Multilevel Marketing and Me

Okay I am really trying to find a system that works for me. I have tried Avon and Pure Romance and I have not done well. It was rather impossible to maintain an online business with these systems and I don't like doing parties. I don't mind telling friends and family about products I am selling but I don't like pestering them if they decide they don't want them.

I am going to try selling Herbalife products. If nothing else I get a months supply for myself with my training package. I have always wanted to try them so even if I don't do well I get to try a product that I am interested in.   I am determined to figure out how to make money doing something like this. I have not been good at sales in the past but I am going to make an effort to learn how to sell not just hope that this product sells itself.

I have books on marketing and I am going to hit the library for books on good sales techniques. I am going to earn my initial investment back as quickly as I possibly can and then I am going to make a profit. If I hate it then I can quit. I just can't stand the thought of being tied to a desk 40-50 hours a week again. I can handle being at home and working on my time schedule even if I end up putting the same amount of hours in a week. I would like to decide I am tired of work and take a break and spend some time with the dog and the chickens.

My biggest problem with a "regular" job is the time clock. Typically you have to get up at a horrible hour in the morning and start getting ready for work. Then you have to drive to work and stay there 8.5 or more hours. You don't get a paid lunch even if you work while eating you lunch. You definitely can not go play with your dog for 15 minutes in the middle of the day nor can you stop work for the repair man that needs to get in an fix the furnace. I want to be able to go to the grocery store at noon on a Tuesday if I ran out of milk and work until 2 in the morning if I can't sleep.

Maybe it is just asking too much but there has to be something out there that I can do I just don't know what that is yet.

The Dreaded Lay Off

Hubby Laid Off

We have always known the dreaded pink slip could be coming but this week will be my hubby's last on the job for who knows how long. We have enough saved to live on for quite a while and with unemployment and a quick lifestyle adjustment we will won't have to touch much of the savings. Not that I want to live on unemployment for a long time but it will allow us a few weeks to get some things done together and give us some quality time to spend together.

I am looking forward to the quality time I will get to spend with Ryan. He works 6-7 days a week most of the time and lives on a third shift schedule. I only get to see him in the evenings for a few hours each night. Hopefully he will go on a day shift schedule until he gets called back or finds a better job. That way we can spend a lot more time together.

What Does the Future Hold

The other great thing about this lay off is that my hubby can explore other career options. I have always known that he is not excited to go to work each day so I plan to encourage him to think about what he would like to do. We can make a plan to make it happen even if he really does want to be a goat or ostrich farmer.

I hope it looks like my dreams of having a small farm that produces much of our own food but also generates other types of income. If it doesn't I just have to try to think outside the box and see how we can meld our dreams together. Now that he has time to think I want to give him that freedom.

I had a big segment typed on a few other things I wanted to vent about but I think I will save that for another post. Right now things are okay but there are some issues we need to pan out. I am thinking we might have the time now to really discuss these issues before I write about them. As I was writing I realized that we are polar opposites on these issues because of our spending/selling styles.

I realized that because of our lack of quality time together we don't really want to spend what time we do have hashing out the issues we don't agree on. It would not be fair to write a long public post complaining about them until we both understand where the other is coming from.

Other Money Saving Ideas
Well I am hoping to learn to make a few things at home that will save money but I am not sure it works that way anymore. I was thinking with my bread maker it would be cheaper to make my own bread but I can't really tell. So if any one has frugal bread recipes please send them my way. I am going to make some freezer jam this evening and start having eggs and toast for breakfast. It is more filling and it is cheaper that the kinds of cereal I eat.

As long as we are on food I also plan to make meals with the things I already have in the house in mind. This will only cut the grocery bill until my cupboards, fridge and freezer are empty but it is always a good thing for me to try to use what I have.

I have not had the heat on much even though it gets cold at night, I just don't want to pay the high gas bill anymore. I have it turned down to like 40 so it does kick on if it gets below freezing but that and the use of natural light instead of turning lights on when it is sunny should save me a few dollars a month. We also don't plan to turn the A/C on this year unless it just gets down right nasty. Since we can barley hit 60 right now I doubt that will be any time soon.

As you might already know I have chickens and right now they are costing me a little money but eventually they will help lower my grocery bill. When they are producing eggs regularly they provide eggs for me and I will be able to sell the surplus to family and friends to cover the cost of keeping the chickens. While I am not going to get rich with six hens I will be able to cover my costs and eat fresh yummy eggs.

Please if you have some easy money saving tips for me sent them my way. You can always email me at sundcarrie@gmail.com.

I am a bad blogger

Well I am really having some trouble adjusting to my night shifts. I am not always a zombie like when I was trying to reverse my schedule just two days a week but I am not feeling like doing anything.

No that I am realizing that a lot of my issues are because of my lack of a regular schedule I am really regretting not applying for the day shift on the weekend. At least then I would have been much closer to a regular schedule.

I wonder why I have so much trouble seeing things about myself when the right opportunity has passed my by. If I had applied and gotten that shift I would have been able to take a lot more day shift hours during the week as well. All I could think about was when my hubby does take a day off it is Saturday.

Now if my brain had been working right I would have realized my hubby would be sleeping about 8 of the 12 hours I would have been working. That would mean I would be tired but I would still have time to spend with him in the evening. Not only that if I worked on Saturdays I might have better luck finding a second part time job or for that matter I might be able to keep this job and work another full time job.

I really could use some extra money right now. My hubby is working 7 days a week and we are doing a good job saving. We have had a few setbacks on the savings front with an $1100 dollar vehicle repair and $1000 deductible for the duplex that had a tree fall on it and my hubby going to the emergency room for a nail in his foot. Good thing we had been saving because we had no problem paying for all that. This all happened in December and January well that is when the bills came in.

