I finally caught up with my savings shortfalls of the previous months. My guess is that there’s increased demand for consumer opinions around Christmas and Boxing Day since it’s the major time people do their shopping. Though I can’t complain since it translates into more money for me.
Microsoft Rewards / Scavenging & Canning
Microsoft was kind enough to cut the benefits of Microsoft Rewards by about 50% in mid-December. Whether this will be a permanent change or one that is rolled back is anyone’s guess. As a rule of thumb no rewards program ever gets better over time and this one is turning out to be no different. Despite this change I earned $15 once again in December that was put into Amazon gift cards. The difference however is that I liquidated the Amazon gift card balance on various orders and put that money into cash. I will reiterate that I dislike having any gift card balances but especially Amazon because in my experience they can arbitrarily decide to apply it to an order (despite you indicating you don’t want to use it). That and the fact your money is trapped in a walled garden and they can decide to ban your account at any time and for any reason thereby forfeiting the money.
With that in mind I turned the gift card balances into cash and combined it with the money I had earned scavenging/canning. I didn’t earn any money this way in December since the only people drinking outside during Winter are the homeless and they are less than forthcoming with their empties. That leaves me with $51 in cash sitting in my repurposed (but also scavenged) Classico Spaghetti sauce jar.
Swagbucks/Leger Opinion
I ended up making $107 this month by doing surveys. Swagbucks was as consistent as ever but the other survey website I have been using – Leger Opinion did finally pay off for me though. I netted $30 alone that way this month whereas I had earned nothing the previous two.
Summary
Between all the work I ended up making $122 in December which is my best month yet. I’m about 70% of the way to my goal but I expect since the holiday season is now over, January will be rather bleak on the survey front.
Not all is rosy though. A big problem that I’ve been slowly coming to terms with is that I don’t think $400 will be enough to buy a Google Pixel 8a. I was overly optimistic when I started saving in October and thought by March 2025 the phone would have dropped in price to those levels. It hasn’t however and didn’t even brush against those levels on Black Friday or Boxing Day. My best guess is that it will reach that threshold sometime in the summer 2025 when Google announce the Pixel 10. Which means I have to really think about alternative choices of phone. I can say confidently that I know much more than I did when I started saving but I have also grown quite weary about the whole process – both learning and earning. I basically just want this thing to be over with so I can move on to other things.
CatsGamesWhatever 