Pocket ‘Change’ Portfolio: The Plan For Cash Towards Daily Spending

As a part of my current asset portfolio building, I wanted to find ways to get constant spending money in my pocket. This had to do with the fact that using money from my occupation for both paying bills and spending for daily needs (such as groceries) was becoming a burden. To only use money from my 9 to 5 job when there are other available options doesn’t make sense (to me). So I began to look for the simplest way to gather some ‘change’ to make a ‘change’ in my pocket.

My new approach on how I look to balance money and time in my life has guided me to add a pocket change portfolio along with a passive money portfolio. This differs with my passive income portfolio. The goal for that portfolio is to benefit the building of my financial future and to have a greater supply of time. My pocket change portfolio on the other-hand is for helping to fund my usual spending needs in an easier way (this excludes emergency spending such as car repairs).

Through my research, I’ve surprisingly come across money apps that can help with this. Most apps pay out through surveys, rebates, etc. while others I found give gift cards. The common ground that I found with most of them was that earning money didn’t have to interfere with your routine. This was another piece to the puzzle I was looking for, convenience. Knowing about these apps now almost makes me feel silly about not knowing about them before.

In order for an app to make my pocket portfolio, it must fit certain qualifications within my routine without interference. These are the traits that I look for when selecting the apps for my portfolio:

• ease of use
• convenience
• free (lol)
• decent payout
• PayPal friendly
• ease of tasks (if tasks are required)
• reasonable estimated time of completion of tasks

Here are the apps that I’m currently using for my pocket money portfolio: Easy Shift, Field Agent, Ibotta, Checkout 51, Spare 5, and On the Go Surveys

I started this portfolio in the second week of November and here are my stats thus far as of December 31, 2016 (included will be the reason(s) I may have dropped an app from the portfolio):

1. Ibotta — a grocery rebate app. I started in April 2015 but stopped and didn’t start back again until November 12. As of December 31, I have $23.50. I still plan on keeping this app in the portfolio because of its great payouts. Another feature is the bonus offers that you can possibly get within each month. These bonuses come in the form of payouts (usually ranging from $2 — $5) and you can receive them from certain products you buy or the number of rebates you get in that month.
2. Easy Shift — a mini job app. I started on November 25 and as of December 31, I have $5.30. I will discontinue use of this app. There were too many questions for the tasks provided. This turned something simple into a task that seemed to take forever. Also, some of the things they wanted you to do within the task would make you look awkward.
3. Checkout 51 — grocery app. I started on December 10 and as of December 31, I have $0.75. It works similarly to Ibotta in that you go through the items offered on the app and after you purchase you scan the product and the receipt. I use this app only to supplement Ibotta though. If there is a product that I buy and it isn’t listed on Ibotta, then I’ll have Checkout 51 as my backup.
4. Spare 5 — mobile mini-task app. I started on November 10 and as of December 31, I have $1.49. This app sends tasks for you to complete on your smartphone and act as games that you can do on your spare time. Tasks tend to pay between $0.01 — $0.30 (usually around $.0.05). I was able to reach $1.49 within about six weeks and was using it modestly.
5. Field Agent — mini-job app. I started on December 11 and as of December 31, I have $62.10. This app is in the same category as Easy Shift, but this app is much easier to deal with in terms of jobs that you do. The jobs that they ask you to do are relatively easy and quick. On top of that, they pay pretty good considering the little work you are asked to do. On average they offer about $3.00 per job.
6. On the Go Surveys — paid survey app. I started on November 10 and as of December 31, I have $3.80. This is a survey app that pays anywhere between $0.10 — $0.50 a survey. Similar to Spare 5 it’s just something useful to do whenever wasting time. If you’re willing to play on your phone just to kill time, why not get paid for it even if it’s just $0.10.

From November 10 (not counting the April date with Ibotta) to December 31 the total that I have in my pocket change portfolio is = $96.94

I’d consider that impressive for such a short amount of time. Also taking into consideration that I didn’t start all of these apps on November 10 and that these apps weren’t in continuous use by me week to week (On the Go and Spare 5 for example, would go a week or two without use sometimes). Most importantly, this was work that on average took five minutes and didn’t interfere with my daily routine.

There is another app that I use but it’s strictly for the use of getting a gift card of my choice. The app that I’m referring to is called Shopkick. Even though the goal is for a gift card and not cash, I can see the potential benefit.

With Shopkick, I want to get a $10 Starbucks gift card for the use of buying my lunches while at work. I currently have money left on a previous Starbucks gift card I received so I’ll just transfer the previous amount on to the new card I’ll get. This will help to keep me from using any money from my pocket to spending for lunch. Also, this will keep me from having to buy anything from the grocery store that I would bring from home to have for my lunch. Currently, I have 1,640 points (as of December 31) towards the goal of 2,500 points for the $10 gift card.

Quick notes:

• Ibotta & Field Agent are my two biggest earners and i will keep
• Easy Shift I’m ditching because of difficulty and awkwardness when performing jobs
• I will cash out every four months (quarterly) into my PayPal account
• I started using Shopkick November 12 and use it almost every weekend.
• the Field Agent app I began using consistently from the second to last week in November
• Checkout 51 is used sparingly

If you know of any apps that I missed that I should consider adding to my pocket portfolio please leave a comment letting me know. Thanks.

Originally published at accordingtoplan.org on January 25, 2017.