A new home...

I had a blog forever ago but I can't remember what my name or password was so I'm starting fresh. Plus now I have a bit more focus to my writing instead of just babbling on about the wonders of my children - although I do still plan to do plenty of that!

A lot has changed for me in the past year. I've found several new passions but when I really take a look at the big picture, they all just stem from one big passion: staying home with my kids. I really feel that there is nothing more important in the world than being here with them, day in and day out.

It's been three years, six months and ten days since I quit my job. How do I recall that? Easy. The day my daughter was born, I quit! Over the years, I have picked up a temporary job here and there when money was tight but was always able to find a job opposite Jon's hours. My kids have never been in any kind of childcare and that's something I am awfully darn proud of!

Anyway, onto those new passions of mine!

My first discovery in the new year was coupons. Yup, totally a new concept, right? I'd used them now and then in the past but I had never taken the time to really learn how to truly take advantage of them. I read an article about the Grocery Game in a magazine and decided to give it a shot. The initial fee was only $1 to try it out for a month and I had a dollar to spare! Wow! My eyes were opened to a whole new world, a world of free items, getting expensive beauty products for just pennies, and the concept of stockpiling!

Ah, stockpiling. That would be obsession #2 on my list. I'd always wanted to stockpile but was scared of the money spent up front. Thanks to coupons, that issue was wiped out. It's a simple thing, really. If an item is normally $2.00 and will a sale and coupon you can get it for fifty cents, buy as many as you can. If you have four coupons, buy four! Then it a month when you are out of the item, you won't end up running to the store and paying full price.

The Grocery Game also led me to another passion, one that I feel could really lead me to a future career (someday in the very far future when my kids are grown!). Dave Ramsey. I'm obsessed with Dave Ramsey. It's OK, Jon already knows. We are officially kool-aid drinking crazies who actually believe it's better to drive a ten year old car than to have a $300 car payment! This past year we have skimped and saved and paid off all of our medical bills that had been haunting us for years. We paid off a loan, a credit card and are almost done paying off another credit card! We can't wait to scream it loud and proud, "We're debt free!"

Perhaps by chance, a friend mentioned to me a work from home job that actually fit my lifestyle. And so I was introduced to the wonders of ChaCha. Since the beginning of my ChaCha journey, there have been ups and downs. But overall, it has been fabulous for me and my family. Some days I have made $70. Other days, only $5. At the end of the year, my earnings have topped $5,000 since mid-June which is pretty darn good for not leaving my house - or my kids.

But ChaCha is going through a slow time while they being a new phase of their business. I have faith that ChaCha will again be busy but in the mean time I have begun researching other options. Through my research, I have come across several ideas and one of the biggest terms that kept coming up in my searches was "create passive income." And the number one way to create passive income from writing seems to be through writing for eHow. I did some research and decided that it was a good fit for me. I have a lot of random knowledge, I have a minor in English and a major in Business. All the right ingredients to become an overnight eHow success!

Well, not quite overnight. The whole point of writing for eHow is to put in the blood, sweat and tears NOW so that down the road, my writings are making money and I don't have to write any more new articles if I don't want to. Since it's winter and we're lazy and taking turns being sick, it's a fantastic time for me to spend a few extra hours at the computer. I am hoping by summer that I will really be seeing the payoff for all the time I am putting in now. My reasearch has led me to find that many people didn't even reach $10 until their thrid month but now make $1,000 or more every month! I'm already on track to make the $10 mark my first month so I am hoping that's a sign that I have what it takes to succeed at thie eHow thing!

Through eHow, I've been learning about all sorts of things - both while writing and reading other people's work. I've learned that there are many more ways to earn money from home and little by little, I plan to try some more of them. For now, ChaCha and eHow are taking up plenty of my time. I moved my computer to the living room so I can now watch TV, play with the kids and work all at the same time. Mommy multi-tasking. Gotta love it!