Another Whirlwind Month. I don’t feel like my progress has been extra great. It honestly feels like some backsliding with the car repairs, mower repairs, and buying the shed, though I did feel a little better last week when I checked my YTD on all accounts on Empower:

Now to be fair, this includes $8,000 in 401k contributions, $5,000 in 401k loan repayments, and roughly $10,000 in IRA 2025 contributions, but still probably $50,000-$60,000 in growth in 5 months after accounting for all the taxable account contributions. That’s the power of compounding.

May	Vanguard	Robinhood M	Robinhood W
Balance 1 May	$14,443.92	$7,875.02	$3,070.90
Money Added	$0.00	$4,430.99	$1,040
Dividends May	$226.65	$294.51	Included to left.
Money Removed	$0.00	– $1,289	$0.00
Balance 1 June	$14,375.78	$11,326.92	$4,307.34

I discussed earlier this month about starting to take the dividends to pay off debt now that I’ve gotten really close to $500 a month. I also want to note that $4,000 of that money added was a temporary borrow from the shed money. It was used to do some covered calls that I will discuss below. I’m mainly waiting for a $6 or higher Snapchat strike to trigger to pull the remaining $3,000 back to savings.

Per my post a few months ago regarding my wife’s Robinhood Gold account it is now exactly where I want it to be from a share perspective. $1,000 of interest free margin (MAIN) with $1,000 of O, MAIN, and BLOX. On paper these should produce roughly $45 a month in dividends. I can’t put these dividends to work against debt like the rest because I’d have to have over $1,000 in cash to get past the margin usage and pull out the money. That means these funds are all on DRIP, unlike everything else in the 15 fund plan. In theory this should produce about 2 more shares of MAIN in the next 12 months, less than 1 whole share of O, and 7 shares of BLOX.

Income this month was pathetic. I set my sights on some more game grinding and I should have hit $100 in payout, but two of my milestones didn’t trigger and Freecash support was less than helpful.

Source	Income	Note
Robinhood Credit Card	$200	Rewards Points
Chase Credit Card	$100	Rewards Points
Added from Paychecks	$1,170.99	Mainly to Covered Call usage.
Covered Calls	$706.84	Before taxes.
Total	$2,177.83

Simply $300 in bonus income this month. I either need to strive toward more churning again, or refocus on surveys and other items.

Now, that being said, I did make over $700 in covered calls this month. I have to also caveat that while learning these covered calls I attempted to protect a position by rolling it and that cost me a loss of $94. So I would have been over $800 doing covered calls this month otherwise. I have set aside 30% in my HYSA for taxes, but this post is always about the income. Total income not from paychecks or dividends: $1,006.84.

2026 Bonus Income Totals

I’m going to clean this up from normal, see April for month by month breakdown.

Source	May	2026 Total
Swagbucks	$0.00	$1,000
Chase Bank	$100.00	$1,300
USAA Bank	$0.00	$200
Branded Surveys	$0.00	$200
Chime Referrals	$0.00	$300
SoFi Bonuses	$0.00	$305
FreeCash	$0.00	$187
Robinhood Gold Card	$200.00	$300
Covered Calls	$706.84	$965.74
Dividends	$521.16	$2,240.58
Total	$1,528.00	$6,998.32

Just 5 weeks of testing/learning Covered Calls and it’s made up 14% of my bonus income this year. Roughly 20% if you don’t count the dividends. Twenty Percent of months worth of grinding, churning, flipping, just from selling options on shares I already own. I’m still early in this journey, but man I wish I had a larger portfolio to work with on the covered calls.

If I can keep this pace up and put all this extra income to debt payoffs, hopefully I can hockey stick my brokerage quickly.

~~Miniwing~~
Investor, Stoic, Parent