Free Game #2

So it's awesome when you order a  game with Prime shipping and it shows up the next day!

Click to ZOOM

I came home from a day long trek with my uncle trying to break in his new Ranger 800, to find this package sitting on my doorstep. I was headed out the door to my in-law's house so I took it along with me.

We decided to test it out after Ian went to bed, and even though we spent 1 hour trying to read the rules and get through the first phase of the game, we had a blast! It was hilarious to see my in-laws trying to figure out how to built a spaceship from a bunch of random junk. There were also some seriously tense moments when we were waiting to see how much damage our ship was about to take from a meteor shower.

Needless to say I highly recommend Galaxy Trucker to anybody who is looking for a hilariously fun game. After the first round that took almost an hour, we flew through the second and third round in less that 20 minutes each.

Had I stayed up at the in-law's house it would have gotten a lot more play time, it really was a great time, made all the better because it cost me nothing!

**Interested in earning money for games or whatever? Check out Clover and  Mechanical Turk. So far I've averaged 1 game a week!

Dang Amazon...

This week I have some good news as well as bad news.

I was able to get over my goal with Clover Thanks to: Jason Frehner; Michael Otte & Kirk Matthews!

Click to ZOOM

 That actually put me over where I wanted to be! So I excitedly logged onto Amazon last night and saw that Cosmic Encounter showed : "Only 2 left in stock - Hurry and order"

Long story short, I got all the way through checkout and suddenly was greeted with: "This Item became unavailable after you added it to your cart!" What kind of irks me about it is that if I do a search for Cosmic Encounter It shows up with: 2 left in stock- Order soon.

After growing frustration I saw that  King of Tokyo was available again. (When I was looking last week I saw that it was out of stock everywhere.) So I decided I would give it a try. Of course when I got through checkout ans saw that shipping time was 18-26 days, I was disgusted and decided to re-evaluate my purchase.

That being the case I am excited with my final decision: Galaxy Trucker. It's a game I've wanted to get now for a while but it tends to slide from the top spot just because I get swept up in something else. It really does seem like a great game though that will fit in perfectly with my regular group. Best part is, it was eligible for Prime shipping so I should have it on Friday!

I sincerely hope that Cosmic Encounter isn't out of print as that usually inflates the price drastically!

Anyway I guess I'll have to hit MTurk harder this week so I'll be ready for a game next week as well!.

Also I'd like to give a Shout-out to Mursz. who posted a good guide to using App-Trailer's to make money in your free time. Go check it out!

Elder Sign is pretty good!

So I decided to break out Elder Sign for it inaugural game today! It was a lazy Sunday after two great football games, and since my wife and child are out of town for the weekend, I called up my sister and my cousin and we decided to take on likes of Cthulhu! I can understand where it feels lacking for more hardcore gamers, but I think it scratches the itch that games like Pandemic or Forbidden Island are lacking in depth.

It was a lot of fun and very presentable to non gamers. I enjoyed it, and I enjoy some of the 6-8 hours games out there but rarely get the chance to play them anymore. It was all the more enjoyable because it didn't cost me anything out of pocket!

I am however, excited for Cosmic Encounter this week as I have never played but desired it for a long time. As It stands I have enough between my MTurk Balance and my Clover referrals to purchase it outright, but I  would like to see if I can get enough referrals by Wednesday to purchase it exclusively from my Clover invites.

Currently my Clover balance is $41, so I  hope I can pull it off.


I want to thank the following for using my invites and hope they are earning as well as I have been:

Lindy Jones; Joshua Tanase; Brad McHargue; Jeremy Mayeres; Andrew DeVries; Patrick Liu & Michael

So the breakdown so far is: $6 for signing up and $35 from my invites! Another 4 invites and I'll be set! So if you are looking to help out and score some free cash yourself, Please click here and invite yourself!

Thanks again for everybody's interest and I 'll work on some new guides this next week!

Update: Thanks to Ricky Sosa for putting me up to $46 just a few minutes ago! 3 left by Wednesday, hope i can make it!

Update 2: Thanks to Ian Ferguson for accepting an invite earlier today! (2 more to go by Wednesday)

Next week's goal: Buy a board game from my Clover referrals.

So I have to admit that I have been slacking on Mechanical Turk this week. I have only been visiting Hit's worth turking for and getting a few easy hits a day. I have kind of been swept up in this Clover phenomenon and have been trying to push to see how fast I can make my $85.

