Make an Extra $100/Day with These Work-From-Home Side Hustles

Mindy:
Hello everybody and welcome to the BiggerPockets Money Podcast where we interview Jackie Mitchell and talk about all the different ways she has managed to make an extra $100 per day and why she’s doing it. Hello, hello, hello. My name is Mindy Jensen, and with me as always is my $100 co-host, Scott Trench.

Scott:
Thanks, Mindy. Great to be here and great to learn from somebody who’s stacking Benjamin’s.

Mindy:
She is stacking Benjamin’s every single day. Scott and I are here to make financial independence less scary. Less just for somebody else. To introduce you to every money story because we truly believe that financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you are starting.

Scott:
That’s right. Whether you want to retire early and travel the world, go on to make big time investments in assets like real estate, start your own business or simply find creative ways to make an extra $100 a day. We’ll help you reach your financial goals and get money out of the way, so you can launch yourself towards those dreams.

Mindy:
Today’s money moment is, do a clothing swap. Are you sick of your clothes but you don’t want to pay for new ones? Get several friends together, bring all of your clothes that you don’t wear anymore and swap them. Anything left over can be donated to your local Arc or goodwill.
Do you have a money tip for us? Email [email protected].
Jackie Mitchell is a 25-year-old rising TikTok star based in Columbus, Ohio. She’s documenting a 100-day challenge where she works all kinds of side jobs to make an extra $100 a day. Jackie, welcome to the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. I am so excited to talk to you about this challenge.

Jackie:
Thank you so much for having me. I’m super excited to be on and talk with you guys.

Mindy:
Jackie, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Jackie:
I can. So I am from Columbus, Ohio, like you said. Not originally, but I live there now with my husband. I’m 25. I work at a church full-time. My husband’s an audio engineer, and we live in an apartment with our very orange cat, Obie, who likes to cause a lot of trouble. And, I’ve just been documenting my experience on what it’s like to earn a little bit of extra money on the side if it’s realistic.

Mindy:
And can you tell us a little bit about your childhood with regards to money?

Jackie:
Absolutely. I grew up in Pittsburgh with both of my parents and my younger brother, and my parents were really good about teaching us how to budget, how to be financially literate, super thankful and blessed for that. My parents always instilled in us the importance of saving what we do have and finding ways to save, finding ways to spend less money, so was always central to my life. I used to go thrifting with my mom all the time, even before thrifting was a cool thing that the kids did and I loved it and I still do it to this day. So it’s always been ingrained in me, definitely from a young age. And I also think I’ve always had a knack for making extra money, right? So I was always the kid who was organizing lemonade stands, trying to think of summer business ideas.
I remember one time we had this huge crab apple tree in our backyard. My dad wanted all of the crab apple droppings picked up, so he told me and my friend, “Hey, I’ll pay you a cent, just a penny per crab apple.” And he stopped counting after 4,000 and we ended up making $40, which I think is a lot more than he expected, but when you get $20 as a kid, that might as well be 200K. So I’ve always had that knack for finding extra ways to make money.

Scott:
Awesome. And is that what prompted this 100-day challenge or what brought this about?

Jackie:
So a little bit behind the 100-day challenge for me personally is just that we are saving up to buy a house. Columbus isn’t really a high cost of living area, but with how things are going, it’s going to get there in the next few years. It’s a really hot job market right now. Intel’s been building this huge facility that’s been driving thousands of jobs. So the real estate market’s really hot. I’m seeing stuff fly off the market and for me as a potential first time home buyer, that’s really scary and I love what I do for my day job. I absolutely love it, but it’s definitely more of a passion project than it is a high earning job. So I wanted to find some ways to utilize my free time and make some extra money and save up for a down payment.

Scott:
Awesome. Is there a reason why it was 100 days? You wanted $10,000 specifically?

