Monthly Archives: August 2014

3 Biggest Budget Busters

Some people seem to think we live in a cardboard box and eat ramen noodles to save money. In this video we talk about how we save money in the 3 categories that people spend most of their money.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average household spends $1400/mo on housing, $750/mo on transportation, and $550/mo on food.

We make up a lot of our savings in these three areas by being flexible on house size, driving only one car, and limiting our restaurant eating.

Food is still a work in progress for us, but we’re getting better.

DIY Vintage Light Switch (Frankenstein Knife Switch)

Parts and Build:

I bought an antique knife switch off eBay as a decoration. When I got it in the mail, I knew I wanted to make it actually work. ?But I needed to make it safe. ?So I used a solid state relay and a phone changer to wire everything together. ?You can watch the process in the video above. ?I got everything to fit inside of the light switch box, so I didn’t need to drill into the wall.

 

1_knife_switch 1_parts_list 3_marking_size 6_circuit_board 7_wiring

11_mounting lights_on testing

knife_blade_switch_wiring_diagram

Teaching Lauren Basic Car Maintenance

On our way back from Wisconsin, we stopped in Chicago. ?We got our oil changed in the city for $30 dollars, saving us on parking. ?But, they said we needed our brakes done and wanted to charge us $374 dollars for the job.

We decided to buy the parts online instead and do it ourselves. ?It saved us over $300 and it was a great opportunity to teach Lauren how to change her own brake pads.

How To Make Money Online (The Hard/Right Way)

Every month we make between $100-200 a month online from a few websites I built back in 2011. Everything I learned about making money online said to build low quality websites and then write hundreds of articles linking back to it, so it looked more useful than it really was.

Unfortunately google released their Panda update a month later that changed everything. But, 3 years later we still make a couple hundred bucks, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.

Even more important is that I learned how to do it the right way, which happens to also be the hard way. The simple formula for making money online is:

Create useful content, build an audience. Then sell them a product of your own, or put ads on the site.

In the video I give an example of my own failed websites, and example of the right way.

Leave a comment if you’d like to hear more specific ideas for making money online.