So Far I have made $26 ($6 from signing up and $20 from 4 referrals!) I have my sister sold on it, but her current phone is Android 2.1 and it won't let her install it :(...

However, 3 of those referrals were from people reading this Blog, so I feel fairly confident that I can hit my desired budget early next week! I still have $30ish Dollars in my MTurk account that I can use to supplement my needed funding though.

I have decided that this week I am saving up to buy Cosmic Encounter I have wanted this game for a while so I figured if I can get it for free, why not give it a shot? So I need $60. I'm almost there but it won't hurt if anyone want's to sign up for Clover and score me another $5. (with $6 for yourself!)

I do want to take a minute and that everybody that is viewing this Blog! It's gotten way bigger so much faster than I ever could have expected. Looking at my Stats I can wholeheartedly say that Reddit is the biggest community to thank.

I would like to spread a little bit of love back to my favorite Sub Reddit's and so here are some links I ask that everybody check out to meet some great people and learn about what interests you!

/r/boargames If you have any interest in Board Games whatsoever, this is basically the say-all-end-all of Board Game communities. Much easier that BGG and I have loved every suggestion I've gotten so far!

/r/Frugal This blog really came about because my wife and I decided it's past time to stay on top of our finances. I cannot explain how much just the simple suggestions and new ideas this group offers has already impacted my families financial stability.

/r/beermoney  Basically the Sub Reddit that feeds this blog. Please check it out if you would like to see what others are trying to do to earn money. Basically all I try to do is take all of the great info from this group and compile it into a "dummies guide."

Thanks everybody for still coming to visit! I'll keep everybody posted as I move closer to next weeks goal!

Clover = Ridiculously Easy Money

So Attempt #2 that I happened upon this week is a new App for the I-phone/Android Phones called Clover.

What it is: Clover is a service designed so that people with smart phones can send money back and forth. To explain it very simply: watch this video..


Why it's Awesome: To promote their service they will give you $6 just for signing up. (Think viral marketing) The person who invited you get's $5. If you opt to put in a credit card (which will not be charged anything!) then you become a "gold member" and are awarded 17 invites. You get $5 for everyone that signs up. They also get $5 for signing up and their own invites. If you are leery of putting in a Credit/Debit Card, you can wait around for a Green Membership to become available and then you are awarded 2 invites worth $5 each. Green Memberships can take up to a week to go through whereas you can sign up for a Gold any time you get sick of waiting.

So Basically in the 3 minutes it took me to sign myself up and send it to my wife and have her sign up, I made $11. You can either cash out $5 as an amazon Gift Card (Which is a Code they email you that you use when you checkout on Amazon.com)  Or leave the money in the Clover App and Later transfer it to a bank account or whatever. Within 5 minutes of signing up I had 2 emails with $5 "Gift Codes" I then took a minute and sent out some text to the people I thought would sign up and sure enough I got a bite. When I have a chance to talk to some people tomorrow and show them how it works, I will have made about $30 for 10 minutes worth of work.

Anyway it really is awesome, sign up make your money , cash out, and then you can cancel/uninstall if you want too. Seems like it might be a nice way to lend money between friends though, because it keeps a record of your transactions. (I forgot I loaned $10 to Mark...Dude! Where is my money?!) Any way have a look and get in while the getting is hot. If you get all 17 people to sign up you just made: $85! plus the six you got for signing up. And it can happen in a day.

If you know people with smart phones that are willing to spend a few minutes and make some money, this is a great way to get it done.

For Anyone wanting to sign up now, scan this code on your phone and Viola! you just made $6!

 Alternatively you cant just Click HERE to have an invite sent to your phone. Thanks, and enjoy your Money!

Scan it in on your phone, make money, retire...

 Amazon Gift Codes take less than 5 minutes to receive. If, however,  you want to transfer it to a bank account then people are claiming it can take up to a week, but so far no issues!

EDIT: 10 minutes after posting this I had another person sign up from this post!
Thanks : Joshua Tanase! & now Brad McHargue & Jeremy Mayeres!

Just Rewards!

Success! So when I went down to the mailbox today this is what I was greeted with. Ten Days worth of MTurk may have actually been worth it! Hope this motivates some people to have a go at it.

Now I just have to find people to play with me! :(

MTurk How To is finished

OK so I just Posted the second Part to my MTurk guide. So if you're new and want to see how to get started check out the guides below:

Part 1: MTurk How to

Part 2: Getting Paid

Good Luck everybody and Happy Turking!

