Saturday, April 17, 2010

Playing Catchup on Reporting

Things offline are calm at the moment and I am hoping that they stay that way for a while. It is always nice to have a reduction of stress in my life. With a bit of luck, I’ll be able to get refocused on my journey.

Even though I was not concentrating on my journey for the last couple of years, my fund has grown more than I realized. I still picked up stray coins, collected returnable bottles and cans for the scrap yard. These habits have become integrated into my life on a subconscious level. I don’t even think about and no one seems to be surprised when I am picking things up and putting them into my car…lol

I was, quite frankly, surprised when I added up all the misc. money that had landed in my fund during the time that I was occupied with my parents and their issues. Considering that my mind was not on my journey, I thought I might have collected a staggering $20 or so. Imagine my surprise as I found the total creeping over $100.

I had forgotten that I received $70 for bookkeeping last August until I found the note in my jar. Unfortunately I had to give up helping my friend with their books because I wasn’t able to be reliable after my mother fell. I will have to find something to replace that bit of regular revenue.

In addition to that, I got decided to log into some of the PTC programs that I had been using and found that I was very close to payout in some. One that I have just gotten is from Wordlinx and I received $9.50. I was amazed that I’d still be able to earn anything from them after all this time. It only took about a week to earn the $0.76 that I needed to reach payout. It was instant so it is safely ensconced in my Paypal account now. There are a few more programs that I expect to pay me but they only total a couple of dollars.

From time to time lately, I help clean the arena. I’ve collected the better part of $10 from coins found on the floor. Added to the other coins I’ve found as I make my way through life, the “found” coins toted up to the spectacular amount of $13.06. The odd time there are stray beer cans. If they allow it, I may lay claim to them if I help again.

If I include 2 of the free movie passes that I have sold for $4 each, the total of my fund goes up by $100.56.

Recently I joined a program called Swagbucks, a search to win site that has been around for a few years. A friend has been suggesting that I join it for about a year and I just had no time to. Now I am glad that I did. When I joined I decided that whatever I won would belong to my journey and, if I wanted it for me, I had to buy it from the journey fund. Within a couple of weeks of joining, and not much effort, I had enough Swagbucks to get a $5 Amazon e-gift card. It is roughly one week later and I am just 4 Swagbucks short of getting another. I hardly spend any time on it and average about 65 SB per day. I just use it as I would any other search engine.

I’ve learned that US residents can earn Swagbucks much faster than Canadians can. They also have a wider range to rewards to choose from. Despite that, I’ve been impressed with this program so far.

In addition to the Amazon e-gift card, I have a few bottles and a bag of cans that will be added once I’ve actually got the cash in hand for them. Until then, I won’t be adding any of it to the total.

For the immediate future, I need to figure out what to do to replace the bookkeeping money that I was getting and what my strategy will be when I reach $1000. I’ve been mulling my strategic options over and am still unsure of the direction that I want to take.

Total today – $100.56

Grand Total - $600.72

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Returning to My Journey

After a VERY lengthy absence, I am attempting to claw back a small bit of my life. To accomplish that, it'll take some focus and all the stars in the universe aligning in a perfectly straight line but I am sure it will happen...eventually.

They should have special diploma courses for navigating life. It is far more difficult than navigating a ship and they have courses for that!

Ah well, back to the topic at hand.

I need to figure out exactly where I am with my journey and get it posted by the weekend. Because I am sooooo far behind, I will be just giving an overview rather than detailing how I got each little bit.

For those that are just starting out, and those further along, I recently joined a program that I'm pretty pleased with, Swagbucks. It costs nothing to join and earn. Nor does it consume too much of your time. You simply use their search bar and, because they pull from Google and Ask, the results are decent most of the time. Random searchers get rewarded with Swagbucks but they do it often enough that most get a few rewards throughout the day. The Swag Store offers thousands of items that you can redeem your Swagbucks for, including PayPal dollars and Amazon (dot com and dot ca). It won't make you a ton of money but it will add up. Whatever I get belongs to my journey fund so, if I use it, I have to buy it from the fund.

Give Swagbucks a try. I'm finding that I can get at least one e-gift card a week, depending on the card. I've been consistently getting between 60SB and 100SB a day so it adds up quickly. If you do join, let me know and I will give you some tips on how to get some SBs effortlessly every day.

I will be updating the links of Others on the Quest in the coming days.