Jackie:
$10,000 would help, specifically. I think that’s what would close the gap on my goal and it also just felt like a nice round number. You know what I mean? When you want to do a challenge, it sounds a little bit wordier when you get into, for 72 days I want to make $18 and 70 cents. You know what I mean? Whatever it is. So I just wanted a nice round number and so that’s part of the reason I came up with 100 and 100.

Scott:
Awesome. So let’s dive into it. What did you start with and let’s hear about some of the ways you’ve made these extra $100 and the creative ones, the hardest ones, the easiest ones, all the good stuff.

Jackie:
I think so far I’ve really run the gambit and there’s lots more to discover. When I started, a lot of the ones I was doing were ones that I had already utilized in college. So this is something that I had been done loosely doing, just to earn some extra cash while I was in college to save up for a trip, stuff like that. Things like Swagbucks, which is a paid survey site and they do mobile game offers. They’ve got some shopping offers, so I’d been utilizing them for a while. Prolific is another site that I used a lot already before this challenge, which would be a site that either researchers or consumer studies run short little surveys, so maybe they’re like five, 10 minutes long. You get paid per hour for those. So I’ve been using that. Some other online work.
Data Annotation is another website that I’ll use, quite often, actually now that I’ve gotten into it. And then outside of that, I’ve cooked for friends, I’ve done meal prepping for friends, I’ve given piano lessons, I’ve played events for money. I have sold stuff on Facebook Marketplace. My coworker gave me a giant bin of Beanie Babies that I’m selling on Facebook Marketplace right now. So I’ve really run the gambit. The thing that’s up next for me that I would love to try, though, is Instacart Shopping, but I’m on the wait list. I love to grocery shop and they won’t let me in, so I’m counting down the days.

Mindy:
Hey Instacart, if you’re listening to this, let Jackie into your program. Okay. So how many hours do you think you’re averaging per side hustle or per day when you’re trying to get to your $100?

Jackie:
So this would just vary on what’s available per day, but I would say typically three hours maybe? Maybe four on a hard day. If you can get into something like a focus group, which is less consistent, right? Focus group studies aren’t going to happen often, but when they do, that’s like $50 to $200 just for one hour study, right? But I would say generally speaking on a day-to-day basis, I’m putting in at about three hours of work, four hours of work.

Mindy:
Okay. So if you make $200 today, do you skip tomorrow or do you still jump on tomorrow?

Jackie:
Sometimes, but I’m trying to be good about that. Partially because my audience isn’t looking for me to take breaks, although I am definitely, but I also want to be sensitive to, if I want to work, I better do it now because if I wake up the next day and I have any inkling to work any extra hours, that’s much better than waiting for the day that I’m sick and I don’t want to. But I used my paid extra day off a long time ago, so every once in a while, I’ll call it short, I always say any progress is progress. So if I’ve hit $95 for the day, but I’m about to fall asleep, I’m so tired, that’s good enough. And there’s a lot of days that I make like $112, so it all evens out. Right now I think I’m about three days ahead of my goal.

Mindy:
Oh, well that’s awesome.

Scott:
Fantastic. And so what is … the easiest way you said is going to be a focus group, so far? When you find those, you pounce on those, that’s a great opportunity. What’s been the hardest?

Jackie:
A couple hard ones are just things that are grueling. Some prolific studies, researchers are looking to do a psychological study or a study on how people react in social situations. And sometimes those are particularly confusing on purpose. So I’d say sometimes that gets hard because you don’t know what the purpose of the study is or they’re asking you to do really menial tasks that are grueling, but you just never know what you’re going to get into when you sign up for a study there. And then I would also say some of the stuff I do on Data Annotation is just really mind-numbing stuff. It’s just plug and chug typing, a lot of that. So those are the two that I would say take the most work for the pay, but they’re also the two of the most consistent ones, which I think makes sense.

Mindy:
What is Data Annotation and how does somebody qualify for that job?

