Tuesday, December 26, 2017

A Crypto Christmas, Passive Income Increase!



Quick, everyone grab your pickax, there's gold in them thar hills!  Part of the purpose of this blog is to track our efforts to increase our passive income.  Every month I release a passive income update that covers how we are working to grow income streams to surpass our monthly spending.  One stream of passive income that we have been playing with is Cryptocurrency mining.  I have mined Bitcoin and other alternative coins at a small scale off and on since 2011.  With the recent surge in Bitcoin, I have used some of the profits to build myself a slightly more high tech mining rig, so far the results have been excellent!

Passive income from Cryptocurrency mining was $40.25 per month in November 2017.  After tweaking the settings of my new dedicated mining rig our income from mining is now averaging over $24.21 per day and rising.  This is a monthly income of ~ $736. The rig itself is currently operating at 3/4 capacity and should be complete early January 2018 when the special power supply adapters I need come in the mail.  I am hoping when all is said and done that daily profit will sit above $30.00.  I will make a future post detailing the hardware and software needed to make this happen once my build is finalized.

Disclaimer:  I consider Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrency to be a high risk investment.  While I strongly believe in these investments in the long term, we will continue to see significant volatility in the near term.  Friends and family have been interested in my mining operation/history with Cryptocurrency due to the recent spike in prices.  While I love the technology I can not in good faith tell them to invest unless they are already in a very good financial situation.  I have lived through more crashes in Crypto value than I can remember and it has only been a 6 year relationship.  My own friends and family have talked to me about investing on margin or using leverage.  To me this is like playing Russian Roulette where 5 of the six chambers of your revolver are loaded with bullets. When you put that gun to your head and pull the trigger, if you survive you make many thousands of dollars. 

TLDR - At this time only invest what you can afford to lose and if you are using debt to fund this venture you are absolutely bonkers.  

Friday, December 15, 2017

Dumbest Ways I've Spent Money


Ms. DebtFree here with some honest confessions.  We have individual Mint accounts to track our spending and tonight I decided to use this fun feature to trend my spending for the last 12 months by merchant.  Yeah, it's bad enough that I had to look at my per-store spending!

Friday, December 8, 2017

November 2017 Spending Report

The numbers are in for our November spending update!  I am hoping these posts provide transparency on how we are approaching spending, which will set up our strategy for attacking debt.  Monthly updates force us to constantly audit and review our financial situation, and from this information we can target areas where we want to improve our performance and meet our goals.  When confronted with the reality of spending and debt it can be easy to take the ostrich approach and just bury your head in the sand.  Monthly accountability and honesty forces us to come up for air, and face our problems head on.  So without further ado, here are our November 2017 spending numbers in fun graphical format!




21 Frugal-ish Christmas Gifts for the Littles


*Full Disclosure: every item in this post includes affiliate links.  However, these are not items we are being paid to promote.  Each item is something we actually purchased and were given the thumbs up by the recipient.  Following these links supports us and does not cost you any additional money should you choose to make a purchase.*


Christmas Time Is Here!

Ms. DebtFree here to confess that I LOVE Christmas.  It was the biggest holiday in my home and I have many fond memories of making peanut brittle and English toffee with my dad, helping my mom decorate the house and arrange our Christmas village, and going to dinners at the homes of our closest friends

We never went overboard with gifts -in fact, we often filled tins with a variety of homemade goodies for our friends.  As a child, I remember carefully crafting my wishlist to include the perfect balance of cheap and pricier items.  My strategy was to give my parents and siblings plenty of options while ensuring I would get that one big ticket item I had been eyeing for months.

Sunday, December 3, 2017

Passive Income Streams November 2017



It's my favorite time of the month again, time for another passive income update!  Our passive income streams saw healthy growth in November 2017.  While total investment passive income continued to rise, the main culprit for our increasing stream is the incredible growth of our cryptocurrency mining operation.  Let's break it down: