once in a while:

“Oh, I sold another one!”

There are certainly worse surprises than making money, right?

If you like flipping (selling for profit) low-ticket items that don't take up a lot of space, then this can be one of those set and forget income streams that put money in your pocket.

One of mine is selling cool serial number bills.

Here are my eBay listings.

I check in once in a while to see if anyone has shown interest in the bills, and send them a small discount.

If they've been sitting there a while, I'll lower the Buy It Now price. I have wiggle room.

Otherwise, I just wait for sales to happen.

One came in a couple of weeks ago, and I sent it out.

Now I go about my business until the next one comes in.

Back burner.

Here's what to do

Nice and easy:

1. Get set up to sell on eBay

This involves signing up for eBay if you haven't already.

Then you can make a listing if you're in an allowed country (most are allowed).

To get paid, you'll link a bank account. It used to be PayPal, but that's not a thing anymore.

2. Price your items to sell at a nice profit

Set your sale price and work backward.

Subtract out the final value fee, payment processing fee, shipping, materials, and the cost of the item.

That needs to be greater than zero, or you're losing money.

Make it worth your time. If it sits a while, that's all right because you …

3. Use your no-insertion-fee listings

You can list up to 250 items per month without any insertion fees.

This means that you can let things ride until they sell, and you pay fees only when they sell.

Your only cost until that point is time.

Now, eBay will invite you to upgrade your listing. Make sure the fee is $0.00 before you submit the listing.

I do fixed-price listings and allow offers. I also set listings to renew automatically.

I can have 250 items listed all the time, with no store fees and no insertion fees.

Set and forget.

I recommend not doing auction-style listings. You probably won't get a bidding war, and you'll end up losing money.

4. Check in once in a while to adjust pricing

If there's interest in some of the items, then you'll be allowed to send those prospective buyers a better deal.

This is good to do once in a while.

Also, if items have been sitting for a bit, you can lower the price if you have wiggle room.

5. Wait for sales, and ship them when they sell

Store your items in a place so you can find them easily!

Then ship them out so they get there in one piece when they sell!

Your items don't have to be dollar bills

Most of what I have for sale now are dollar bills with cool serial numbers on them.

They don't have to be currency. You can sell whatever you like. Starting out, though, smaller is better so that you're not needing to rent storage or use up an entire bedroom for your stuff.

If you're interested in learning more about cool serial numbers and how to sell them, then check out Fancy Serial Numbers for Fun and Profit) for more information and tips!

Header Photo by Pixabay

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