Unusual Kinds of Savings

I have to admit that I am not the greatest at budgeting. I don't really know what stuff should cost. If it's above a certain number, I will feel uncomfortable paying it, no matter what. For example, I bought my car when it was six years old and paid $7,000 as is. Was that a good deal? I really don't know. This is not a good trait.

But I do want to talk about one method of earning money that even I probably can't confuse. I'm talking about a website called Swagbucks. This is what the home page looked like when I ori.

Yes, some of it has to do with getting money back after shopping, but I haven't used that feature. What I use to make points is watching videos and taking surveys. Completely free. In the case of the videos, I don't even have to actually watch or listen to them. I usually have them running in a tab in my browser and I check on them occasionally.

I can't remember exactly where and when I heard about it and started using it, but it's only been a couple of months at the most. Each point can be traded toward a free gift card, with a point equaling one penny. So if you look at the points, you move the decimal over two to the left and that's how much you've made.

The gift cards aren't bad either. I haven't redeemed any yet because I'm trying to hold off for a bigger number. Also, when we start having to pay for wedding stuff, I can assign points to whichever gift card would make the most sense at the time. Some of the ones I will probably use are:

• Amazon
• Paypal
• Walmart
• Target
• MasterCard
• Ebay
• Shutterfly
• JcPenney
• Groupon

There's actually a lot that seem useful for wedding stuff. 

What I do is that I have the videos running in a tab most of the time my computer is on at home and work. That's it. Sometimes if I don't have anything to do, I'll take the surveys, which offer more points more quickly because you have to engage with them. My workplace knows when I have something to do and when I don't and they don't begrudge me going on the internet when I don't.

So far, as you can see from the screenshot, I'm at roughly $68. That may not seem like a lot, but that's money I was making while I was also making money at my job. And once the engagement time officially starts, we will probably have another year before the actual wedding. If it can even pay for one plate or help one bridesmaid get to Chicago, it will be bandwidth well-spent. 

Also, for my own enjoyment I've downloaded an app on my phone called Fundometer.

I looked up online what the average wedding cost supposedly is. Now, I would be disappointed in us if we ended up spending that much, but at least it's a measurable number. This covers just the money from Swagbucks. It doesn't account for any actual money from work or any money that Mr. Wolf has. I end up maybe adding a dollar or two to the number on the app every day. I can't tell you how irrationally excited when that number went from 0.1% of your goal to 0.2%. It's a micro-accomplishment. 

I'm not sponsored by either of these companies (though that would be pretty awesome). I just figured it was unique enough to be worth talking about. 

In the time I spent making this post, I earned about $2.90 in the background. Pretty cool.

Edited to add update: I made it over $100 on Sunday.