Extra Income Goal – January ($1,187)

On Friday, January 11 I posted this to Twitter:

100% of my January income goal: achieved!

— Sarah Peterson (@petersonsar) January 11, 2013

Just the day before I posted that I was 65% of the way to my goal.

So far in Jan I have made $655 in extra income. A good start to my $1000/mo goal

— Sarah Peterson (@petersonsar) January 10, 2013

I thought I would post about it, because, well, it’s not every month that somebody can make $1000 over and above their regular income by the 15th of the month.

Here’s how I did it:

Side Gigs

I have a lot of side gigs. I work for my dad sometimes, I babysit, and I run a website. I also have some online earnings, which I’ll report about further in the post.

I babysat on New Years Eve (I didn’t have any plans and was called in last minute) for 4 hours, which would normally bring in $48. However, because it was New Years Eve, the family I babysit for gave me a $52 tip and gave me a bottle of wine. I know many babysitters charge quite the premium for NYE, so I happily accepted the tip and the wine. They got back at 1:00 AM so technically that was January 1.

I also babysat here and there at the beginning of the month, so was paid for that at my normal rate, and that brought in an extra $130.

Total: $230

I worked for my dad last weekend painting as he needed some extra help. He pays me $16/hr, and typically buys me lunch. My dad’s shop is far out in the Fraser Valley, but not a super far drive from the new house. I get to capitalize on the low gas prices in the sticks, too. I saved $7 on filling up my tank out there.

Anyway, I worked for 8 hours, which brought in $128.

Total: $128

Online Income

For online income, I do quite a bit:

• Staff writing
• Ghost writing
• Commenting Services
• Blogging revenue

While I am not at liberty to tell you exactly how the income is broken down in that category in protection of my clients’ privacy, I was able to bring in quite a bit of extra cash through these activities.

Total: $829.39 (after Paypal fees)

The grand total for January so far is $1187.39. 

I am, of course, very happy with this. Even if my extra income is nil throughout the remainder of the month, I know I’ve exceeded my January income goal.

Realistically, I can work for my dad whenever I want, and I know I have at least two babysitting shifts in the next week, so I should be able to exceed even the above total.

If I made $1187.39 every month, I’d make over $14,200. This is $2,200 over and above my extra $12,000 income goal, and would add a nice $4,200 over and above my goal to add an extra $10,000 to my emergency fund by the end of 2013.

Obviously I would be VERY happy with this, but if this is the case, I’ll have to re-evaluate my goals in April or May. If it is this easy I’ll have to increase the amount to challenge myself.

I just realized how braggy and presumptuous that sounded, but I’m going to leave it there because it’s true.

All of this extra cash has been put into my emergency fund to work toward my resolution, which means that, within 13 days of the year starting, I’ve already accomplished 12% of my emergency fund goal and almost 10% of my extra income goal.

Let’s just hope that I’m successful on my health goal too this month. Hopefully I can lose at least a couple of pounds.

Now I’ll have to focus on those goals. How are you doing so far with your resolutions? Too soon to tell? Tell me all about them!