2009 Alternative Income

Having multiple income streams is one of those things you often hear about in the PF blogosphere as a good idea.  And I totally agree.  It’s nice to collect a salary from your day job, but it’s extra special to make some money on the side.  One of my goals over the last few years has been to increase my number of income streams and then increase the income coming from those streams.

My alternative income streams in 2009…

1) Selling Books:  $2,081 - I’ve written several times about how I sell used books online.  This is my largest alternative income stream and one of my most enjoyable.  I’m already off to a great start for 2010 and my goal is to do over $3,000 in profit from book sales this year.

2) Interest income:  $289 – Between my checking account and my ING savings account, I totaled $289 in interest earned for 2009.  Super easy free money.

3) Online Activities:  $486 – This category includes mysurvey.com, mypoints.com, Swagbucks, blogging, and affiliate sales.  This is a category I would really like to increase in 2010 and I’m going to set the bar at trying to make at least $1,000 online in 2010.

4) Credit Card Rewards: $695 – I like to use my rewards card for every possible purchase and earn miles that I can redeem for travel-related purchases.  I was really pleased with this amount for 2009, but I will admit that it was so high because I put many wedding expenses on the card and hopefully I won’t be spending anywhere near that amount of money in 2010.  So I look for this income stream to kind of dry up in 2010, though not to go away completely.

5) Random: $266 – This category features things like winning the office football pool, winning at Bingo, dogsitting, donating plasma and finding cash.  I have no idea if I’ll make any random income in 2010, but here’s hoping.

What’s not included on this list that maybe could have been:  rebates I received from purchases, tax returns, and gifts.  Leaving off the gift category probably had the largest impact.  As you know, I got married in 2009 and not only did we receive substantial monetary gifts from our parents to help up pay for the event, but we received thousands of dollars in gift money from our guests.  I’m going back and forth on including the gift category for 2010, but I probably will.  Last year was just such an anomaly.

All totaled, my alternative income streams added up to an extra $3,817 on top of my salary.  Not too shabby.  For 2010, I’m making it a goal to make at least $5,000 in alternative income.