In my last post, I talked about keeping track of your net worth by keeping a spreadsheet with a running tally of your various incomes every month. After doing this a few days ago, I noticed a few columns on the spreadsheet that curiously racked up some significant figures annually. What’s interesting about these sources of income is that I don’t really… do much work to get the money every month. I want to share these things with you. Here are just a few ways you can make a grand or two a year without really even trying:

Certificate of Deposits (CDs)

• Placing a portion of your money in a CD account basically guarantees you a chunk of free cash every month. Seriously. The only catch is that you can’t touch that money until the CD matures, so just put a few grand that you won’t use for a few years. You can choose how long you want your money to remain in the CD (usually longer term = higher rate = more $$ made). A term can be anywhere from 3 months to 4 years depending on the bank. There’s also a minimum amount required.

Google Ads on your website

• If you have a blog (or any website for that matter), consider throwing on some Google Ads for free cash every month. All you have to do is place the code on your site and keep the site relatively updated with fresh content.
  Bonus: make more money by focusing your site on a specific topic.
  Double bonus: make the ads visibly obvious but NOT annoying.

Get really good at something you enjoy doing and then teach it

• I know what you’re thinking… Tony, if I’m spending time teaching, then it’s work! Yes true… but I emphasize the word “enjoy” in the above statement. Seriously, if you enjoy yoga and are really good at it, devoting a few hours per week to teaching it is not really work… because you would’ve spent that time doing yoga anyway! The only difference is you’re getting paid to do it. I teach guitar two hours a week and make $200-$300 USD a month. That amounts to about 8-12 hours of work a month (including curriculum prep time) at about $25 an hour. Not bad if you ask me…

Adding up the money I make from these three activities amounts to anywhere from a few hundred to a few grand annually… and honestly, the work doesn’t justify the cash IMO. So get crackin’!!

Today I was buying a candy bar at the convenience store, only $0.50, chump change right? Yes, but it got me thinking about how much money I’m spending at the convenience store every week… and furthermore…

How much money / assets do I own total?? i.e. what is my net worth?

So I just spent an hour updating my ginormous net worth excel spreadsheet. It basically has all my assets organized with dollar amounts for every month. I organized my spreadsheet into the following categories:

• CD accounts (Certificate of Deposit accounts)
  1. Account 1…
  2. Account 2…
  3. etc…
• Website Revenue
  1. Google ads
  2. Text Link ads
  3. etc…
• Securities Revenue (Stocks)
• Bank Account Balances
  1. Bank 1…
  2. Bank 2…
  3. etc…
• Music Revenue
• etc…

After organizing all my account balances and revenue amounts, it really gave me a very clear picture of where my income is being generated as well as how much money I have TOTAL. I highly recommend all of you to make such a spreadsheet and update it monthly (especially if you have income coming in from many sources).