Going for Not Broke

I've been away from this blog for a while. It's been a time issue, plus a "boy am I bummed I haven't made more headway" issue. But I'm still here, still trying to beat the debt. More posts to come.

Back in December, I signed up to work small jobs through MTurk (a site owned by Amazon.com ). I've completed several jobs there, and in total, before taxes have earned $78 and change. Overall, I have a positive outlook on working through the site, but my expectations weren't that grand going into it. I didn't expect to make what would equal minimum wage -- or even close to it. I looked at it as a way to generate a little extra income, not to get rich. Just as expected, I didn't make what would've averaged out to minimum wage. (I wish I had kept track of how much time I spent working for that $78; that way I could average it out and provide an estimate. I'll keep that in mind for when I work through the site again.) The verdict: Because the tasks are generally short, MTurk is great for earning a little income when you have 30 minutes or so at a time to spare. But be prepared for it to take a while to accrue even $20 (unless you qualify for some of the ...

My car has been acting up lately. I cannot tell you how much I wish I could afford something else without having to go further into debt. In order to get back and forth to work, ultimately, that may be exactly what we do. But I'm calling that Option Z. For now, I've been doing what I can to earn a little extra to send to our creditors. I signed up for MTurk , a site through which users can do a wide range of tasks for pay, through Amazon a few weeks ago, and after the latest car trouble, I decided to put the site to use. Here's my take on MTurk: You would have to have little debt AND a rather low cost of living to be able to make a living working through the site. For my current purpose -- earning as much extra as I can to help pay down debt -- it's OK, but I won't be reaching my goal anytime soon. Most tasks are time-consuming so it would be tough to even be able to earn minimum wage doing them. You can qualify for higher paying tasks, but I don'...

Every now and then, I go online and find a calculator that will breakdown how long it will take to pay down my debt. I like to see it amortized so that I can see at a glance how many months it will take for me to knock milestone amounts, such as $1,000, $5,000, etc., from my total debt. One of the best calculators I've found is at What's The Cost . This one gives users the options to see how long it will take and the total interest they'll pay if the take on their debt by balance and by interest. The problem, though, is that sometimes, once I see that how long it's likely to take, I start feeling rather overwhelmed by what we owe. That's what happened to me last night. I ran my debt on the calculator right before bed, then I had trouble sleeping. I'm trying very hard not to feel overwhelmed but rather feel spurred to action.

I mentioned in a previous post  that I haven't been showing much self discipline financially so far this year. Thankfully, for now, I'm having a spell of doing better. Sitting down and seeing exactly where I am helped get me back on track. Hopefully, I'll continue to do better. First off, I'm going scale back the anniversary party  I was going to hold for my folks to just a big family dinner. I was going to do games with door prizes, but now, I've decided to just make lasagna using my mom's best recipe. It will still be costly, because it will be dinner for at least 20 people, but it will still be easier on my pocketbook. The next thing I hope to do is to figure my checkbook* daily. I have a tendency to try to keep track of it mentally, then when I start to fear that I might've left something out of my mental total, I'll charge necessities, like gas or diapers. So far, for the last week, I've done better with my checkbook. And knowing exactly whe...

For several years, my husband and I have kept track of our total debt and spending with spreadsheets charting what goes up and what goes down. On a monthly basis, we would get together and look at where we stand financially. My thinking was that seeing just how much we owe would force us to keep that total in mind and strengthen our resolve to pay it down. Overall, I think it's helped, but it alone hasn't been enough to inspire us to eliminate all of our bad financial behaviors. If it were, we would've been a lot better off several years ago. It has, however, inspired us to be a little better about our spending. I know this because we haven't been as diligent about the spreadsheets since our daughter was born. I say "we" because my husband is further behind in his share than he typically is, too, but I haven't really even tried to keep up with my part, especially this year after all of the long trips back and forth to visit my dad in the hospital. Even...

See that wonky-looking stuff on the right of the screen? That's what my iMac is doing these days. All in all, I can't complain. I bought it in 2006, so I got seven good years out of it. I was in the middle of my twice-yearly freelance project when it started this, and at first, rebooting would get rid of it for a little bit. Not so much now. I want to buy a new computer, but I won't. I have a laptop that works fine but runs much, much slower. I'm in the process of transferring all of my necessary files to flash drives. Scribus Update I had mentioned in a previous post that I was going to use Scribus as I worked on my freelance project this time to see how well it worked. I knew my computer's days were numbered, and rather than buy Adobe InDesign again (which I'd have to do because CS2, the Creative Suite version I have, will not work on a new operating system) I thought I'd see what my other options were. Well, it was slow going key command...