That went better than expected...

So I'm now just over a week into Turking and I made my first purchase this morning, Thanks to Amazon Prime my game should show up on Friday. I've decided I'm going to limit myself to one game a week. This week it was Elder Sign . basically a co-op game for 1-8 player's which is essentially a stripped down version of another game called Arkham Horror. Since I don't usually have 3-6 hours to play a board game I decided to go with the light version of it.

I also decided that since my balance is still quite high I'm going to stick $50 into our savings account which leaves me with just over $20 in my Amazon Balance. Not bad if I say so myself! Since my approval came through on most of my balances here was the updated amounts before I started spending money:

Thus far, Mechanical Turk is a great way to hunker down and buy some of the things you might not otherwise. Or even just add to your monthly income. I figure I am going to try and stick with making $5-$6 a day for the next little while and just see how things end up.

Check back as I'll be trying some different things this week, and I'll keep everyone updated on what is available out there!

ALSO: If you have any questions or are interested, please make sure and ask them via the comments. I'll help in anyway I can, It's been good for me so far, and I don't see why it can't be as good for other people..

First Attempt - Mechanical Turk

So the first thing I decided to try was Amazon's Mechanical Turk.

What exactly is a mechanical turk you ask? Basically amazon has setup a service where people can log in and complete mundane tasks that computers and A.I. can't quite accomplish yet. There are Companies/Universities/Etc. that have a bunch of busy work they need done, so they outsource it to whomever wants to do it. usually for pennies on the dollar.

Be warned that this method does require actual work. You choose a task (called a HIT) and if you complete it you will get paid. There are some scammer's on there so you should probably be somewhat careful as to which HIT's you accept. However in my experience they are few and far between.

HIT's range from anywhere from $0.01 and I have seen some as high as $18. Now you do have to be qualified for the high paying HIT's and most of those require that you be very good at writing. If you are, and are willing to churn out articles for Travel blogs or any other type of article, then I guess you could actually make a lot of money. While my writing isn't that great I figured I'd start small and go from there.

The website that is extremely helpful here is another blog called:  HIT's worth turking for. Basically, Justin tries to go on every day and find some easy hits that pay between $0.50 and $1 and link to them on his site.  His efforts are appreciated and he has quite a following. Because of that some of those HIT's don't last very long, so if you're interested it pays to check his site a couple of times a day.

-Personal Experience-

So I started Turking on 1/08/2012 and so far I have been very pleased. I found a guy that has a bunch of Spanish to English translations things that he needs done. They only pay $0.15 per hit and I average about a minute and a half per hit. I'm afraid I've gotten kind of addicted. If you figure it out hourly it's not even minimum wage, but for time i would have wasted at night watching TV or browsing the web, I have no qualms about it.

I found out that you have to be active for 10 days before they will pay out. (I don't think it's consecutively, just ten total day, meaning you don't have to be on straight for 10 days...) You can either link your bank account with your Amazon payments account, or just opt for an Amazon gift card. I linked my account and so I can just transfer the money over if I want to. Even though most of my purchases will be on Amazon, it will be nice to just have the option to put money into my account if I'd rather.

Have a look at my first 9 days, and tell me what you think:

Click the picture for a larger version.

So far so good. I don't think I can keep up with the 100 HIT's a day though. I think it would burn me out. If I can get on and spend half and hour to make $5 a day, I think it's totally worth it. Let me know if you have any questions, and I will try and respond.

Until Then, Happy Turking!

New year, new stuff

Welcome, welcome everybody so with this new year my wife and I finally decided to get our finances in order. We've set ourselves up a budget and are doing our best to stick to it. One service that we've found that has made our lives easier is the website Mint.com It's run by Intuit (The guys behind Quicken/Quickbooks.) It's not perfect, but it is free, and secure. We can check our account balances and budget balance any time on our smartphones. It really is worth checking out. It did struggle with adding out Mountain America account right off the bat, but after an email to the support guys, they seem to have it mostly figured out.

While I was browsing REDDIT one day i was turned on to the /r/beermoney subreddit (basically it's a forum where people are trying to make extra money online.) They have a few strong suggestions as to what sites are the best and what is the best way to make it happen. So I figured I will give it a go, and decided I would chronicle my experiences on this blog, for anybody that might be interested. 

I have been big into Board Games this past year and have been trying to figure out how I can continue to grow my collection without affecting our budget. So far I have been quite impressed but we will see how well it continues.