This Is How to Make Some Money the Next Time You’re Sitting on the Toilet
You’re busted.
Study after study shows a lot of us use our smartphones when we’re in the bathroom. The most recent I’ve seen says nearly 90% of us “admit” to doing it.
It’s not a big secret. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s just a smart use of otherwise idle time, IMHO.
Get through some emails. Catch up on the news. Respond to your @mentions on Twitter (you’re so popular). Play a game, because this is the only alone time you get all day.
Or… make money.
If you’re just scrolling to waste time while you’re on the can, try tapping a few buttons that’ll help you earn money.
We’ve found tons of apps that are quick to set up and let you start saving, earning or managing your money simply. Most offer a way to earn a few bucks right away — so you can emerge richer than when you entered.
So that’s what that satisfied grin is all about…
How to Make Money on Your Phone… From the Toilet
Check out these apps to bank more than $50 in bonuses and other cash — plus set yourself up to earn more in the future — next time you take a seat on the porcelain throne.
1. Start Investing — but Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff
Saving money is hard. Investing? Usually harder. Automating the process lets you get started on both without thinking about it.
A micro-investing app does that for you. Here are our favorites:
Stash lets you start investing with as little as $5 and for just a $1 monthly fee for balances under $5,000.
Stash curates investments from professional fund managers and investors and lets you choose where to put your money.
But it leaves the complicated investment terms out of it. You just choose from a set of simple portfolios reflecting your beliefs, interests and goals.
With Acorns, you can start small and stack up change over time with its “round-up” feature. That means if you spend $10.23 at the grocery store, 77 cents gets dropped into your Acorns account.
Then, the app does the whole investing thing for you.
The idea is you won’t miss the digital pocket change, and the automatic savings stack up faster than you’d think.
Bonus: Sign up for either app, and you’ll get an extra $5 after making your first investment.
2. Drop Your $10/Month Gym Membership
Analyzing your monthly budget is, to put it simply, not fun. But you’re just sitting here for the next few minutes. Put it to use by cleaning up your monthly bills with this simple trick.
We all sign up for stuff. Sometimes it’s easier to put subscriptions on a recurring payment and forget about it. Getting rid of the subscriptions you’re not using and socking away the savings could save you a ton of money.
Download TrueBill, an app that’ll negotiate your bills, cancel unwanted subscriptions and refund your bank fees.
After downloading the app, create an account and link your bank account and/or credit cards. Turn on the bill negotiation and outage protection features. Boom. TrueBill is already searching for potential refunds — it might get you a refund even when you didn’t know an outage occurred.
On average, Truebill customers get $12 in credits off their cable bills each month.
The app will also remind you of all those sneaky subscriptions you’ve signed up for through the years, so you can cancel what you don’t use and reclaim your monthly budget.
3. Fill This out While You’re Just, uh, Sitting There
Surveys aren’t the best way to make money fast. But there’s a certain appeal to clicking a few buttons and earning money when you’d otherwise be doing nothing.
Here’s our recommendation: Sign up for these legitimate survey sites all at once. Chances are, you’ll qualify for at least one or two surveys on each site a month, and the rewards will add up.
- Swagbucks: The average payout for answering a series of questions is 75 points (called SBs), which is equivalent to 75 cents. You won’t qualify for every panel, but you can usually earn about $5 for 30 minutes of work.
- VIP Voice surveys are relatively quick to complete and reward you with points you can redeem for cash or gift cards. Plus, you’ll still get points for taking surveys even if you don’t qualify to take the whole survey. Plan to login a few times each week, and you’ll have no trouble earning extra money this month with almost no work.
- Survey Junkie’s clean look and “cashout wheel” keep you motivated to take as many surveys as you want. They’re relatively quick to complete and reward you with points. Once you earn 1,000 points — or $10 — you can cash out for gift cards or cash paid via PayPal. Pro tip: Take all the profile surveys to help you earn an easy 200 points or so up front.
4. Get Money Back From Stuff You’ve Already Bought
Admit it: You’ve made a few impulse buys from the toilet. Unless you had Indian food for lunch, you don’t have enough time to carefully consider your decision before tapping “buy now.”
If you’re an avid online shopper, you might not like keeping evidence of your binges. We found a free tool that might make you reconsider.