Jackie:
So I get it because Data Annotation seemed to be something that wasn’t on a lot of people’s radar before this podcast. I don’t work directly for this company, so this isn’t something that I’m necessarily touting from the rooftops there, but it is, in a general sense, I can’t get into specifics too much, but what I do on their website is take replies and responses from large language models, so large AI chatbots that are used either for the general public or for a specific purpose. And I’m analyzing those responses, I’m fact checking it for things like verbosity, am I checking to make sure it’s comprehensible? How’s the readability? Then I’m editing all of those responses to make it better for the chatbot and then I’m feeding it back to the chatbot. Some of those are more hyper-specific and they’ve got a lot more specific requirements for each turn. But in a general sense, that’s what I do on that website.

Mindy:
Okay. That is super interesting.

Jackie:
Yes. I know.

Mindy:
You said there are some things that are specific. So BiggerPockets is a real estate investing website. Scott and I both work there. We have a lot of high level real estate investing knowledge. It’s something you can learn, but it’s more like lifelong knowledge. Are there opportunities that are hyper-focused on lifelong knowledge where somebody would be more qualified for that? I’ve got 25 years of real estate experience, so I would be more of a fit than you would for that particular job. I’m really butchering this question, but is there a way for you to do hyper-specialized things like that and then are those Data Annotation jobs paying more to me who has different skillsets?

Jackie:
I think that’s a great question. So I can speak a little bit into this, but obviously I don’t qualify for some of their hyper-specific tasks, but I can give you a general idea of what I think they’re looking for. So just as a broad statement on their website, they say they prefer people with strong writing and logical critical reasoning skills. So that’s an all across the board encompassing, when you take their assessment, that’s what they’re going to ask you. So that is just the pre-screener to see if you get in. And then you are qualifying and essentially for each project group that you’re getting. So I’m qualifying for a subset of projects to work on that has a large number of tasks. But I do get things that come across my dashboard quite a lot for things like, is your second or first language Japanese? Do you have experience coding? And those do seem to pay more than the ones that I’m getting just because that’s a smaller subset of the community that would be working on there.

Mindy:
That is so cool. I’m going to go check that out. That is, because that, I could talk all day.

Scott:
What’s the hourly pay for this?

Jackie:
It depends on the project. Same with Prolific. So a lot of these sites are going to be per either task group or per larger system of whether it’s the same model across all boards or if it’s a more specific harder task. I would say for Data Annotation, my pay range is somewhere between $20 and $30 an hour. Prolific is looking at maybe $12 to $25 an hour, something along there. And then I’ve also heard Remotasks is very similar to Data Annotation. I haven’t tried them out. I’m actually on the wait list for them, but they, I think are paying similarly for similar tasks as Data Annotation is.

Scott:
So what is your, in the next 50 days, I assume you’re going to do more experimentation with that, what are some of the areas that you’re excited to explore next, that you think might be really good dollar per hour options?

Jackie:
One of the things I’ve been super excited about that I’ve only gotten into recently and only because of this challenge is content creation. So that’s something that was only available to me because I started this challenge and gained any sort of platform or any sort of following. So stuff like UGC for brands, I’ve done a couple of brand ads, which to me the turnover rate on how much work I’m doing to edit a video, post a video versus what I’ve done before. I mean that’s really high rate of pay for the hour that I’m putting into it or whatever. So that’s been huge. Affiliate marketing, I’ve started an Amazon affiliate program, so I’ve got some links in my bio there. So I’m testing out the waters in terms of affiliate marketing and content creation. That would only be available to me because I started this challenge. So it’s kind of full circle.

Scott:
So what’s a typical day in the life like for you at this point? How many hours are you putting in at your full-time job and then in addition to that, these extracurriculars?

Jackie:
So I work from nine to four. I have a short commute, which is nice, so it doesn’t take me too long. I’d probably get out of bed like 7:30 or 8:00. I try not to do too much work if I don’t have to before my day job, just like to start my morning nice. And I’m a morning person anyways. I just want to enjoy the morning and get my day job done. I head home at 4:00 and I’m at home usually most days around 4:30. And then I definitely always turn on my heated blanket, sit in bed to do some work because if I can work from bed, I’m going to work from bed.
And then it just depends. My husband doesn’t get home until 6:00, so I usually have a window of one and a half, two hours where I’m not doing anything in particular. So that’s a nice time to knock out a couple of hours of either Prolific studies, Data Annotation, a focus group, content creation, stuff like that. And then anything I can do to get that done before 8:00 or 9:00 PM is great because it does take me about an hour to edit my videos and do the voiceovers from the previous day.

