Blog Money Whore

Chances are you have at least one credit card and a giant pile of statements. If you’re like me, then you have something more like ten credit cards and a figurative pile of electronic statements. What do you do with all of them? You know that the proper thing to do is to check all your receipts each month and to save all your statements for the last seven years (the IRS can audit you for up to seven years). However, it’s a giant pain in the ass, and many people don’t bother.

I’ve read about and seen all sorts of credit card organization systems. However, none have ever worked as well for me as this one that I devised. Everyone’s different, though, so take what you need and forget the rest.

First, buy a 5″ x 8″ index card file. A cheap one from Staples is $4.48. I also got tab organizers, though simple index cards will do. Then, create a file for each credit card. I’ve also added all my bank accounts.

The index card file holds the actual credit cards (and ATM/debit cards) and all the associated receipts. If I buy anything in a store, then I always get a receipt and stick it in the file. As for, receipts for online purchases, save them in your email client using a similar directory structure as described below.

Next, on your computer, create a folder that mimics your card file, and inside each folder set up directories called “Statements” and “Payments”. All electronic documents from your credit card company go here. I then save the documents as PDFs with the naming convention year.month.day.pdf. Here’s an example directory structure for two credit cards:

• Money
  • Citi Diamond
    • Statements
      • 2007.12.21.pdf
      • 2008.01.21.pdf
      • 2008.02.21.pdf
    • Payments
      • 2007.12.24.pdf
      • 2008.01.12.pdf
      • 2008.02.23.pdf
    • Chase Visa
      • Statements
        • 2007.12.22.pdf
        • 2008.01.22.pdf
        • 2008.02.22.pdf
      • Payments

When I receive the statement from the credit card company, I immediately print or save as PDF and reconcile my receipts against my statements. If there’s a mistake (and I’ve caught them before!), then I contact the company and get it fixed immediately. Otherwise, I feel free to shred my receipts, though I generally save them anyway. Of course, definitely save anything you need for your taxes.

If I need to make a payment (I generally don’t as I’ve set up autopay for just about everything), then I print out the electronic receipt as a PDF and save it in the Payments folder.

The one question I suspect you may have is: how do you print as PDF? Well, most credit card companies offer the ability to download statements as PDFs. If yours doesn’t or you need to print electronic receipts as PDFs, then you need software like PrimoPDF for Windows. If you’re using a Mac, then just print like normal, except click “Save as PDF” rather than “Print”. And if you’re using some other OS, then chances are you can figure it out for yourself!

And there you have it! A simple way to organize your credit cards!

These days a number of business services offer free health insurance as well as other deals like home insurance. Of course all this is not mentioned on their business cards.

There are tons of services like this, but MyBoneYard.com appears to be very professional and actually does pay a decent amount of money for your items. Everyone has tons of electronic junk lying around after upgrading to new computers and phones, and they are willing to pay you money to recycle them!

Of course, you probably won’t get as much as just selling it yourself on eBay or Craigslist, but who has the time for that? I’m strongly considering recycling my old Motorola SLVR L7 through them, as I actually wouldn’t get all that much more on eBay after fees. In exchange, they send a prepaid Visa card loaded with money. That’s not too shabby!

Update (3/1/08): I did end up sending my Motorola SLVR L7 to them. In exchange, they’re sending me a $35 Visa gift card. To avoid the hassle of selling a somewhat scratched phone that I modded a bit on eBay, it seemed worth it to me. The gift card should arrive sometime this week. I can’t wait!

With tax season coming up, I received my W-2 from a part-time job and discovered that I made a total of $2400 as a part-time teacher. I won’t say what I taught or where, as I don’t want to reveal or malign my former employer, but I do want to question the value of a part-time job. Is it worth getting one?

Pros:

• Money: In most people’s lives, more money is better. Any job obviously earns you more money.
• Something to put on the résumé: If you’re self-employed like me, then you really worry about gaps in your résumé. There’s a strong possibility that I’ll want (or more likely, need) a more regular job one day. Plus, any sort of work bolsters your experience and gets your foot in the door.
• Alleviates boredom: This was a huge one for me. Sitting at home all day is a very lonely experience. It’s nice to have an excuse to go outside and deal with other people. Teaching was especially great, since I then had twenty new people to talk to every other day. It certainly beats wasting away in front of a TV.
• Benefits: Depending on where you work, you may be afforded benefits for a part-time job. Starbucks, for example, gives part-time employees health benefits. Elsewhere, you may be able to take advantage of employee discounts, which may be especially useful around the holidays.

Cons:

• Not much money: Most part-time jobs pay rather bad hourly wages. Also, if you already have a full-time job, you’re better off working overtime instead.
• Few advancement opportunities: It seems to me that nearly all part-time jobs are also dead-end jobs. Sure, you may be promoted a little, but you probably won’t be a big shot one day. It seems that full-time jobs are much better for careers.
• Time-inefficient: This is the big deal-breaker for me, which outweighs many of the pros. Part-time jobs are incredibly inefficient unless you schedule them much like full-time jobs. For every shift, you have to expend energy commuting, getting dressed, preparing (definitely the case with teaching), etc. If you’re only working for four hours, is it really worth it to spend one hour unpaid to do all these things? On the other hand, that one hour amortizes much better across a full workday.
• Lack of benefits: Hey, didn’t I just say “benefits” as a pro? Well, most part-time jobs don’t have benefits. You can forget contributing to a 401(k), getting health insurance, etc. at most places.

Of course, these pros and cons vary from job to job, but these pros and cons seem to be fairly consistent for all the part-time jobs I’ve worked over the years. It’s up to the individual to determine the applicability of these criteria for a given job, but I wanted to provide a framework for thinking about the merits of a part-time job.

In general, I try to find work that I can do from the comfort of my own home to avoid costs like commuting, which alleviates the time inefficiency. However, that’s not always feasible, and plenty of time is then wasted searching for work. That’s really fodder for a future blog entry, though.

Getting life insurance as well as car insurance is much more important than mundane insurance policies. Anyone who has a creditcard is well aware about these issues.

Last month’s earnings totaled $6.71 with 1740 pageviews. $6.67 was from Google AdSense. $0.04 was from AdBrite. I’ll continue to run AdSense exclusively in most spots until I have more data to input accurate eCPMs into AdBrite, so I can use those spots for more than one advertising network.

I also had a handful of referrals for sites like Blingo and Prosper, but I can’t necessarily attribute any of those directly to this site, as there’s no way to track from where those referrals come. I do post these things to more than just this blog.

Anyway, it should be rather clear as to why there are so many young, abandoned blogs out there. Results take a while and certainly aren’t guaranteed, but you have to put in a large amount of work writing, editing, designing, promoting, etc. in order to get there. Plus, you usually have to reach a minimum threshold before you can receive any of these earnings. For example, Google AdSense requires you to hit $100 first. If you’re earning $6.67/month, then you won’t see any payments for 16 months! (Yup, not 15 months, as it takes about a month for you to get the payment!) Tack on expenses like the domain name and hosting, and most people quickly realize they won’t be able to quit their day jobs anytime soon.

As usual, I’ll add this to the earnings table for all time.