Welcome to weeks 25 and 26 of our Social Security experiment! It is the heat of summer, so we are trying to stay cool, most of all. We ended July in the positive!
Birthday celebrations
My Dad turned 73! This is a big milestone because two years ago he had a QUADRUPLE bypass heart surgery. That was intense. Happy birthday Dad!
We celebrated one of my best friends’ birthdays and my friend bought dinner! Love these girls 🥰
Deals I got
It has been a big deals month, and to be honest, I think I went a little too crazy on the shopping. But I got some things I needed, including a freebie! And some pretty things I did not need, but were really fun to score a deal on.
I got the cutest little things from Hobby Lobby! Two yard decorations and a set of kitchen towels were just $11.73. Everything spring was 75% off!
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I got the cutest clearance clothes from ModCloth during their semi-annual sale. I need to shop there more! (But only if it’s in the budget. 😜)
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I’ve honestly never had this happen, but our meal was so bad at Chick-fil-A this week I had to send in a complaint. We immediately got rewards for two free sandwiches. WIN!
This was random, but I was entered into a sweepstakes for making a purchase using PayPal a few months back I had no idea about. So we got $23.87 back for that!
Finally, I got a super deal on a bikini bottom at Target for $5.40. I already have a top that matches!
Side hustle hiccups
Now the side hustles. Phew. I had a couple of hiccups with those.
I tried driving for Roadie this week. The first route was fine, and I figured everything out.
But, the second was a nightmare.
I arrived to the warehouse. I thought, the closer I am to the warehouse, the more likely it is to pick up a route. With Veho, you can pick up a route without being approved every night at about 9pm, so long as there are routes available. You can also pick which area you want to be in, and you’ll know about how much you’ll make.
With Roadie, you have to be approved first before knowing if you’ll be able to take a route. So I tried, but I kept getting denied.
I showed the warehouse staff, and they just said I had to be approved first.
The messages said I needed to move further away from the warehouse. So I drove down the street. Not far enough. (Bear in mind, I had to wait for a denial each time I requested a route, so that took a minute.)
Driving down the street was not far enough, so I went to a nearby shopping center. Request. Wait. Denied.
I drove even FURTHER down the road to a DIFFERENT shopping center. Request. Wait. Denied.
“Sheesh!” I thought. I’m going to go back to the warehouse and see if I can ask a driver what is going on.
I found someone, and she said the company had had problems in the past with drivers lining up in the parking lot waiting for routes, so they have to make sure people were several miles away, otherwise they would automatically get denied.
OH! No one told me. 😅😅😅 I thanked her and drove FURTHER away and tried to get approved for a route. I was denied, but it took awhile, so I finally was far enough away to get a chance at a route versus an automatic denial.
I decided to go back home and get something to eat. At this point it had been a couple of hours since I had started the process and I was getting frustrated.
When I went out to try again, I decided to wait at a park to see if I’d get approved for a route. This was my view. It was a beautiful day!
I thought to myself, I’ll sit here on the grass, get some sunshine and grounding in, and see if I get approved.
I requested another route. Waited about 15-20 minutes. Denied. Someone else was approved for that one.
Tried again. Waited 15-20 minutes. Denied.
Tried one last time. One of the same routes I had requested before was available. I thought, I cannot wait around here all day for this route. It was about 2pm by this point, and I didn’t want to drive home too close to dark. (I was requesting longer routes since I had done a shorter route the day prior.)
Denied. I was absolutely done. I think I should have been done after the first too-close debacle but I really wanted to see if it would work.
Then, to add insult to injury, as I’m driving home I start to get notifications saying, “The route you requested is available again! Offer now.” The audacity! I have been waiting here for two hours for you to approve a route for me, and NOW you want me to offer for this route. No. Thank. You!
In total, that was about four hours of complete frustration and lost time. I do not think I’ll drive for Roadie ever again. 😅😅😅
I have really enjoyed driving for Veho, but it has not been without its share of hiccups.
This week, I saw a route in the app for arrival at 4pm. “That’s unusual,” I thought, because most routes are in the morning, and the warehouse tends to close up shop about 2pm. But what do I know!? I haven’t been driving for them very long, and maybe sometimes they do later shifts.
I arrive to the warehouse at the scheduled time. No one is there, except for a few drivers who tried to sign up for a route like me.
Thankfully, when I knocked on the door a warehouse employee was there and let me in. I showed him my route, and he showed me there were no routes on his computer:
When I let the support staff in the app know, they let me know it was likely an error and I could fill out a reimbursement request form. Veho’s support while you are on your drive is really great and very responsive!
(Edited later to add: It took a couple of weeks, but the reimbursement came through!)
Credit card rewards
I don’t think I’ve mentioned this very much in our experiment, but credit card rewards have added a significant cushion to our budget. It’s not huge, but it’s something. We earn rewards by using our credit cards as a payment system, and we pay them off each week.
This month, we earned $133.42 through three different cards, including the below Citi card! That was enough to cover my Dad’s birthday dinner, so that was pretty sweet. 😍
July month-end
July was a really fun month. We kicked it off with an impromptu 4th of July mountain trip, we went to free concerts, enjoyed the sunshine, spent time with friends, and I worked the side hustles. We ended the month with $56.57 in the positive.
Hope you had a great July, and hope you have a great week!!! 🌻
ALT MONEY CHOICES 