The Diplomats’ March Side Hustle Report

Busy season is finally just about over for the Dividend Diplomats!  Through the insane work weeks and the Cleveland Cold that ensues, do you think we were able to keep the side hustles going?  You better believe we never stop side hustling and trying to earn every extra dollar possible and MAKE EVERY DOLLAR COUNT.  It was a solid month overall, but we are looking forward to April Side Hustlin’ money showers!  Now, let’s see how we did in March!

The side hustles

Ebates – We’re pretty sure most people are familiar with Ebates, the website that offers cash back and coupon codes for nearly all major online retailers and travel sites.  In addition,  each new user also can receive a free $10 gift card upon sign up (yes an affiliate plug), which is an added bonus.  The two of us always visit Ebates prior to making an online purchase to see if we can earn cash back by visiting the website through Ebates or using one of the listed coupon codes.  Since we travel a lot for work, we will access the hotel’s website through Ebates first to earn a few extra dollars on the business trip.  We really mean it…it is EASY money for a simple additional step in the online shopping experience that maybe adds 10 seconds to your transaction.  Here is our February summary for cash back earned from Ebates:

Lanny – $9.14 – Still churning out dollars, but not as much as last month..  I wasn’t able to screen shot my “profile” on 4/1, but here it is as of 4/5.  Most of my activity was from hotels and rentals cars (small benefit of traveling for work).  In total, I have almost $425, and looking to break that once a pending item, settles.  See below’s snip from their website:

Bert – $0 – Once again, another $0 month here for me.   With limited time available to shop and spend my hard earned dollar, I haven’t had the need to use Ebates.  Further, I bdidn’t travel a lot for work in February and March (thank goodness), so I didn’t earn any cash back on reimbursed travel expenses.   It sucks that this source of extra income has slowed, but at least it means that I have not spent a lot of money shopping!

Swagbucks –  One of our longest tenured side hustles.  Every day the two of us our battling and challenging each other to make sure we hit out minimum “Swagbuck” goal.  The earnings build up quickly!  Swagbucks is a website the provides gift card or cash rewards for performing activities on the website.  The activities include using their search engine, answering surveys, answering polls, watching videos, printing off coupons, shopping (similar to Ebates above), signing up for different offers, etc. Bottom line is that there are a ton of different ways for people to earn!   Here is our referral link if you would like to give it a try as well!  Here is how much each of us earned from Swagbucks:

Lanny – > 2,207 Swagbucks or $22.07 – I made it an effort to ensure I was over $20, since last month was legit the first time, since we reported, that I was below that amount.  I was able to do one cash out during the month and I am almost cashed out again in April, about halfway to another $25!  The way I was able to monitor the total amount earned was take my end of previous month lifetime amount and subtract out my lifetime amount at end of month (found in the activity section of your account).  I am expecting April to finish in the mid $20’s, given the slow down of busy season and desire to keep this churning.

Bert – > 1,248 Swagbucks or $12.48 –  This was a relatively slow month for me as I couldn’t really Swagbuck too much during work as every minute made a difference with some of our deadlines.  However, once things slowed down, I was able to return to my side-hustling ways.  Luckily for me, I was able to cash out and receive a $25 Paypal credit during the month.  As I mentioned in an earlier article, I have committed to use all side-hustle income to paydown my mortgage, so once I completed the cash out, I made a $25 extra principal payment towards my mortgage.   Man this is a lot of fun!

Ibotta – Ibotta is one of our favorite apps because it is so easy to use and barely adds any time to your routine shopping experience.  It is so easy to earn money that they even give you $5.00 just to sign up!  The app allows you to earn cash back from nearly every grocery store and many of online retailers.   Before shopping, you scan the available rebates on thee app and see which items you are planning on buying.  Some example of rebates that may be available any given week are $0.25 for different fruits/vegetables, $1-$2 off of cereal, $1.00 for purchasing a certain type of coffee,  or $2-$3 back for purchasing beer or wine! We mean it, they have discounts on everything

One of our favorite things about Ibotta is that the discounts don’t just apply to goods that are impossible to find or are very expensive.  Ibotta makes it easy to redeem cash as well and the process takes less than a minute after you complete your purchase.  You simply scan the receipt, select the rebates that were purchased during that shopping trip, and then receive the credit within 24 hours.   If you would like to try the app, we included a referral link in the banner below our monthly summary and at the beginning of the paragraph.

Lanny – $2.00 – Sadly I am starting to realize, which may be a good thing, with travel for work – this reduces my iBotta (hopefully this means my groceries are reduces as well though!).  In total, I’ve earned over almost $200.00 in cash back from the app.  However, I highly URGE you to sign up. Yes, sadly we do get a referral kick back, but this is by far the EASIEST way to get cash back.  Further, the beer, wine categories make it fairly simply to rack up (usually $1.00 – $3.00 for a 6-pack and/or bottle of wine, eh, I’m Italian and Irish).  Additionally – supplements like vitamins are a bigger cash back piece as well.

Bert – $3.75 –  Not the strongest month for Ibotta.  However, this was due to the fact that we did 80% of our grocery shopping at Aldi.  We have this fun routine where we get as much as we can at Aldi based on the prices (which are awesome) and then will go to a local store for the rest.  The local store is on Ibotta and that is where the $3.75 came from this month on random small items.  I just love that we earn a few dollars on goods we were going to purchase anyway!

Selling Household Items

Lanny – $0.00  – I have sold nothing, again, for the fourth consecutive month.  Busy season just ended and it’s time to get back in the saddle.  Further, one should see 5 benefits of getting rid of “stuff”, I know I own too much crap in my life that is consuming space, time and resources.  In the end, the idea is that the items sold or donated will add value to someone else’s life, as that’s the purpose of owning something, to add value.

Bert – $10–  My wife and I were lucky this month.  In January, we listed a piece of wall art that had been sitting in our attic for $12.  We were getting ready to go grocery shopping one Sunday and right before we left we received an offer for $10.  Obviously we were both pretty excited to compelte the sale.  The icing on the cake was that the person who was purchasing the art also offered to meet us in the plaza where we were shopping during our trip.  So we didn’t have to make a special trip or go out of our way to complete the sale.  I don’t think we could have asked for a better/easier transaction!   Hopefully this will continue to ramp up as we have more free time in April.

Total March Side Hustle Income: 

Lanny: $33.21, total of $694.87 since tracking on the blog!

Bert: $26.23, total of $518.86 since tracking on the blog!

Diplomats Side Hustle Total: $59.44, Cumulative Total of $1,213.72 since tracking on the blog!

9 thoughts on “The Diplomats’ March Side Hustle Report

    • Tom –

      Hahaha, I think and ask myself that ALL the time. I am worn out, I cannot lie about that. You and I both know how tough it is. The 70-80 hour+ weeks are behind us luckily; and now it’s just trying to find time to charge the batteries, but doing what you love (this blog, investing, living haha) as much as you can. Hilarious.

      -Lanny

  1. Great job on the side hustles especially since it’s being earned during the busy season. I still haven’t gotten on the bandwagon and so I’ll just live vicariously through you guys until that time. Looking forward to seeing how April report shapes up.

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