Capital One Shopping Price Protection is a tool that gets you money back for your online purchases. It’s free to sign up, and once you do, it will scan your email for any receipts. If it discovers you’ve purchased something from one of its monitored retailers, it will track the item’s price and help you get a refund when there’s a price drop.
Plus, if your guaranteed shipment shows up late, Capital One Shopping Price Protection will help you get compensated.
Capital One Shopping Price Protection compensates us when you sign up using the links we provide.
5. Automate Your Savings
Saving money is tough. While you’ve got some uh… time on your hands, why not set up a way to save that you wouldn’t even notice?
Digit makes that possible.
This innovative app automates saving for you. Simply link it to your checking account, and its algorithms will determine small (and safe!) amounts of money to withdraw into a separate, FDIC-insured savings account.
Bonus: Penny Hoarders will get an extra $5 just for signing up!
Using this set-it-and-forget-it strategy, one Penny Hoarder saved $4,300 without noticing — read his Digit review.
If you need that money sooner than expected, you’ll always have access to it within one business day.
Digit is free to use for the first 100 days, then it’s $2.99 per month afterward.
7. Download This App to Get Paid to Pay Your Bills on Time
Here’s an easy step you can take to improve your financial well-being — without even standing up.
An app called MoneyLion offers rewards to help you develop healthy financial habits and will literally pay you for logging onto the app.
You can earn points in the rewards program by paying bills on time, connecting your bank account or downloading the mobile app.
You can redeem those points for gift cards to retailers like Amazon, Apple and Walmart.
8. Boost Your Monthly Budget by Cutting Interest Rates
Unfortunately, many of us carry some amount of debt around like a full bladder.
But it’s time to relieve that burden — and avoid funneling money toward insane interest rates that quickly add up month to month.
A good resource is consumer financial technology platform Fiona, which can help match you with the right personal loan to meet your needs.
Fiona searches the top online lenders to match you with a personalized loan offer in less than 60 seconds. If your credit score is at least 620, its platform can help you borrow up to $100,000 (no collateral needed) with fixed rates starting at 4.99% and terms from 24 to 84 months.
9. Complete Your Objectives in CS:GO
If you’re going to pass the time on the loo playing video games, you need this app. Seriously, it helps you achieve financial goals — while you take out enemy players.
Blast is a savings app for Android made by gamers for gamers. It allows you to save, earn and win cash for playing games.
It works with every game in the Google Play Store, as well as top PC games, including Counter Strike Global Offensive.
The app is free, with no hidden fees.
While you play, the app works in the background and transfers small sums from your checking account into a high-yield Blast savings account based on “triggers” you set — things like the number of opponents you defeat or enemy bases you destroy. You can earn extra cash by completing “missions” that allow you to test new games or take familiar games to the next level.
Your Blast savings account earns 1% interest, is FDIC-insured and is secured by bank-level encryption. You can withdraw your money anytime or just let your savings grow.
10. Test Drive a New Gaming App or Video
Download AppKarma, a free rewards app that lets you earn cash and gift cards when you try out gaming apps and watch videos.
Android users can download the AppKarma app directly through the Google Play Store.
iPhone users: AppKarma is not in the app store, but you can use it from your mobile browser. Click on the link from your iOS device to access the AppKarma web app. Complete the first offer (and earn 100 points!) to get started.
Bonus: Penny Hoarders will get 500 extra points when you sign up, plus you’ll get an email shortly after signing up with a special promo code worth another 750 bonus points.
You can exchange your Karma Points for gift cards to Amazon, PayPal, iTunes, Target, Starbucks and Walmart, among other retailers.
You don’t even have to leave the commode.
P.S. Don’t Flush Your Cash Down the Drain
As you’re finishing up, just a quick reminder: Don’t squander your earnings.
If you struggle to stay on top of your bills, credit card spending or debt, I recommend my favorite financial tool (really), Credit Sesame.
Credit Sesame gives you a free credit report card — including a credit score — and provides you with recommendations and financial education resources. It’s free to use and makes managing your money actually, well, manageable.
Dana Sitar ([email protected]) is a writer and editor at The Penny Hoarder. Say hi and tell her a good joke on Twitter @danasitar.
