an easy $175....

today was a great saturday.  we slept in, i got a nap, we went shopping for Thanksgiving.... oh yeah, i made $175 by doing nothing.  that's always great!

i typically try to keep financial talk to a minimum on my blog - but this was too easy not to share!  so here's how it all happened.

1. i was browsing our bank accounts today and saw that we had been earning reward points that we hadn't cashed out yet.  so i got $25 for each account.  that was easy! ($50 total)
2. three months ago, i had entered a contest for a free book and $50 cash.  i assumed it was a scam, since i never heard back from the publishing company or author and saw all over twitter that no one else had either.  the blog and twitter account for the author and giveaway were never updated.  i forgot about it.  well two days ago i was finally contacted saying i was the winner! i told them i was feeling somewhat apprehensive, seeing as the contest had ended several months ago and i was just now being contacted.  they said there was a communciation error internally and they had no problem sending me my monetary winnings via Paypal.  so today, i got a Paypal confirmation for $50 being deposited - awesome!
3. finally, last month i won a pretty big contest on another blog.  well, it turns out that the product just didn't fit with our lifestyle, so i posted it for sale on eBay.  i got my asking price from a buyer today - a cool $75 for a product i got for free!

granted, i don't typically have days like this.  ok, being completely honest, i never have days like this where i sit back and relax and make a bunch of money.  but i was happy about it - it will definitely help for Christmas!