Scott:
Awesome. And if you weren’t working a full-time job and had time during the day, would there be better or more opportunities, especially in the opportunistic space?

Jackie:
I would definitely say that I would be doing a larger quantity of these jobs. So very rarely am I hitting the limit of what’s available to me. So there’s always more jobs available from most of these sites. I would say Prolific is one that dwindles on the weekends, but for the most part it looks like a lot of these sites really need workers. So I’ve yet to hit a wall where I’m like, I really can’t make $100 a day. To me, it seems like I’m running out of hours, they’re not running out of tasks.

Scott:
Awesome. And have you considered things like, hey, there’s an event going on, or something like that, and they’re looking for staff that can support that and there’s an opportunity to make way more in there? Or are you really looking for stuff by and large that you can do from home?

Jackie:
I’m looking at both. I’ve definitely done either just some random in-person tasks like shopping and cooking for people. I’ve done piano events before and I’ve also worked in the service industry. Before this, I worked a second job in the evenings at a steakhouse, so I definitely am open to that. But I do think my audience is specifically looking for things that are accessible to someone like a stay-at-Home mom. And I want to be sensitive to that because the reason that I’m getting any opportunity like this at all is because of my audience. So I do try to prioritize things that would be realistic for a working mom or a full-time caretaker.

Mindy:
Okay. So now we need to put our Finance Friday hats on and ask if you’ve considered leaving your full-time position to pursue this full time.

Jackie:
I have not at all, but my full-time job was never about the salary for me. So I think that’s why I love what I do so much and I cannot overstate that. So I think that’s part of the reason that I have so much energy to do other tasks on the side is because I want to be sensitive, too. I know a lot of people feel maybe stuck at their job or they feel drained by their day job, and I’m in a really fortunate position to not feel that way. So I really love what I do. I love my coworkers. It’s not something I’m considering at this time. I just really love what I do. But again, more of a passion project for me than a big income source.

Mindy:
I think what you’re doing is a great option for testing out other things. If you can go on dataannotation.tech and start trying out these jobs and you’re like, “Oh, you know what? I really hate this, but I’m a piano player and I never thought about playing in public and now I can because, thanks to Jackie’s TikTok videos, I was reminded that people will pay people to play piano for them, and now I can have this job that I love.” I have had jobs that I hate, and when you get up in the morning, your soul is crushed just a little bit more because you’re like, “Oh yeah, it’s Monday, I have to go to work.” So when you have a job that you love, it’s really such a non-soul crushing event. You wouldn’t consider quitting. So I totally get that answer. Totally get that.
So you document this on TikTok, like we’ve talked about. Why did you decide to do that?

Jackie:
That is the question. In terms of my day one post, I have no idea why I posted it beyond just the vague notion of needing accountability. So I thought if I post this and someone sees it, one of my friends sees it and they know I’ve posted it, I’ve got to post day two. I love to make things a competition with myself, but that can only get you so far. I do also want accountability from others, and within that first day of hundreds and thousands of likes and comments like, “Oh, I want to see what day two’s like,” I was like, I really have to actually commit to this now. So it was surreal, but I think I just posted it because I wanted to make sure I would actually stick to my goal and that’s definitely worked. I can’t stop now.

Scott:
When did you first see it resonating with other people that weren’t part of your core network?

Jackie:
I would say day one, I was really surprised because I had about a hundred followers. So really my network at that time was just some friends or some auxiliary accounts that had been following me. But up until that point, I really hadn’t had any sort of audience. So I’d posted that and my follower count jumped by several thousands, so I was like, “Wow, okay. It seems like people want to see this. That’s great.” And then I think on day nine, that video was particularly, that might’ve been the video you guys saw. That one kind of got a lot of traction and gained me a large portion of the followers that I have here today.

