My old classmate Jonny Page posted this comment:

So.. Let me get this straight. You are trying to save up a million dollars, yet you buy lotto tickets?

I can totally understand his confusion as to why I would be doing something that is obviously a frivolous thing. Trust me, I know this all to well, since I went into depth about the potential waste of money lotto tickets can be on a persons savings. But, regardless, there is that dream that a lotto ticket just can’t deny.

Imagine winning a couple million dollars on the lotto. The lure is at times irresistible. Especially, when it comes to office pools. I just can’t say no to those. Imagine being the only guy left in the office when everyone else is now enjoying the millions they won. Just would suck going to work.

So yes I admit it, I do purchase a lotto ticket once in a while. It might be a couple dollars a month for that sense of hope and elation that would go along with the dream of winning a large sum of money. But I am still focused on saving towards my retirement. Will I be able to earn $1 million by 2012? Only time will tell, but wouldn’t it be nice to achieve retirement now?

I honestly can’t believe how fast time has gone bye. It seems just like yesterday when I started this journey of achieving early retirement. It is fantastic to think of what I have achieved through this site. Sure my earnings are nothing like the top online money makers in the blogsphere, but, in terms of improvement in my life… it has been great!

The new job at Norquest has been going really well. I am enjoying the experience of being able to develop full time and my skills are growing every day. The co-workers I am with are fantastic and the atmosphere is a lot more relaxed than when I was working for The Brick. Also, having my own office with a view is a great perk!

So another month and another dollar, lets see what My Retirement Project earned with me doing absolutely nothing:

AdSense: $5.42
Kontera: $0.57
Interest: $47.91

Wow! Almost $60.00! Just shows how handy interest income can become! Over the course of 2007, My Retirement Project earned $1,592.74 towards my goal of retiring early!

The most surprising thing to me was that my feedburner numbers didn’t dip as much as I would have thought. Aswell, the website still has a page rank of 3, I would have thought that would have dripped for sure.

So what is in for the project in 2008? Well, I am going to try to focus more on retirement based entries, less junk entries. I am going for a “Less is More” mindset this year. After all, I am not a professional blogger and this is just a hobby that lets me learn and earn.

Speaking of learning, I will be doing lots of that. The new job is pushing me to new ideas. PLUS, they ordered me the Master collection from Adobe and I will need to learn Premiere and Aftereffects! Yay for me!

So as many of you have noticed, I haven’t created that many posts in the last 30 days or so. Needless to say it has been a very crazy month but it has all been worth it. As of today, I start my new job at Norquest College in the heart of Downtown Edmonton. Gone will be the days of working for the Canadian Retail Giant, thebrick.com.

Honestly, it is hard to leave a company that you have spent 4 1/2 years with and it is even more hard to leave the people you have gotten to know so well over the years. The group of people I worked with at The Brick Corporate offices were a hard working group that where nice enough to make a $100 contribution to My Retirement Project! Every little bit helps, but more importantly, it is the gesture of the gift. I will miss that group of individuals…

But change is good!

My new job as Multimedia Developer at Norquest will allow me to use my skills I have acquired from school, work and creating My Retirement Project dot com. So with a new challenge in my life that I need to dedicate to, the time I will spend on My Retirement Project will become less. Now this doesn’t mean that I am giving up on my dream of retiring early, it means I am stepping up to my new challenge to become the leader in my career that Norquest has hired me for. If life happens to lead me to my goal of early retirement, then life works in very mysterious ways. Until then, I will continue to add posts and try new methods of earning money online.

November’s Progress:

AdSense: $4.36
Kontera: $1.72
Donations: $101.15 (Big Thanks to Kim!)
Other: $20.00 (Won $20 from a lotto ticket)

Not a bad month considering I only did 2 posts. I will try to be a better blogger this month.

Thanks for the support everyone!

I realize I have been a bad blogger, but it is for a good reason. I have had to renovate my shower because the dry wall had rotted out and the wall was laced with black mold. Ya, it was as gross as it sounds.

Here is a photo of the wall being torn out and cleaned up:

Once I had removed all the mold, rotten dry wall, and broken tiles I needed to replace the rotten dry wall with mold resistant green board:

With the dry wall in place I plastered the walls together and painted the walls for the glue to have better adhesion.

The new shower is 5 plastic pieces glued on the wall. The edges are sealed with grout and caulking and will ensure that my hard work will last for a long time.

As you can see the shower looks great and with a bit of elbow grease it looks professionally done and should last for a long time.

So how much do you think this cost me? $1000? $800? $500? Nope! I renovated my shower for less than $300. Sure it was a chunk of my time, but I enjoy working with my hands and I learned a lot about laying tile, dry walling and plumbing.

So, what do you think? Did I do a good job?

Well it was a surprisingly successful month. Nothing like John Chow’s $23,000 last, but never the less the month was more successful than I thought it would have been.

October Progress:

AdSense: $13.24
Kontera: $1.62
ReviewMe: $5.00
Advertising Sold: $120.00

October turned out to be a more fruitful month than I ever expected. Mostly, because of the advertisement I sold on the First time Home Purchase posting. Yup, that is right, I got paid an impressive $120 to post a paragraph with my posting. Pretty sweet, however it required a bit of back and forth with the guy who purchased the ad space. If you are interested in getting connected with the individual who purchased the space from me, leave a comment in this post and I will get back to you.

Also, I thought WidgetBucks might work out nicely with the $25 sign up bonus, however we all know about the hidden link fiasco and it is unlikely I will be able to make the additional $25 to get paid by this system. As well, I began to investigate Weblo.com and I see there is potential there, but the lack of simplicity makes it a bit of a pain to get it to work and it isn’t clear when the payout will happen.

SO, what is up for November? Well, I have to renovate my bathroom for one and that will take a good chunk of my time. Also, I really want to do some house keeping on My Retirement Project dot com and finally get around to looking at new template options. Also, work is keeping me incredibly busy.

It is good to be busy, it keeps me out of trouble.