With the start of the new year and my foolish 20s drifting farther away in the rear view mirror, it's become painfully obvious that it's time to start acting like an adult. It's not cute or funny anymore to be broke. After 30 it just starts to get embarrassing.
I'm working to pay off my debt and I'm on track to be 100% debt free by the end of the year. At the same time I want to build up a starter emergency fund of $1000. Not only does having a fund in place help you to feel more relaxed and stress free but It will also give you a confidence boost. Gradually seeing your emergency fund grow will make you feel like you have your life under control.
I've started adding $50 to my emergency fund from each paycheck. This is a good start but I want to bulk up my fund even more . Here is a list of simple things I'm doing to grow my emergency fund more quickly.
I'm working to pay off my debt and I'm on track to be 100% debt free by the end of the year. At the same time I want to build up a starter emergency fund of $1000. Not only does having a fund in place help you to feel more relaxed and stress free but It will also give you a confidence boost. Gradually seeing your emergency fund grow will make you feel like you have your life under control.
I've started adding $50 to my emergency fund from each paycheck. This is a good start but I want to bulk up my fund even more . Here is a list of simple things I'm doing to grow my emergency fund more quickly.
Declutter
If you live in a small apartment like I do, then Decluttering will benefit you in many ways. You will be able to find things more easily. You won't go out and buy something you already have just because you couldn't find where you put it. You will also be less stressed when you look around and everything is organized and clean.
DVDs, CDs, and Video Games: We have a huge collection of these that take up way too much space! So we are going to go through all of these and If we haven't used them in the past year then we probably won't. We just got a Roku for Christmas that we can stream Netflix on. So we have an even less need now for physical dvd's. Decluttr.com is a website that will buy back your used CDs, DVDs and video games. You just have to type in the barcode number. They will even pay for shipping. They have an app as well for Android and Iphone that is really useful because you can just scan the item's barcode and not have to type each one individually.
Clothes: We are going to go through the same purging process with our clothes. If we haven't worn it in the past year then we don't need it. It's just taking up much needed space. I researched websites that will buy your used clothes but I was disappointed to find that pretty much all of them will only buy back high end designer clothes. That doesn't do much good for an Old Navy/Walmart girl like me. So I decided we're better off just donating our clothes to charity and claiming it as a tax deduction.
Books: I do most of my reading on the Kindle so I don't have a ton of books to sell. My husband has a few textbooks though that I am going to look up on a site called Bookscouter.com, they also have an app if you want to be able to scan the barcodes. Bookscouter will compare prices for your book with tons of different vendors so you can see which one will buy it for the best price. This is a very useful tool! If you don't have any books of your own to sell then you could go to your local Goodwill store and start scanning the used textbooks to see if you can make a profit.
Take a 10 Minute Survey Break
There are not many survey sites out there that I will bother spending time on. I got fed up fast with spending 30 minutes on a survey just to get told the last minute that I don't qualify for it. So frustrating! There is however one survey that I love because it only takes about three minutes and I get paid for it every time. A little trick I'm going to share is that you can do the same survey on three different sites each day! Just make sure you clear your internet cookies or better yet do it on different devices. I do it on my laptop, kindle fire, and phone. The first site is Treasuretrooper. After you sign up, you should click on the cash surveys tab and click on survey #8.
Sunshinerewards is the next survey site. The survey page will be the first one that opens and you will want to click on Opinion Central Daily Survey Router.
FusionCash Is the last Survey site you will visit. After you log in you will click on the FC Surveys tab at the top right of the page. On that page you will see a Daily Surveys table on the left of the page. The first survey is Openion Central. That's the one that you want.
Completing these three surveys shouldn't take you more than 10 minutes a day and will earn you about $42 each month to add to your emergency fund.
Watch Some Videos
You don't even have to watch them. You just have to let them run in the background on your phone or tablet when your not using it.
PerkTV: This app is the best! They pay you for watching movie trailers and app videos. I recommend the app videos because they're shorter so you get more points faster. You just have to hit the "i'm still watching" button once every two hours but other than that it's completely passive earning. You can run it on up to 5 devices at once and I've made more money from this than almost any other online venture. I've redeemed $150 in Walmart gift cards in the past 3 months. We use them to pay for our groceries. They have a large gift card collection as well as a paypal redemption option. You can get 50 bonus points if you use my referral code c5c69681
Swagbucks is my next favorite app. I talk about it in great detail in one of my previous post you can read here.
Take Pictures of your Receipts
There are a number of apps that will pay you for sending in pictures of your receipts. Sometimes they will give you rebates for specific groceries you bought but other apps will give you paypal or amazon cash for any receipt you take a picture of no matter what you bought or where you shopped. This blog post will give you details on all the free apps that will pay you for your receipts.
Cash Back Online Shopping
I know what your thinking. If you're building up your emergency fund than you shouldn't be online shopping. That's very true but sometimes its unavoidable. Maybe you got invited to a baby shower or a wedding. Or your child got invited to a birthday party. With many major retailers having free site to store shipping, you can save a lot of money shopping online. The two cashback sites I use most often are Ebates and MrRebates. Sometimes one of them will have a higher cash back amount than the other for the store that I'm looking for so it's a good idea to check both.
Clickworker
Clickworker is a site that pays you to do short tasks. The one I've been focusing on is search engine evaluation. They show you a search engine term and then an ad that would pop up when someone searches for it. You then rate how well the ad goes with what the person is searching for. Its really easy once you get the hang of it. You get 5 cents for each one you do and it only takes a few seconds. It's pretty easy to make $9 an hour on Clickworker.
Do Some Searches
There are a few search engine sites that I put into my daily routine because they're so easy and take little time.
Bing Search: You can get 15 points a day for searching on your computer and 10 for searching on your phone. You can also get daily points for answering trivia, watching videos and taking quizes. They do pay in gift cards instead of cash but I figure it will still be nice to have some Starbucks and Burger King gift cards saved up if I ever get laid off. You can earn $10-$15 in gift cards each month if you spend a few minutes on Bing each day.
Inboxdollars and Sendearnings are sister sites. They each have a search engine feature that pays you 1-5 cents per search. You also get a 10 cent bonus for searching 4 days in a row. They have a lot of other features as well like cash surveys, cash videos and paid emails. What I love about these sites is that after you make $30 you get put in a Gold Member pool and every time someone new signs up they become a Gold Member's referral and you earn a referral commission. This makes them two of the few survey sites that you can earn passive income from.
Conclusion
Well that is my list. I hope you enjoyed it and got some ideas for adding to your emergency fund. I have no trouble earning at least $200 a month from doing the simple things on this list. If you have any other ideas for ways to build up your emergency fund, please feel free to comment below.