Mindy:
What was that video?

Jackie:
That was day nine of my challenge, and it was just a normal day. I can’t understand particularly what was so enticing about that day. I did a few different offers. I did like a swag bucks game offer. I did some data annotation. I talked about selling some Beanie Babies online, so I don’t know what was enticing about that. I don’t know if just the algorithm picked it up, but that was my bigger break into gaining a larger audience.

Scott:
What’s enticing about it is the fact that it’s so achievable and relatable, right? That’s, I think, one of the things we like to talk about here on BiggerPockets Money is the big story is somebody with a very normal income with a strong savings habit achieves financial freedom or builds wealth over a reasonable period of time through hard work and highly relatable approach. And that’s all you’re doing here, which is why you’re so extraordinary is because anybody can do what you’re doing here. It is just putting in the hours, you’re working a full-time job and then you’re going home and doing more work, and that is going to accrete huge benefits to your life over time, and it’s just really inspiring to see it being done.

Jackie:
Thank you. I absolutely believe anyone can do it.

Mindy:
You’re aiming for $100, you’re not aiming for $10,000 a day, and that’s what I love is that it’s totally doable.

Scott:
And what are some questions you’re getting from folks from the community?

Jackie:
One of the biggest ones I get is definitely how I’m handling taxes, and I think that’s a super valid question. I’m going to get hit with quite a few 1099s this year. So what I always tell people is you always have to track your expenses and your earnings separately, even if a website tracks it for you, even if you have all of your pay stubs recorded. I would tell people to always put into just a simple spreadsheet what you earned, how many hours that took you, because you may look back at the end of the year and even not for tax purposes, you may just say, this wasn’t worth how much money I made for how many hours I put in, but you may not be able to look at that until it’s way too late, right?
So track that by yourself and then you can make estimated payments quarterly for taxes. And so that’s what I do because even though it’s the same amount, whether I pay it all in March or I pay it four times a year, it just feels like you’re paying a little bit less. That’s what I’ll call, people get into girl math. I think girl math would be to do four payments quarterly. But if you make estimated payments, I think you’re going to err towards the side of a return rather than get hit with that large lump sum at the end, which I think is a really big benefit for a lot of people.

Scott:
I didn’t even consider that and I should have. That makes a lot of sense that you got to be tracking all of those things.
What is the most fun work that you’ve done thus far, regardless of income to per hour ratio?

Jackie:
I think the most fun for me has just been through TikTok. I actually got accepted into their Creativity Beta Program, which pays creators a portion of the revenue from qualified views. So I’m actually getting paid a little bit every time I post a video that’s over one minute long. So to be able to create content that I was already creating, that I already love to create and I was going to share for free anyways, to be able to make any revenue off that at all is amazing. I always share that when I make that in my videos and it’s been just between $5 and $25 a day, but when I’m aiming for $100 a day, that’s a quarter of my goal. That’s amazing.

Mindy:
Okay. You said people are asking about taxes and at the end of the year you can go over and see if there’s anything you wouldn’t do again. Is there anything that you’ve done in these first 50 days that you have said, “Well, that was interesting to try. I am never doing that again.”

Jackie:
That’s a good question. I think not just in the 50 days that I’ve done, but just in a holistic four years, five years of doing this throughout college and whatnot, in my early adulthood, I would say tasks that pay per task a couple cents, it may seem like you can do a lot of those. So stuff like Swagbucks, a lot of other survey sites are offering cents per task. I don’t think that that usually adds up to be worth it. It tricks you into thinking like, okay, if I just do enough of those an hour, I’ve actually got a pretty good chance of doing a lot of tasks, but to me it hasn’t been worth it.
So in terms of specifically Swagbuck’s website, because I know a lot of people use it, I’ve got a lot of followers that use that site, I stick to their game offers and their shopping offers, their surveys are not worth what they’re paying, in my opinion, versus a reputable site like Prolific that’s offering researchers the chance to directly talk to consumers. They’re paying a much higher rate. So if you’ve got a subset of similar groupings of tasks or similar groupings of revenue sources, try to look at those and then say, “Can I put more effort into this one that pays higher than continue to put work into something that’s not going to make as much money?”

