Ms Frugal McDougal Is Born

This is my hubby's pet name for me. I have always looked for ways to save money since I was a single mom for five years with two growing boys to support. Old habits are hard to break! I have gotten him on the savings train in a lot of ways now, though.
My kids think I am cuckoo because I refuse to shop in the malls. I have spent a lot of time and effort finding ways to dress and support my household and my children without spending hundreds of dollars on designer clothing. This can be done and it is not hard to do at all! It just takes some time and a mindset that you do not have to spend $60 on a pair of Limited Too Jeans in order to be cool in the workplace or at school!
All of this really came home for us when three years ago I had to leave my very successful massage practice due to health reasons. I had to relearn all the old tricks and find a few more to figure out ways for our family to do well without my income. I realized after some research that I did not have to be "without" income. I could work at home!!!! HOORAY! So I set out my work at home search for work that I could do with my health issues and still be here for my children as we could not afford day care with our present money coming in.
Some things I found I could do very quickly were online surveys and some paid forum posting jobs. These didn't require any experience except for common sense and to be able to post in a forum which I was very efficient at!
I immediately joined Greenfield Online and NFO Forums. I am still a member of NFO and continue to do their surveys today even though they do not pay out straight cash as they did in the beginning. They give points for surveys and you can build up points to cash in for a check, gift cards or merchandise. This does not work out to be as much as I received in the beginning but it is fun and I still enjoy finding out about new products on the market as well as being able to influence them to a certain degree. Needless to say this did not feed our family, but it did help out with some spending cash and for extras that we needed at the time.

Image courtesy of crisderaud at stockxpert.com