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For the last couple of days, I have been talking about a new account (actually an older checking account renamed) called the Hustle Account we are working to fund.
Basically, this account will be used to collect all the monthly savings we are finding in our budget. Some of those savings will be small … like the $12.44 monthly savings on our Verizon Wireless cell phone bill we just uncovered. Other savings may be larger but not as frequent.
In addition to collecting savings from our budget, income we earn from any side hustle will be added to the account. For example, I recently listed a bunch of items to sell on Amazon (by Merchant). These items were just taking up space in the house. We are trying to reduce the amount of “stuff” we have lying around in our home. So why not earn a little cash from it?
Hustle Account – Used to Fund our IRA’s
You may be wondering the purpose of this “Hustle Account”? Couldn’t we just keep the extra cash we get in our normal checking/savings account? Or better yet, just transfer it to our Robinhood account and buy a share or two of a dividend stock?
Yes, we could do any of those options with this extra cash.
But we have a new goal to start funding our tax deferred retirement accounts. The plan is to use these extra funds to at least fund my wife’s IRA next year … which would be $5,500. I think we can hit that target in savings and side hustle.
If things go well, then we hope to starting funding my IRA for next year as well … up to the $5,500 limit.
We have focused so much time and effort on building our taxable dividend income portfolio … that is time to start focusing on our pretax investments.
Which brings me to our latest deposit into our hustle account … a $265 increase!
Adding $265 to the Hustle Account
Over the last several weeks, my wife and I have been studying up on travel hacking strategies. We are not big travelers and don’t have aspirations to travel the world right now … but we do value having options for cheaper travel when we need it.
For example, we take a couple family vacations each year that are usually within a day’s driving distance from our home. For the most part, these vacations don’t break the bank too much and are important to us.
Our goal through travel hacking is to hopefully reduce the costs of our lodging. And eventually maybe plan a family trip to Hawaii!
So we recently started our travel hacking by opening up a new credit card, which should give us over $500 in future travel.
As we researched more and more about this strategy, I realized there were other ways to earn hard cold cash by opening up checking accounts … and that is what we did.
Earn $300 Cashback by Opening a New Checking Account
I came across an offer to open a new checking account where we could earn $300 cashback. The only requirement was to have $4,000 or more direct deposited into the account within the first 90 days.
This was an easy $300 in our pockets, since we have over $5,000+ directed deposited each month already from my job.
A few weeks ago we setup the account, changed our direct deposit information and were on our way to earning $300 in extra cash. Everything worked great, except for one oversight on my part that cost us $35 in insufficient funds from our old checking account.
When the new account was opened, I changed all of our automated payments, etc. from the old checking account to the new. This helps pay our credit cards bills off each month, our mortgage, car payments, etc.
Unfortunately, I missed an automated transfer into a separate account which caused our original account to be overdrawn! Actually, I missed two automated transfers and we were hit with a $70 insufficient funds fee.
The good news is that I called the bank of our older account and they were willing to split the difference on the two charges … and removed one. So we were out $35, making our net profit $265.
I am happy to say we have transferred these funds into our new hustle account and have made an inventory of all our coming and going automated payments of so this doesn’t happen again!
New Hustle Account Balance
As I mentioned in a previous post this week, we started with a balance of $41.06 in our account. The minimum goal is to reach at least $5,500 in cash that will be used to fund my wife’s IRA in 2018.
Adding $265 new dollars has brought our latest balance up to $306.06!
New Balance = $306.06
What strategies do you use to fund your retirement accounts? Do you take advantage of travel hacking or other cash back bonuses?