Scott:
Makes sense. So, some of these days I’m sure you’re able to get to your goal pretty quickly, and some days not so much. Do you find this eating into a lot of your free time? Is it creating a lot of stress in your life or are you enjoying it?

Jackie:
That’s a good question. I think I am not quite stressed, but I do definitely feel like I owe it to myself to keep going, right? So I am somewhat of a workaholic. I really enjoy working. When I worked at a restaurant back in the day, I liked working. I liked the feeling of coming home and having worked two jobs, which I know is not a lot of people’s reality, it’s just how I work. So I liked feeling accomplished, but I do want to be sensitive to, finances are a part of life, but they’re not the point of life, especially not at least in my case. And so I want to be sensitive to spending time with family and spending time with friends. One of the great things about the stage of life that I’m in with my husband is we’re both 25, we’re young, we don’t have kids.
And then our friends are also in the same boat. They’re young 20 something’s. They understand the need to make extra cash. So even if we have people over, we love to host, so we’ll have people over here probably four or five times a week. We’re going to have someone come over for dinner after this. I got to start cooking after this. But because of that, my friends are pretty open to the fact that I’m earning extra money, they’re supporting me on it. So say we have dinner and then we all just hang out in the living room. Someone’s put on a movie. No one’s going to be upset if I say, “Hey, I got to do a couple of hours of Data Annotation on my laptop while we watch this movie.” I’ve been really blessed with friends that understand that, and even a few friends that do that along with me on their own journeys to making some extra money.
I had a friend, Erin, who came over a couple of days ago, and all we did was turn on a horror movie, watch, bake some cookies and just get started on some Data Annotation and some surveys. So it’s possible, it’s possible to do it together, I think.

Mindy:
I was going to say, have them bring their laptops over and you can have a Data Annotation party.

Jackie:
Exactly. Exactly.

Mindy:
What are some of the things that you’ve learned about yourself during this challenge?

Jackie:
I’ve learned that I definitely work best when I’m not at home. So one of the best things to do on my day off is just to go to a cafe, and I thought this was just like a me phenomenon, right? You always think you’re the only person in the world who feels these things. And what was nice was a lot of my followers shared that this was something called body mirroring or body doubling. That’s actually a really effective tool for studying and for working purposes, and it contributes to why people feel like they might stay on task more when they’re in a large group of people or if they’re in the office, just simply because your brain sees other people working and it just says, “Hey, I should be doing that, too, right?”
So it’s much easier for me to delay stuff, procrastinate when I’m home alone. So I’ve found that it does really help on my days off or in the evenings if I can get to a local cafe, sit down and people watch. That makes all the difference for me. I don’t know if that’s partially because I’m an extrovert?

Scott:
All right. So I got a question here around you’re going to save up $10,000. I’m assuming that you guys have other savings on top of that because you talked about your upbringing and frugal, cost conscious, those kinds of things. When you buy your house, what kind of house are you looking to buy and have you considered a house hack? Are you familiar with that term?

Jackie:
I am only a tiny bit, through you guys from what I’ve listened to so far. So I’d love for you to talk about that a little bit more. But I’m definitely looking for, we’ve got a pretty short list. We’d like two bedrooms and we’d like to live in a home somewhere in the Columbus area, right? But honestly, we’re looking for fixer uppers, we’re looking for whatever. We are not really that picky. We understand that it’s our first home and we are not high earners, so we have to be realistic about what we’re getting.

Scott:
Absolutely. Just throwing it out there. If you can get a house with an extra bedroom or two or maybe a duplex or something and they pay a thousand dollars a month in rent, you’re $33 a day towards your goal of $100 a day with that particular investment. That’s all.

