I have always been one who believes that it’s important to get all the big personal finance issues in order before you start looking at the small stuff. If you are losing several hundred dollars a month paying too high of an interest rate on your house payment and decide to spend your time trying to earn a few extra dollars in other ways instead, you have your money management priorities a little out of whack. That being said, once you have taken care of the big stuff, I believe that saving those small amounts is important. Earning small amounts is often referred to as snowflaking and the ways that you can go about creating these income streams is limited only by your imagination.
While many people focus solely on the amount of money, they often forget about the psychological benefits that saving small, additional amounts can have. Most people have all the money in their budget accounted for, so being able to earn small amounts outside their regular income streams allows them the flexibility to tackle the money goal that they have their sights set on. Whether it’s paying down credit card debt or building an emergency fund, being able to add more (even if it’s a small amount) than budgeted provides confidence and motivation to get to that goal that much more quickly.
While I have a number of ways that I snowflake, the one constant seems to be finding coins while I walk. I find over $100 a year on the ground. This most certainly isn’t the typical way that most people snowflake, but it seems to work for me and it’s a wonderful example that shows you are only limited by your creativity when it comes to this exercise. I encourage you to enter this contest, I truly hope it gives a bit of inspiration to help you think about other ways that you can possibly put a few more dollars in your pocket than expected.
To help with that creativity, one of the ways to enter is to explain one of the ways (feel free to share more) that you snowflake. I think by getting people to share and to see the wide variety of ways that people are already doing this, it can help get your creative juices going that much more. I think you will be pleasantly surprised at how motivating it can be when you get into the habit of snowflaking in your spare time, and all those little triumphs of paying a little more against debt or toward the emergency fund will make the personal finance journey that much more enjoyable.
If you’re a blogger and you would like to participate in these no cost giveaways in the future like all those in this one, you can get more information here.
Jeffrey strain is a freelance author, his work has appeared at The Street.com and seekingalpha.com. In addition to having authored thousands of articles, Jeffrey is a former resident of Japan, former owner of Savingadvice.com and a professional digital nomad.
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