Every time I think I might be inching ahead… something breaks. I’ve got van repairs, my wife’s phone might be dying, and it’s like a never-ending vicious cycle. I don’t usually track almosts, but USAA credit card points are $94, Freecash is at $76, Swagbucks is at $90, and Branded is at $47. I generally wait until something hits $100 to cash out, unless I don’t plan on using a tool anymore. So while payouts seem a little shy this month, because I haven’t been grinding the games as hard as I did in June, I’m still at slightly more than $300 waiting in ‘almost’ payouts.

I think, six months into this documented project of side hustles and investing, it’s going pretty well. I’ve made some alterations already discussed in the High Octane to Ashes post. Though I do want to mention that the large increase in my Robinhood Balance is related to the $25,000 from the SoFI loan that was discussed as going into my HYSA while I pay down the actual amount I needed. That was able to produce $250 in dividends this month, so hopefully, it will make more than it costs me.

July	Vanguard	Robinhood Mine	Robinhood Wife
Balance 1 July	$13,914.76	$16,565.69	$4,233.86
Money Added	$500.00	$25,208.91	$0.00
Dividends July	$225.53	$494.80	<<To the Left
Money Removed	$0.00	– $1,358.91	$0.00
Balance 1 August	$14,219.63	$40,654.45	$4,240.87

On the income side of things, I didn’t get too much accomplished this month. Honeygain got its first payout after almost six months of running its software at my house. Not sure if it’s worth $20, but it was 100% passive. Sadly, it also had fees in order to pay out so it only paid $17.93. I was able to trigger two FreeCash payouts of $100 each (minus two $5 fees) and my FreeCash-to-Stake-to-Robinhood Bitcoin funnel was able to finally cash out at $906.45, which was a $45.93 profit over the initial actual payout — an over 5% increase in 45 days.

I also deposited $500 to Vanguard in order to even out my shares as part of the new plan discussed earlier. Between that and the dividends at Vanguard, the only thing delaying ARR and AGNC contributions is 43 more shares of EARN to hit an even 2,000. Since I might have some breathing room this month, I put $500 toward my wife’s 2026 IRA as well. I was also able to put $500 back into my HYSA from the $4,000 I borrowed with SNAP, just off the options premiums, aside from taxes. Finally, I had $100 in Robinhood Gold points that went into the brokerage.

Source	July	2026 Total
Swagbucks	$0.00	$1,100.00
Chase Bank	$0.00	$1,300.00
USAA Bank	$0.00	$200.00
Branded Surveys	$0.00	$200.00
Chime Referrals	$0.00	$300.00
SoFi Bonuses	$0.00	$305.00
FreeCash	$235.93 ($200 -$10 fees + BTC bonus)	$1,684.93
Robinhood Gold Card	$100.00	$500.00
Covered Calls Premiums	$646.00	$1,953.00
Dividends	$720.33	$3,441.30
Neilson	$48.00	$48.00
Class Actions	$0.00	$7.31
Honeygain	$17.93 ($20 Cashout)	$17.93
VFW	$5.00	$5.00
Total	$1,773.19	$11,057.47

Pretty clean, I think. I definitely hope to side hustle more in August. Still, I’ve now surpassed both $10,000 and $11,000 this month for the year, which is really thrilling.

Deal	Spent	Earned
Last Month’s Chart	Annual: $1,122.88 ($28.37 was gift cards/survey points)	$1,863.40
Freecash Raid Shadow Legends	$31.83 ($10 was points)	$133.00
Match Factory!	$0.00	$0.04
Total:	$1,154.71 ($38.37 was free)	$1,996.44

Profit Formula:

1. Cash actually spent = Total spending − Points used
   $1,154.71 − $38.37 = $1,116.34
2. Profit = Amount paid back − Cash spent
   $1,996.44 − $1,116.34 = $880.10
3. Profit % = (Profit ÷ Cash spent) × 100
   ($880.10 ÷ $1,116.34) × 100 ≈ **78.84%**

Yeah, I’ll take a 78% profit margin on my game spending overall. This was a pretty exciting month.

~~Miniwing~~
Investor, Stoic, Frugalist