Jackie:
I love it. I’d be open to it. I love that.

Scott:
So besides housing, what comes next in your financial journey after this challenge?

Jackie:
So I think after that we’ve got some student loans that we’d love to pay down more aggressively, right? Of course, that’s a lot of people’s goals. And then after that, I think it’s time to look at the future. So boosting our retirement savings or contributing to stuff like 529s for future children and just investing for the long-term, right? For things to be passed down for generations.

Scott:
What advice would you give for folks who want to also find creative ways to add to their income? Are there things that you would go back and change, now that you’re 50 days into the challenge and tell people to start with?

Jackie:
I would say to start, it’s always best to look at yourself, your skillset, and make sure that you know yourself before you go in. I think one thing I see a lot is people maybe getting a little bit frustrated that they can’t do specifically everything that I do, but I can’t specifically do anything that anybody else does, right? We’re so highly personalized. So, like Mindy brought up earlier, there’s going to be a lot of skills that you have that I don’t, that would be better suited to opportunities that I haven’t even found. So, first step is always going to be just to know yourself, know your skillset, and then also be realistic about how much time you want to invest. ‘Cos you can set as many goals as you want, but if you only have two hours a day that you’re willing to invest, you’re not going to end up reaching your goals and you’re going to make yourself a little bit upset.
And then I would also say that one of the best things to do when you have a lofty goal is to break it into weekly or daily pieces. All of us can say, I want to save money. All of us can say, I want to save up for a house. I want $10,000 to buy a new car. All of these things are great goals, but the reason we lose a lot of momentum is because that seems like an impossible task. It feels like you’re standing at the face of the mountain and there’s no way to scale it. So I would say by breaking it into smaller goals, $10,000 becomes $100 a day. Well, that seems more reasonable. I can see how I can take that action step. So, that’s my second piece of advice there.
And then my third piece of advice would be to utilize online forums to vet all of the sources that you’re using. So if you are looking for more ways to make money or you just want to make sure that a site that you found is legit. I honestly, I know this sounds crazy, but I think Reddit is just a great tool all around. I know it gets a bad rap where I know it gets a little bit of, “Oh, that’s for money nerds and I can’t utilize Reddit,” but I think everyone can utilize Reddit. I use a lot of sites on Reddit for either frugality purposes or one of my favorite sites would be, it’s called r/Beermoney, and it’s just what it sounds like. It’s not enough to make a living off of, but it’s sites like these that you could at least make a good chunk of change on.

Scott:
Those are fantastic pieces of advice there. I want to ask one quick question about your goal setting. Do you have a system for that or any type of mechanism you’re using to create these goals, chunk them down? Or is it pen and paper?

Jackie:
I mean, a lot of it is just going to be pen and paper, dividing. You’re going to want to divide as much as possible. So, you have to know when you want your money by, right? So if it’s a monetary goal, you have to know an end date, otherwise you’re going to delay it as much as possible, right? I mean, even the best of us want to procrastinate every once in a while. So, pick an end date, pick a solid goal and go over it by a little bit. If you really need $5,000, set a goal of $6,000 to cover taxes, expenses, whatnot. And then after that, we’re just going to divide that down from say, I’ve got three months to do this goal. I need to divide that per month, then per week, then per day.
And then I would say always put that somewhere you can see that, whether that’s on a home screen on your phone, whether that’s in the mirror, in your bedroom, on the kitchen fridge, anything where you can see it daily. I think we are likely to forget about our goals. One of my bosses always says vision leaks, so we need to be refilling vision day after day. So, a lot of it is just reminding yourself day after day, and if you’re immersed in it, you’re more likely to actually achieve that goal. So put it somewhere you can see it and make it bite-size.

Mindy:
Okay, we are 50 days into the 100-day challenge. What is your content going to look like after day 100?

