Income Updates – Q1 2021

My company does a business update every quarter. I thought, it would be fun to start one as well. I can’t believe that we are already at Q2 of 2021. Where did the time go? This is a good reminder that time is a limited resource, you can’t earn more or get it back once it’s gone. Make good use of it while you have it.

Since it’s my first income report, let’s start with …… my work income, just for Q1!

Work Income

Well… my salary has decreased by 20% compared to last year. This is because… I have switched to a 4 day work week! I am pretty excited at that extra day of the week where I don’t have to work!

I have been working from home since Mar 2020, and I have to say, working from home seems to have taken a toll on me mentally to be honest. I’m not saying that I don’t want to work from home. I like working from home, but when you are working for home for so long, the lines between work time and personal time seems to get blurred along the ways.

So when my company started offering us the option of part time work with prorated benefits, I jumped on it immediately. so YAY!

Alternative Income Stream

1. Interest and Dividend from Stocks/Bonds

  • Dividend from stocks – $1,546.45
  • Interest from bonds – $0

This quarter, I netted a total of $1,546.45, mainly dividends from my REITs counters. This works out to be around $500 each month. I like REITs for the recurring income that they provide. This is purely passive income. I don’t have to do anything, other than review them every year.

2. Interest from Crypto

  • BlockFi and Celsius – USD$188.17

With the bank cutting interest rates on deposit, one has to look else where to earn more interest. This is where BlockFi and Celsius comes into play.

I have been putting my bitcoin and ETH in BlockFi to earn interest since 2017. I’ve since added stablecoin to this mix. So, the total interest generated from Crypto this quarter is USD$188.17, approx SGD$252.

Another passive income checked. No work done, just HODL.

3. Ad Revenue

I’ve thought long and hard about monetizing my site with Ads, but I’ve got bills to pay. And no one was sending any BITs of love (I mean BITcoin) over to me 🙁

I started with AdSense PPC. I gave up on it half way through, as my account keeps getting flagged for invalid traffic, which limits the ads that I can show on my site. So now I have money earned sitting at my account which I have no idea how to withdraw, as the min payout is $150.

I switched over to Ezoic, once I hit the bare minimum to qualify. And so far, I think I’m doing ok. I just have to see if this income stream is reliable going forward.

4. Referrals

  • BlockFi – USD $50
  • Endowus – SGD $20

I think crypto has been gaining a lot of traction since start of 2021. So for the first time, I have earned USD$50 worth of BTC in referral from BlockFi for the first quarter, which is pretty cool!

So thank you if you’ve used any of my links to sign up!

Summary

My total alternative income for Q1 works out to be SGD $1885!

2021 is turning out to be a better year than 2020! Even though I took a 20% pay cut, I’m feeling much happier, with more time on hand.

My alternative income helps to make up some of my loss income from working 4 days a week. I’ll definitely be focusing on generating more streams of alternative income in the future now that I’ve got some extra time off work.

I am already looking forward to Q2’s income. Rock on 🤘 2021!