Exploring working at home and my budget

As Hurricane Gustav passes us by, I am feeling really sorry for the people in the Gulf Coast right now. It has been cloudy, dark and windy here these past few days. We are just getting the outer bands so I can just imagine how powerful that storm is. I just hope everyone stays safe and it passes without harm to anyone.

The bad weather is keeping us inside today and I am here online reading some blogs and message boards. I stumbled across one of my WAHM forums where one of the hot topics was blogging and paid reviews. Some people are making a lot of money doing these. On my old blog I had Adsense on it and I think I made a whole $10 by just having ads on my blog. Not much but it’s $10. How the heck are these people making so much?  Gosh, if I could do that- my lawyer would be paid off and I wouldn’t be wasting all this time looking for part-time jobs outside of my house. I love to write!  So I am investigating this further. I know it is possible because I make a little money doing surveys now. Last month, I made about $100 doing online surveys. I always thought those were scams until I got paid for them. That money definitely came in handy too.

We went over our budget last night. Wow, what a surprise! I am constantly asking why are we so broke? Well, last month I decided to track every dollar spent by using my debit card for everything because I stink at writing it all down. Well, I poured over the bank statement and realized we do spend. Not on luxuries but just not smart. I considered my being “frugal” a good thing but I see I am making a lot of trips to Publix, Target and Walmart. In August alone I spent $592 at these stores. Yes, it was for food and necessities but geese-we need to cut that down. We spent $372 in gas…in gas. So tomorrow is September 1st and we are cutting back even more. We need to. This is going to be a challenge but it can be done.