05/14 - Smooth Sunday!

A few questions for those who are willing to answer them:

1) What do your monthly expenses look like?
2) Has turking significantly increased your quality of life?
3) Secret money saving tips?

I'll start - my takehome share of turkmonies is about 3k each month so far. As for expenses, the apartment my girlfriend and I rent costs 1200 in Southern California (cheap, I know - we basically pay the mortgage for a friend's father), and then there's some stuff like gas, groceries, eating out, entertainment, etc, but it never comes to more than ~600 a month usually. Bills, maybe another 200? My girlfriend is our current breadwinner, she has a "real" job at a marketing firm, while I'll be back to being the bacon-bringer in another month or so. While the turkmoney isn't exactly super, super important, it certainly does make our quality of life better since I don't have a full-time at the moment, it prevents me from having to use any savings, and also lets me save additional money to that. All those poke bowls have to come out of someone's wallet.

As for a secret money saving tip - if you're paying anything over $30 per month for your cellphone bill, you're paying way too much. Look at MVNO's and bring your cellphone to them - a lot of them offer $30 a month for unlimited call/text/etc + 2 gb or so of data. Also check out ProjectFi if you have a google phone - really cheap for families to use their service. I use Mint for my phone service (https://www.mintsim.com/) and I use a bit of a work-around to get that 12/month price year round, and it saves a ton off what I was paying with AT&T (I think around 70 a month).

 

1) ~$700/mo for rent and ult + another $50 for internet (these are what I pay I live with my brother so it obviously isn't the total) Add a bit for food as well but not much because my brother and I buy everything from costco and I cook every meal. I also have been paying around $200/mo back on my student loans ... So ~$1000/mo?

2) Well I doubt my family would let me be homeless but things would have been pretty bad if I wasn't able to find a job.

3) Don't buy stuff? *looks at my 8tb HDD* Although I guess the serious response would be to cook stuff instead of going out to eat like a lot of people do.

 

Your HIT activity for this week:
- Number of HITs submitted: 1,482

Approvals and payments that occurred this week:
- Number of HITs approved: 1,480
- Number of HITs rejected: 0
- Bonus reward earned: $1.11
- HIT reward earned: $167.46
- Total Amount earned this week: $168.57

This week in a nutshell

 

Geez.. starting to wish I WASN'T qualified for this survey I'm doing. It's taking FOREVER. Not sure if it's worth $2.

 

What survey?

 

Greetings from Amazon Mechanical Turk,
The following is a summary of activity for your Mechanical Turk account for the week ending May 13, 2017.
Your HIT activity for this week:
- Number of HITs submitted: 804
Approvals and payments that occurred this week:
- Number of HITs approved: 656
- Number of HITs rejected: 0
- Bonus reward earned: $1.60
- HIT reward earned: $243.71
- Total Amount earned this week: $245.31

 

Academic Research Study- 5 cents to qualify, possible $1.95 bonus!

Shoot.. missed the part about 45 mins.

 

1. Graduated from college and had been having a hard time getting my freelance/business to rake in anything significant, and I couldn't even manage a call back from a place like Office Depot, so I'm the stereotypical millennial living with my mom and sister. My family had been helping me out for the longest, but now (good timing) I'm about to have the responsibility of handling my stuff. My expenses are like $50 for car insurance, $50 for my phone, and about <$150 for groceries. $10-$20 for wine
2. Most definitely. My other income sources were just giving me enough to keep up with my grocery expenses. Now I expect at least a 400% increase, an actual taxable income as my brother remarked lol.
3. I only eat like once or twice a day. My social life is horrible and I've already mentioned my issue with driving, so I don't really get out as much as I like. And I don't find a lot of purchases to be important. I very rarely buy new clothes and stuff. The only thing I'd end up blowing my money on is equipment, and all the equipment I have my eyes on cost a very pretty penny.

 

https://turkopticon.ucsd.edu/A2EGXSBTZ91MYV

>$2 for 50min 3/5 pay

 

1) Me and my girlfriend share an apartment and I earn 90% of our money through mTurk alone.
Rent: $680
Food, Bills, smokables: ~$600

2) I used to be a Supervisor at a convenience store, I worked 50 hour weeks at slightly higher than minimum wage and just about everything to do with that job was terrible. They told me I was set for a promotion, trained me and everything but then nothing happened with it and they would ignore my questioning of why. So I quit and moved and started turking. I'm earning pretty much exactly what I was making before (minus health insurance )
the biggest difference is that I only work 5 hours a day on average and it's on and off throughout the day. Half the work with essentially 'hourly' breaks and the best coworker I could ask for.

Spoiler: Coworker

You didn't think I meant my girlfriend, did you?

3) I cook like 95% of our food which saves a TON of money (you can cook a more hearty meal for $4 than an entire $20 meal at most places. But cooking is a hobby and not a financial thing for me. I did cancel my cell plan because if I'm working from a computer all day then I'd rather people contact me there and if I'm away from my computer I'm probably doing something that I do not want/need interrupted.

Also:
Your HIT activity for this week:
- Number of HITs submitted: 819

Approvals and payments that occurred this week:
- Number of HITs approved: 1,106
- Number of HITs rejected: 0
- Bonus reward earned: $6.70
- HIT reward earned: $207.96
- Total Amount earned this week: $214.66

Which is probably just 95% Pinterest and C-SAT because I bought a new gaming pc this week and didn't feel like grindinggg

 

I will try this as well. I actually just answered a ton more questions. Is there any sort of alert system? I have been doing Prolific stuff for a little over a year and I have never figured out anything.

 

1. My monthly expenses are quite low--I live with my parents and help out a lot (go grocery shopping, clean the house, take care of the dogs, do yard work) because they're both disabled and can't physically do much. My only real expenses right now are my car insurance (about $95 a month) and gas money/concert money. I usually earn about 500-600 a month on Mturk but haven't been doing as well the past 2 months.

2. Yes. I have severe social anxiety and PTSD that flares up at unexpected times, and being at home for most of the day is super helpful to me in terms of keeping my brain under control. It's hard for me to keep a job for long periods of time without my stress levels going through the roof, so working form home is ideal.

3. I don't buy new clothes/shoes/accessories--everything I purchase in those categories is second hand. I don't really drink and that helps save a lot of money as well. I like to live a very minimalistic lifestyle and turking goes along with that well.

 

I'll be honest I was expecting a screenshot of the forums. (Although I did originally read that as 'coworkers' and not 'coworker')

 

1) Monthly expenses for me alone are like 1400 including car payment and student loans and cell phone. Right now though while my boyfriends recording studio isn't making money I am footing all the bills including his so it's gone up to like 3k.
2)It really has. I wish I could get him started on it but even in the down time running the studio and trying to get people in eats up his time significantly. Also he's really bad at time management thanks to ADHD so I seriously doubt he could get into this. It's allowed me to pay off two credit cards and keep some money back for bills so all my paycheck doesn't get eaten up by it.
3) We cook ALOT. Like every meal. We don't buy things we don't need or if we do decide we need something I budget for it. Also I go through sales ads and figure out what store has what on sale and buy in bulk and that tends to save a lot of money as well.

 

The following is a summary of activity for your Mechanical Turk account for the week ending May 13, 2017.

Your HIT activity for this week:
- Number of HITs submitted: 5,993

Approvals and payments that occurred this week:
- Number of HITs approved: 5,314
- Number of HITs rejected: 26
- Bonus reward earned: $11.20
- HIT reward earned: $450.71
- Total Amount earned this week: $461.91