This past Friday I got my first check from the freelance work I am doing for my father-in-law. It was roughly $450, of which I have only $100 left to put on a credit card. First, my brother needed cash so I sent him $100. Then I decided to invest in my computer so I can work on this freelance work at home.

I wasn’t working from my home computer because, even though I’m my employer’s Web master, I still had dialup. Slow as Christmas too. So, tired of the slowness and tired of waiting for my wife to get off the phone so I could go online, I decided to get DSL. I ended up with BellSouth’s DSL Xtreme 6.0.

The problem then was that browsing the Internet was faster, but our computer still pokes along. I have a Dell Dimension 2350 that is about 4 years old and has a 60GB hard drive and only 256MB of RAM. This is where I decided to invest some of my first freelance check. I purchased a 250GB external hard drive to move my music files to and to use as a backup, and I purchased two 512MB sticks of RAM to max out my computer’s RAM.

I hooked up the hard drive last night and will put in the new RAM today.

I know what some of you are saying out there. “That’s not an investment, that’s a purchase!” I beg to differ! 

See, to do the freelance work, I needed to go to my father-in-law’s business, 45 minutes from my home. So for each 6-8 hours of work there, I spent an hour and a half on the road. I don’t know exactly how much that cost me in terms of gas, but I can save some of that money now. Now I can work some hours in the evenings from home and get more hours in each week.

So, I invested not only in any future freelance work I may be able to do, but the new Web site will get up and running faster, which means more money made by the company sooner, which very well could result in a bonus for me.

If you look at it this way, and knowing my father-in-law, the $225 I spent on the RAM and external hard drive could result in a $500 bonus. (More or less, but this would be a reasonable figure from him). I could more than double my initial investment.

I’ve added a new personal finance blog to my blogroll: The Div Guy. He’s been a frequent visitor to this blog and has now begun his own blogging adventure. The Div Guy is “One Guys Road Towards Financial Independence via Dividend Income”. He has no mortgage and no debt.

Here is some info on who he is from the first post on his blog:

First, I have to say I am a Baby Boomer so that makes me a little older and hopefully a little wiser. I plan on talking a little more on stocks and asset allocation and less on budget issues. It is safe to say I have been able to live within a budget for many years. I started my career in the mutual fund industry in the late 80’s and spent over a decade in the industry.

Pay The Div Guy a visit and make him a regular stop on your daily trip down the information highway!

I switched from ING Direct to E-Trade because of the three days it took money transferred from ING to show up at my B of A account. Yesterday I initiated a transfer of funds from E-Trade to B of A, and this morning the money is already there, or pending deposit anyway. This is much much faster than ING Direct was!

On another note: the freelance work for my father-in-law is going well. I’ve already earned a little over $300 and will be earning more by the time I get a check Friday. I’m hoping I can parlay this into a full-time job with him, basically acting as the tech guy for his small business. He owns a fishing lure company, so occasionally I can see him taking me out “product testing” (read: fishing) during work hours. T’would be a sweet gig indeed.

My 401-k has been up and down lately, but I am happy to report that my rate of return since I opened it (from Feb 28th 2007 to today) is 14.25%! This is from investing in Fidelity International Discovery Fund. I wish my Roth IRA Web site would tell me rate of return like that so I can easily track it.

Also, I started doing freelance Web work for my father-in-law’s small business this weekend. I worked a total of 8 hours this weekend and will work more this week and probably every Saturday for a while. Just this weekend alone I earned a tad more than $200. I’m hoping to use the money from this ongoing project to kill off the credit card we opened for the Europe trip, have money to invest and save, and possibly invest in a new computer and software to allow me to do more freelance work from home.

Been meaning to post about this for a while but have failed to do so, until now. I made a couple lists on some other blogger’s sites, though I don’t know why they would put me on either one of these lists!

First is the list of The 100 Most Inspirational Personal Finance Turnaround Stories Online at Credit Card Lowdown. I am #26 on the list, under the Investing subcategory.

Next is the 200 Most Influential Personal Finance Bloggers of Our Time over at Hustler $$$ Blog. I am #188 there.

Again, I don’t know why I would be on there, but I’m happy to be included and hope you go check out these lists and their associated blogs soon!