My 3rd Instacart paycheck 💸 🛒

As much as I've been enjoying my new job as an Instacart shopper, this week was a tough one. I wasted so much of my time just waiting on certain things. Whether it be my car being in the shop or just a general lack of batches, I did not have a very good week in terms of earnings.

My Week 2 Instacart Financial Report was a massive imporvement over Week 1. Sadly, Week 3 has forced me to take a step back, but I'm confident that Week 4 can be my best yet.

The main reason that Week 3 didn't go as well as I was hoping is due to my car costing me another $1300+. It sucked to have to not only fork over a bunch of reserve funds but also be totally unable to work while my car was out of commission. Luckily, I did end up getting my car back towards the end of the week and I was able to work some on 4 different days.

I plan on doing a weekly Instacart Financial Report like this one, so if you enjoy this kind of content be sure to follow me if you aren't already doing so.

I'm going to be breaking down each day of work individually. Luckily, the Instacart Shopper app makes that extremely easy to do. Let's go ahead and get things started.

Monday, January 23rd

Tuesday, January 24th

Wednesday, January 25th

The first 3 days of the week I was unable to work due to my car troubles. I didn't get my car back until 4 pm Wednesday and by that time it was too late to start working I spent time with @flowerbaby instead. That's also what I choose to do most weekends, but it is tempting to work a few hours on Sat/Sun because the pay is so good.

Thursday, January 26th

My first day back to work in exactly one week. I was anxious to get started and hoped that all of the experience that I'd gained thus far had not worn off already. Luckily my skills were still as available as they needed to be and I ended the day with over $100 worth of earnings. I didn't get started until around noon due to certain circumstances, but that just meant I needed to work that much harder and smarter.

I made about $21.52/hr on this day.

Skipping over the low-value batches that are quick to complete is becoming more and more of a thing. I don't see myself ever accepting another batch that pays under $10. No amount of shopping and driving is worth it for that amount. I prefer over $20 per order so I don't feel like I'm wasting my time or gas. You will still see some orders under $20, but that's only because they were simple or just really convenient to where I was located at the time.

I always love seeing a day with my tips higher than my batch pay. Sure, that means that Instacart is probably underpaying me by the batch, but at least my customers are making up for that by leaving me some pretty good tips. I'm thankful that Instacart provides the platform for me to work so easily, but I must thank the customers even more for making this all worth it to me.

Friday, January 27th

Some days I just don't have as much time as others. The gym takes up a few hours, and so does cooking, and then there are the days that I spend the majority of my time with @flowerbaby when she is not working. Although I was barely able to work 3 hours on Friday, I just made some good money that outdid most of my days from Week 1.

I made about $22.83/hr on this day.

Getting started early in the morning feels best, but sacrificing my normal morning routine of computer work, going to the gym, and cooking may not always be worth it. It's hard to predict how busy a day will be. Friday I spent about 2 hours total waiting for an order. There just wasn't anybody needing me to shop for them, at least not anyone who was willing to tip me well enough to spend my valuable time and gas on them.

Once again my tips were quite a bit more than my overall batch earnings. Even though I wasted some time sitting idle, I did at least have good earnings once the batches did finally come. The $45 order is my second biggest order yet. I'm still waiting on my first unicorn customer who leaves me an enormous tip of over $100 out of pure generosity and abundance.

Saturday, January 28th

If @flowerbaby has to work on Saturday, so do I. She is how I base whether or not I work on the weekends. It's 50/50 as to whether or not she is off on Saturday. She is always off on Sunday. She worked a short shift this past Saturday, so that left me about 3 or 4 hours to get some extra work in to make up for this slow week. Saturday and Sunday are said to be the highest earning days on Instacart, but I had yet to find out if that was true until this past weekend.

I made about $38/hr on this day.

It turns out that Saturday is actually a very high-paying day, I can only imagine how good Sunday must be considering it's said to have a higher earning average than Saturday. Over $100 in just 3 hours, that's some major cash in a very short amount of time. Sure, it's not going to make me a millionaire, but money like this does help so much. I wonder how much I would. have made had I worked a full 8 hours. By my calculations, if the hourly numbers stayed consistent, I would have earned about $300 in just one day.

Tips were what made this such an epic three hours of work. I had a $28 tip and a $22 tip. Then a few other ones weren't half bad either for the easy work that I did to earn them. I say easy, but I don't think this job would be simple for everyone. It requires extreme focus to not mess stuff up. When you are doing two or three orders at once, you have to stay vigilant about keeping all the items separate, otherwise, you'll make errors that will cost you time and money.

Sunday, January 29th

This was my first Sunday doing Instacart and by looking at the app's stats I can see that Sunday is the highest-paying day of the week. The stores also happen to be the most empty on Sunday. I had planned to take the day off, but after leaving the gym I changed my mind. I received a notification about my first promotion opportunity. I would be paid an extra $5/batch during a small three-hour window. I didn't have anything else to do besides relax, so I went ahead and did a couple of batches.

I made about $34/hr on this day.

I'm so glad I took a few hours out of my morning and afternoon to work a little bit. This extra pay on Sunday allowed me to have my highest earning week so far, just barely though. I'm very surprised I was able to do this considering I couldn't work during the first three days of the week. Pay on the weekend is clearly better and that makes it more tempting to work at least a little bit during that time.

My tips were just barely more than my batch pay, which actually shouldn't have been the case this time. The app failed to recognize my second batch as part of the extra $5 promotion. I contacted support and they made it right after a few minutes of chatting. The only thing is, it showed up as a shopper bump and not included in my promotional earnings. So really my batch earnings should have been 29.36, which means my tips were under. I didn't get bad tips, but batch pay was about twice as good as normal. I'll be on the lookout for more promotions in the future.

End of week hours and pay 🤑

My weekly pay was $350 and I worked just under 13 hours in total. I honestly thought this would be my lowest earning week since I didn't have my car for half of it, but working some on the weekend made up for it. I earned $1 more than my best week so far (Week 2), which makes me feel pretty satisfied.

I made about $27.25/hr on average this past week.

My hourly wage for the week was my best so far, but this was also the least number of hours I've worked in a week. My goal for next week is to keep that hourly wage of at least $25/hr and then also work 20-25 hours total. This should allow me to eclipse $500+ in one week. I'd of course be fine if my per hour went up, but don't really want to work more than 30 hours in one week ever. I just feel that the modern day 9-5 and 40 hours/week is horrible for us mentally and emotionally.

Doing it again next week 👀

I'm dead set on making Week 4 my best week of work so far. There is no guarantee that will happen, but I think as long as I put in the effort it can occur. My goal now is $500 in one week. The most I've made in one week so far is $350. I'm really curious about what amount will actually end up being my limit of max pay in one week. I feel like if I lived in a city with more overall wealth, I'd be seeing some crazier tip numbers aka unicorns. We shall see what happens next week. Be sure to come back again to learn about how it all goes in my Instacart Financial Report Week 4.

I hope you have enjoyed this insider look at what kind of pay is possible while working for Instacart.