Jackie:
I would love to continue making consistent content. That’s what I’m planning on doing in the new year. I see myself as a highly competitive person, and I do love a good challenge. So I can foresee some challenges coming up in the future. But I also post a lot about budgeting and hosting on a budget. Gift giving. I’m really passionate about showing people how they can host on a budget and that they don’t have to sacrifice quality and style for money. I think you can do both really well. So I am excited to focus a lot of my content creation on stuff like gift giving and hosting on a budget. And this is something that I get a lot of questions about that I’m excited to talk about a little bit more is, I keep my husband and Josh and I under $80 a week for two people for all of our groceries. So stuff like grocery budgeting, I love to share about that. So maybe a shop along with me thing I would love to do in the future.

Mindy:
Oh, yes, yes. Because $80 for two people isn’t going to be attainable in every city in America, but holy cow, I want to see, oh, you should connect with Budget Bytes, and do you know budgetbytes.com?

Jackie:
I do not, no.

Mindy:
Oh, she’s got a whole website filled with recipes and she breaks out how much each ingredient costs.

Jackie:
I love that.

Mindy:
So it’s like, you need a tablespoon of olive oil, that’s 12 cents or 3 cents or whatever it is. So then you have an idea of what the recipe’s going to cost. I love that shop along with me idea. Oh, do that next.

Jackie:
I will. Absolutely.

Mindy:
Okay. We are all going to be following along with you, Jackie, and where can we follow you one more time?

Jackie:
You can follow me on TikTok and Lemon8. I’m posting budgeting and productivity content on both of those. My name’s Jackie Mitchell on both of those sites.

Mindy:
And spell it out again.

Jackie:
My username is J-A-C-L-Y-N, Mitchell with an extra L at the end.

Mindy:
Awesome. Jackie, this was super fun. Thank you so much for doing the challenge, and thank you so much for sharing the challenge with our listeners. I really appreciate your time today.

Jackie:
Thank you guys so much for having me. I had a great time.

Scott:
Thank you. This was incredible.

Mindy:
We will talk to you soon.

Jackie:
All right. Bye.

Mindy:
All right. That was Jackie Mitchell and her $100 a Day Challenge, and I just love her. Scott, what did you think of the show and what did you think of her challenge?

Scott:
Oh my gosh. I mean, what an amazing woman here. She’s just crushing it with this. She’s got a great thing going on with this. Really, you can tell the financial foundation is super strong. You can tell that she’s hustling and that she’s built a community around her prior to even building this huge following on TikTok that embraces the same values. A very fun and full life while working basically a job and then a part-time job on top of that to get to her financial goals. So really admire that. I can’t wait to see what happens when she starts accumulating these tens of thousands of dollars here over time and starts investing them and where this all ends up for her, because I think she’s on a really, really good path that is just the very beginning of its compounding journey.

Mindy:
Yes, I’m super excited for her future because she is not afraid of hard work and all of the $100 a day options aside, if you’re not going to do the work, you’re not going to make the money. So I see Jackie’s future as a very bright star because she is ready to do the work. She’s willing to do the work, and she is jumping in there with both feet. I just absolutely love her. So, please go give her a follow on TikTok. Honestly, I think she needs her own sub-Reddit because I would devour everything in that sub-Reddit, all of her information. I have subscribed to her TikTok feed just so I can watch her videos every day. I love her energy, I love her story, and we’re going to have her back next year when she’s doing her Come Shop With Me videos. ‘Cos those are going to crush it, too. I looked in my crystal ball.
All right, Scott, should we get out of here?

Scott:
Let’s do it.

Mindy:
That wraps up this episode of the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. He, of course, is the Scott Trench. I am Mindy Jensen saying Farewell Carousel.

Scott:
If you enjoyed today’s episode, please give us a five star review on Spotify or Apple. And if you’re looking for even more money content, feel free to visit our YouTube channel at youtube.com/biggerpocketsmoney.

Mindy:
BiggerPockets Money was created by Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench, produced by Kaylin Bennett, editing by Exodus Media, copywriting by Nate Weintraub. Lastly, a big thank you to the BiggerPockets team for making this show possible.