Its amazing how we move from one year to the next. The news since Obama's first term has been coming fast and furious as we continue the "he said, she said" nonsense that has become normal in American political discourse.
I recommend that you pick up the book (or audio book) Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. This book will explain what the term "Disaster Capitalism" means. I also highly suggest you watch Chris Martenson's "Crash Course" video that is available legally from various sources from torrent to You Tube.
*I have linked to the condensed version above
Both of those pieces of information will clear away any fog left to explain why we are in the situation we're in.
From now on I will view any planning like businesses do. Currently we are in the 2nd quarter of 2013 which started January 1st. Meaning the 1st quarter of 2013 started Oct 1st 2012 and ended December 31st 2012.
You'll notice that 1st quarter earnings contain Black Friday/Cyber Monday and Christmas earnings by retailers and other companies. So I will say that I had a income "glitch" from Oct 1st till just after the first of the year. For some reason my GA was cut off starting with the final payment Sept 3rd. I was never told it would be cut. So when I didn't get a check (electronically) Oct 3rd, I was concerned. When I didn't get a check Nov 3rd, panic mode started and I contacted DPSS (Los Angeles Dept of Social Services) and asked what was happening. It turns out my claim was stopped because of some form I didn't fill out, but I'm positive I never got. In any event, I had to re-apply. So I did that Nov 10th. I was paid for Jan, Dec and part of Nov.
I ended 2012 with the cash amount of $389. I should mention that I paid for a Sony PS3 Super Slim during Black Friday. I have wanted a PS3 for awhile and was waiting for a price drop to $199. This happen around holiday time in 2011, but this time I figured no price drop will happen until the announcement of PS4. So I went ahead and pulled the trigger. I also tried to upgrade my current laptop with an SSD. That failed as I bricked the laptop. After returning the SSD and spending almost a month trying to un-brick my laptop, I decided to purchase another one. I will eventually fix that one, plus the other one I have from my father's estate, maybe when I return from my trip.
By the end of 2nd quarter I should have at least $1700. That's if I do nothing else but what I have been doing. If you didn't know I have been working on a podcast version of this blog since the end of summer 2012. Well that podcast is about to start. Stay tuned for some changes to the blog's layout to make it easy to download the podcast, read show notes and visit the links provided to what I am talking about.
To make my trip work and give myself maximum possibilities I need at least $2,000. If you noticed $1,700 is not $2,000. I would be $300 short or about a month's worth of donations. So the second part of my plan in 2013 is to launch my Sell It All campaign. I had previously thought about this but had put it to work. As a debt reduction tactic its been used by many followers of the blog Man Vs Debt. So I will be using Ebay, Craigslist and Amazon Marketplace to sell items I no longer need or frankly have been saving up to this point. I think its more important to get my media empire off the ground that to keep various anime related items and other stuff I have laying around here. My goal is to earn $1,000. I may earn more, but that's the target.
Before I started donating plasma as regular income stream, I had sold a few things on Ebay totaling about $105. So I know with the rest of the stuff I got, I can make at least $500, but I though why stop there? $1,000 seems like a reasonable target.
Next blog post, I will show you my earnings from donating Plasma in 2012, which is my first full year of donations. I will also show you how to link all this to Mint to keep track of all your spending.
