Inaugural Post

Introduction

If someone would have asked me a week ago if I would toss my hat into the blogging ring, I would have laughed in their face! I am the first to admit I generally like to keep a low profile on the web, but the idea of a blog and exposing my personal life for all to see? Absurd! Yet here I am.

Why would I start a blog then? The main reason is that I would like to get more exposure for my online content writing. I signed up for Associated Content about nine months ago, after a friend begged me to join the site. She thought it would be a perfect way for me to earn a little extra cash, and she was right. I earned just under $500 last year writing content for that site. All in my spare time. Many top Content Producers there get exposure for their work by blogging, so why not me too?

About me

I am a 30-something married parent of two. I have always worked, so the transition from working full-time to staying at home was a bit of a challenge for me. I don't regret it though. I love knowing that I can be there in a heartbeat if my child is sick, scared or just needs a little extra attention. The transition from two incomes to just one wasn't as big of a deal financially since my husband graduated college and took a job at the same time that I had just given birth to our second child. In reality, he was making more than the two of us combined after graduating college and taking a job in his new career path. However, one unforseen obstacle was that moving to the area with the job would mean a very high cost of living, especially with regard to housing. The rural area in which we live is about 1-1/2 hours from DC, yet the housing prices are keeping pace with the DC market for the most part. We needed to choose between the house we wanted and the house we could afford. The house we wanted would require me to return to the work force and place our children in daycare, the house we could afford would not. Our children came first, and we are crammed into a house a bit too small for our needs.

Our mortgage payments took up half of my husband's take home, so we needed to do a little something extra to make us feel like we weren't living paycheck to paycheck. It was at that time that I was introduced to the idea of taking surveys to help fill in the gaps. I quickly found that taking surveys could add a little extra income to our household without being time consuming.

How do you get started taking surveys? It is actually easier than you think! I am not going to lie to you, filling out registrations and the demographic surveys will take a little time at first, so spend an hour or two each day signing up for various panels. Need a step-by-step how to guide covering the ins and outs, as well as my own personal recommendations? Please read my article How to Make Ends Meet and Still Be A Stay At Home Mom.

Making ends meet can be a job in itself. I plan to dedicate this blog to showcasing ways to save money that not only stay at home mom's can use, but even those moms who are working the 9-5 grind and just barely getting by.

~Pinching Abe