What Am I Doing With All This Moolah

If you're a regular reader, you might have noticed that I've been posting my Paypal notices from when I get paid by various online companies. This is just the first trickle - because of Paypal's limit of $500 per month withdrawals, at least $1600 of my earnings from other sites like DealBarbie, RockHardCash, and MyHotCash are coming by check.

These first few withdrawals I'm kind of allowing to "disappear" - you know, like when you withdraw $125 from your savings account to deposit somewhere next week, and by next week somehow there is only $100? You know what I mean. I have this tendency a lot, which is why I pay all of my bills the day I get paid, even if they're not due or I haven't even gotten the bill yet. And any little things, like Pinecone checks, get put into savings instead of checking so they don't "disappear" on me. I've accepted that for the next week, money is just going to *poof* disappear, because my mom is coming to visit tomorrow night through next Tuesday, and I know we'll spend a lot of money on various things. I already promised her that I would split her hotel bill with her (because she agreed to stay in an Inn Towne Suites instead of our office, for Boyfriend's sanity) and I want to hit a bunch of museums and what not. I'm trying to keep it on the cheap - I've got a folder at home with Restaurant.com coupons (by the way, another 60% sale with coupon code 65096 until the 31st) and Entertainment.com coupons and coupons from the ValPak and coupons from the newspaper. You get the idea. So I know that I'm going to probably spend $300 or so while she's here (I already withdrew the $80) and I have accepted this. I am Zen with spending all that money, because my mom is coming all this way to do stuff with me.

Yesterday I put in the request to have my ING account linked to my Paypal account (I have four ING accounts, but only one has any money in it) so that I could withdraw stuff straight to my ING account and not experience too much "disappearance" along the way. For this most recent payment, I withdrew half of it to my regular checking and half to ING, and after that basically everything else I get by Paypal will go to ING. I know that the checks coming next month will pay off my small credit cards, so that's how I've decided to break it up to ensure that everything gets paid. Anything after that, I'll probably throw into my Roth IRA in addition to the $100 a month I put in now.

In many ways, what I am planning to do with this money is similar to planning for a windfall, because this kind of money-making isn't sustainable. There aren't an unlimited number of sites out there, and few sites allow you to do multiple Tickle offers in one week as I did at DealBarbie and RockHardCash (which may have since changed their policies) so I can only do one a week at these places. Basically what I was doing was finding new sites, tearing through all of the high-paying offers in a day or two, and then cashing out and not going back. But I'm not finding so many new sites anymore, and I kind of want to pay off the credit cards before I rack up any more charges from doing stuff. I estimate I've spent about $400 on all the Tickle offers, trial fees, etc etc.

(Now I also have to pay to ship back a bottle of some vitamins, because after I cancelled the free trial they said that only ONE of the bottles they sent me was free, and I had to send back the other one or they would charge me full price. We had already thrown them away, but Boyfriend, being resourceful, made me go out to the dumpster and helped me look for the trashbag they were in. The package was covered in rotting cherries but the bottle is clean and they are getting it back no matter what it smells like.)

I know that most of the time they say to use some of a windfall for fun, but I think I probably already have too much fun in my expenses as it is. What will be more fun for me than spending it recklessly is to use this money to pay down debt and establish a great emergency fund. Yeah!