Happy July, friends! This post is six months of end of month progress! We’re only three days away from the 250th anniversary of the US. My neighbor puts on a $10,000-plus fireworks show across from my house every year, so I’m expecting something truly awesome on Saturday.

Well, we have some rough stuff to talk about on this post. First, funneling almost all dividends into debt has done some cool stuff – like making excellent HELOC payments – but it also means I’m not growing the dividend snowball (very expected). However, I have still been buying one share of something each day. Most days, it has been 1 share of OXSQ, as it is very cheap, and the next item on my list for the game plan.

Second – and the biggest hurdle I’ve run into – is that Freecash puts a limit on how much money you can withdraw and still get the 30% boost via Stake, which is reasonable, I guess. This is a problem because cashing out via Stake involves doing so in Bitcoin, and Bitcoin has been on a giant plummet for most of the month. So, while I’ve converted $862 of Freecash rewards into 0.0139424 BTC, that’s only $826 right now. I had a limit sell in Robinhood set for $70,000, but I lowered it to $65,000 (BTC price) because, while I really do feel Bitcoin will continue to go up over time, I need the money from Freecash to go toward debt repayment. Assuming it reaches the $65,000 mark soon, that will cash out for $906. For the purposes of this income tracking post, we’ll stick with the $862 that was “earned” via Freecash.

June	Vanguard	Robinhood Mine	Robinhood Wife
Balance 1 June	$14,375.78	$11,326.92	$4,307.34
Money Added	$0.00	$9,300.00	$0.00
Dividends June	$213.64	$266.75	<<To the Left
Money Removed	$200.00	$2,884.00	$0.00
Balance 1 July	$13,914.76	$16,565.69	$4,233.86

Now, you’re going to notice that Robinhood appears to have a giant increase in balance, even though the picture at the top shows a $1,700 deficit. The reason for this was that I went against my own advice and I bought 500 shares of Ford to continue to further the Options Wheel experiment. While pulling that cash out of my emergency fund is a big no-no, there is a large philosophy online in the FIRE subreddits about how your HELOC should be your emergency fund, not a pile of cash that isn’t growing. I’m still not sold on this mentality, and I feel like the 4.25% interest rate in my Robinhood savings account adds enough extra to justify the cash pile; however, I want to catapult my extra income and grow my dividends and clear my debt. The idea isn’t wrong that the HELOC is available in a true emergency, so I’m splitting the difference. Instead of buying more shares or pumping the covered call premiums into debt repayment, I’m repaying my emergency fund. All the premiums from SNAP and F will go toward reimbursing the Emergency Fund (while putting 30% aside from taxes).

Now for the juicy bits: the extra income. I got the check for $40 from my family doing a week of radio surveys for Neilson, but they also sent $8 in cash, so that was $48. I also had some Covered Call action, and a bunch of Swagbucks and Freecash work, and PayPal cashouts from Freecash eat $5 per $100, which really sucks. Also coming in at the eleventh hour is $7.31 from the Facebook Class Action privacy lawsuit.

Source	June	2026 Total
Swagbucks	$100.00	$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	$1,262.00	$1,449.00
Robinhood Gold Card	$100.00	$400.00
Covered Calls Premiums	$526.00	$1,307.00*
Dividends	$441.04 (missing interest)	$2,720.97
Neilson	$48.00	$48.00
Class Actions	$7.31 (Facebook)	$7.31
Total	$2,384.35	$9,337.28

I feel that some of these numbers have been misleading, because I haven’t been tracking the spending that has happened to get several of these payouts from the apps like Swagbucks. For example: Freecash $1,262 this month, but with $20 in paypal fees, plus $244.95 in spending on the first game, plus $348.02 in spending on the second game, and $86.69 on the third game (with milestones still being earned), that is $679.66 spent to earn $1,262. This means the profit was $582 – a big difference. Therefore, I feel like I need to start tracking this as well.

Deal	Spent	Paid out
Fan Duel Swagbucks	$10.00	$67.00
Farm Adventure Swagbucks	$3.00	$3.20
Golf Rivals Swagbucks	$100.00	$134.00
Disney Solitaire Freecash	$53.30	$135.46
Branded Guiding Blind	$20.00	$40.00
MGM Sports Branded	$10.00	$58.14
Sierra Club Branded	$20.00	$40.00
Covenant House Branded	$20.00	$40.00
Sofi Plus Branded	$10.00	$20.00
Smile Train Branded	$20.00	$40.00
Freecash Big Farm	$5.26	$9.88
Freecash Pocket Champions	$12 (used $2.09 in points)	$16.18
Freecash Puzzles and Chaos	$244.95 ($13.78 in points)	$400.66
Rise of Kingdoms Swagbucks	$159.66 ($7.50 in points)	$138.30
Freecash Puzzles and Survival	$348.02 ($5 in giftcard)	$537.04
Freecash Raid Shadow Legends	$86.69	$183.54 (still playing plus tickets)
Total:	$1,122.88 ($28.37 was gift cards/survey points)	$1,863.40

That spending also generated $33 in points on the Robinhood Gold card, which puts the gaming side hustle at 65.95% profit. $1000 of that was spent on games through Google Play, producing 1200 points at my Gold status. That means $12 worth of gift cards from the spending; so, if we put the credit card points together that is $45 in bonuses, which technically brings us to 72.88% profit.

Wow — monthly dividends dropped below $500, mainly because USOY paid less as oil prices declined. This is part of why I’m reinvesting back into dividends and splitting payouts. My Robinhood banking interest dropped by $20 because I used so much cash for the Ford covered calls. Generating over $2,000 in bonus income this month is amazing. How did you guys do this month? Let me know in the comments!

~~Miniwing~~
Parent, Investor, Stoic