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Sunday night I couldn’t sleep, so, naturally, I decided to look into getting some of the songs I’ve written available on Spotify and other streaming services. The process looked straight forward enough. I went digging through some of the tracks that I’ve recorded and that I am okay with the how they turned out. I chose one and uploaded it to the online music distributor. Filled out some information for identity verification, uploaded cover art, and clicked submit. As of the writing of this the distributor has sent it to the online stores and now, I am waiting for the stores to accept or reject it.

The whole process took maybe 30 minutes and cost me a whole $15. The $15 was for a year of unlimited uploads, so if this seems to work as advertised, the price per song should go down. Stay tuned for more updates.

Due to life happening at the speed of life, it has been awhile since I’ve made any status updates. Let’s dive right in shall we.

Jobs

• The day job
• The other day job
• The other, other day job

That list looks a bit confusing I know, let me explain. While I am still doing freelance IT work, I took over the day to day operations of two other businesses. If you’re keeping score at home, that’s three businesses to run. Three sets of books to keep track of. So many bank accounts.

The freelance IT work is still the largest income stream. As mentioned in a previous post though, that income can vary pretty wildly. Last year I was working as a delivery driver to try and smooth out some of the valleys in the income graph. Last fall I started another business for managing the day-to-day operations of other people’s businesses. While this does cut into the IT work a bit, it’s a fairly steady stream of income that helps so much with keeping a budget. This would be the other day job. I know the list above has a third entry of the other, other day job, but really that’s just the third business that my second business manages. Confusing? I know.

Other Streams

I mentioned in this post that I was also putting a significant portion of my income into the market. Turns out, that was unsustainable. I made it until about September until I had to start pulling money back out to cover bills. I would love to be able to get back to a point where I can put that much into the market, but first I think I’m going to need a hefty cushion in savings to really start hammering at that again.

As it currently stands I am holding stock in two companies and one bond backed security. My average dividend peprcentage is currently sitting a little north of 15%, so hopefully in time this will pay off.

I realized I forgot the last stream of revenue in my last post. This stream is nothing more than a trickle at this point, but I’m hoping it will grow rather substantial given enough time and watering.

The reason for the number of jobs I have is that I am socking away as much as possible into the market. This is roughly 10-20% of my net income. I began doing this in January of this year and have made decent progress. My income from the market right now is approximately $35 per month. This is about two orders of magnitude smaller than what I would like it to be, but you have to start somewhere.

I realize that using after tax dollars to invest in a non-tax advantaged account may not be the smartest move, but it gives me the amount of freedom I am looking for in trying to gain my financial independence.

For now, I’m doing my best to stick to dividend bearing stocks. By reinvesting the dividends, it’s helping the nest egg grow at roughly double the market average. Only time will tell if this plan works out or not, but for now, here’s hoping.

The Day Job

By day, and sometimes middle of the night, I am an IT contractor. I bill by the hour for helpdesk, system administrating, and software development. This makes answering my kids’ questions about how much I make rather complicated, as it depends on what it is I am doing at any given time what I am making per hour. This coupled with the intermittentness of doing break/fix computer work means that my monthly income can vary wildly. Enter, the side jobs.

The Part-Time Job

Getting paid once a month means that occasionally there is too much month at the end of my paycheck. To help even this out a bit I picked up a part-time job delivering pizzas. I make much less per hour doing this, but I get paid at the end of every shift. This helps keep gas in my car and milk in the fridge in between paychecks.

Side Gigs

Other miscellaneous income sources include occasionally helping a local landscaper on weekends and doing odd jobs for the owner of the building my office is in