$10k Challenge: Some New Ways to Make More Money

I'm on a quest to raise an additional $10k this year in income -- extra income outside my regular job. The numbers I ran show that making this amount and socking it away year after year can yield quite a sizeable next egg.

I already have quite a sizeable list of money making ideas, but I'm going to add several more in this post thanks to a piece I saw on Yahoo titled Nickel-and-Diming Your Way to Riches. In it, they list several ways to make extra money including:

• He has his paycheck deposited directly into a high-yield savings account, where the money sits until he transfers it to his checking account to pay bills. His reward: $35 to $85 in interest each month.

• Borrow from credit cards with 0 percent introductory rates and then use the money to earn a little interest, often stashing the cash at EmigrantDirect, HSBC Direct or one of the other banks with high-yield online savings accounts. ["One year] I made $1,800 in interest."

• Mr. Bilker says he hasn't paid to take his family to the movies for two years. He's also got $500 in convenience-store gift cards, and he garnered a $1,700 discount by charging $17,000 in kitchen remodeling expenses.

Here's the problem with these for me -- they take a TON of time to implement relative to the reward. Sure, it's worth my time to manage accounts based on interest rates if I could make $5,000, but $1,000 seems like a small reward for all that effort.

But they do have a solution for those of us who still want to earn extra money but don't want to spend a boatload of time doing it:

Sound too risky -- and too much like hard work? Forget shuffling back and forth between your checking account, your savings account and the latest, greatest credit-card offer. Instead, go for the easy money.

Pile your expenses onto a good rewards card and be sure to pay off the balance every month. Let's say you charge $1,000 a month to a credit card that earns frequent-flier miles. That should give you enough points every two years to get a domestic round-trip ticket worth perhaps $400 -- and maybe two or three tickets if the card pays double miles and gives you a sign-up bonus.

This is basically what I do, but instead I go for cash. I'd prefer to have it over miles anyway. Last year I made almost $500 charging on a cash back credit card. I'd say that's pretty good for spending no additional time and money.

Comments

[Lazy Man and Money]

I am going to have to read how he makes $35-85 a month in interest via shuffling money in a high-interest account. I calculate to make the $85, he'd have to have more than 20K in a 5% for about a full month. Considering that very, very few people take home $20K a month in their paychecks (after taxes this would be a base of probably near 300K), I'm not sure how this is really possible.

If you take the average case of someone moving 3K a month and happened to have your money in there the whole month (which is impossible if you want to transfer it to pay bills) you'd make about $12.50.

Eh, considering a slight slip-up can cost you overdraft fees, it's really not worth looking into this unless you make a few hundred thousand a year. And by the time you make that much money, $85 might not seem like very much.

[mysticaltyger]

Actually I disagree with you about how much time some of these strategies take. In particular, I've made quite a nice sum borrowing from credit cards at 0% and putting them in high yield savings accounts. HSBC had a 6% rate for 2 months. And there's another bank I just moved money into that will have 6% until 9/28/07. I will admit that my credit rating took a hit. But since I'm not in the market for a loan, I have time for it to recover. In the meantime, I'll have made at least $2000 from these offers, in MUCH less time than I would have spent working a second job.

[mysticaltyger]

By the way, FMF....if your income is as high as I think it is, and your credit rating is as good as you say it is, I'm willing to bet you could indeed make 5K borrowing money with 0% credit card offers and putting the funds in high yield savings accounts.