I really wanted to move from here before the spring but I don't see that happening. I am not in the mood for the loud people that seem to come out in droves when the weather gets nice. The houses are very close together here and even if someone next door to you is just talking in a normal voice you can hear them with you windows open. So add alcohol and a large group of people and you have loud drunk people who you can hear their entire conversation. Then you have fighting and sometimes music. Now if it only happened on weekends I would just deal with it but around here it is can happen all week long. I usually end up closing my windows and turning a fan or two on to block the noise or turning the air on well before its time.

To say the least I am not looking forward to the summer in this house. It is really getting to me and I am feeling desperate to make(and save) some more money so my hubby can feel comfortable moving. I really want to move out into the country with a few acres. I would like at least two with a good distance between houses. I don't want to be able to hear my neighbors unless they want me to hear them. I want a nice big garden with a bunch of veggies and some herbs. I also want berry bushes and strawberries everywhere I can fit them. Don't get me wrong I don't hate people I just want peace and quiet especially when I decide to sleep.

August 1st

Today I am taking it easy. I had surgery on Thursday and I did way too much on Friday because I felt okay. I paid for it yesterday. So I am just going to spend the day doing simple chores that won't require a lot of strength. I feel fine today but I want to feel great for Monday so I am just going to have to relax.

I spent a few hours yesterday and Friday applying for jobs online. I worked on my resume and sent it to some temp agencies and some directly to companies. If I take it easy today, I should be able to make a plan for going to fill out applications for Monday. My interview is at 2pm so if I get up early and have a plan in mind. I can go fill out applications in the morning and come home for lunch and head to the interview.

I need another job to save for a big down-payment on a house. I know I don't have to work so much forever and that is encouraging. I just have to keep it up and remember that if I want to reach my goals then I have to work hard now so I can do what I want later.

So Tired I Could Sleep For a Week

So I have been working on many things the last two weeks. I have been out to help with things like cleaning a goat stall that held two goats and had not been cleaned for quite some time. I loaded the back of a pick up truck three times. I then spent half another spraying round-up around all the fences and trees and I didn't get it all before I left. I also put a dent in the truck that I was driving which will put me behind on my saving schedule.  I did get to take my dog with me on the day I cleaned the stalls and she had a blast playing with goats from the other side of there fence, running around and chasing cats up trees. I enjoyed the work though I have to say I am thought I might change my mind once I got to doing the work but it feels great to come home tired and to have a more relaxed dog. It really feels like something I would love to do.

I have been trying to reconnect with the God I believe in and some amazing things have been happening. I believe it is God but even if isn't I feel better. I feel less stressed and I feel like I am starting to see new light. I can make it through a day at my paying job and not feel like shooting myself when I get home. Maybe it is just that I am doing more things I am enjoying in my free time. I have had more opportunities to do things I enjoy though since I started reading my Bible again and praying so for me it is not coincidence. I also have had 3 requests for showings on the duplex and a job interview that would pay me to work around animals with the possibility of me taking my dog to work. I have really been feeling relaxed more often especially when I am out on working on the farm. I get anxious mostly when I try to figure out how I am going to make the money to get a farm of my own and at least quit the day job that makes me stressed out. Maybe the farm thing means I should keep that job because I am less stressed out anyway.

I have also somehow in the last few weeks managed to say the right things to get my hubby to understand me more. I want him to help me with planning goals that doesn't mean they can't change and maybe he was just worried that I meant whatever we planned had to be done now or was not flexible. I don't know but he seems to at least be on board for now. He never has before and now I just need to get a second job so he knows that I am super serious about this. Everything really depends on our savings plans because we don't want a large loan no matter where or when we move. He can work more overtime and I can work two or three jobs but we don't want to have no life. We still need time to spend with each other. So we are going to have to balance things.

My hubby has decided it was a wise step to get different life insurance that costs less than half what we were paying for a lot more coverage. I love my insurance agent for car and home insurance but I think his prices and policies for life insurance are outrageous. As long as I live in Ohio I will have him as my agent for other things but I had to shop around for this. We have our exams next week so I won't cancel until they new insurance is in place. That will save us over $650 more a year. We have cut so much out of our budget we are starting to look a little crazy. A rough estimate on what we will be saving a year since I started cutting the budget is about $3000 dollars. I am really rather excited about being able to save more money towards our farm fund. Oh did I mention my paying job that was going to disappear instead gave me more hours. How is that for a miracle.

So I still have more work to do around this house today and I am going to take it easy this holiday weekend. I have some other stuff going on as well but I think I will save it for another post.

Friday Finances

It is no secret that I am a Dave Ramsey fan and I would love to follow all of his principals. The only problem with that is that my hubby doesn't agree with him on everything so I have to compromise. It is not worth it to have a marriage issue over something like how much to put into retirement.

So what I first have to mention is that my hubby is not a big spender anymore and neither am I but we both have times where we really want a big item. Now we save for it and if we still want it when we have the money we buy it. The things we don't agree on are things like budgeting every dime and the amount of money that should go into savings and/or retirement.

I highly recommend reading anything by Dave Ramsey but I am learning to take his major principals and apply them as much as possible. So on that note I have done a lot of stuff this month to save money. I am learning to eat cheaper as this is a huge bill for me. I like to eat expensive meat like ground buffalo and steak. I am replacing some of the ground buffalo with ground sirloin when I find it on sale. It is not as healthy but it won't kill me to eat it sometimes. I am not good at cutting the grocery bill and I am trying to learn to do just that.

I have canceled my cable and phone so that saved $70 dollars a month and I quit selling Pure Romance because I am horrible at selling and I was just spending money approximately $50 a month. I have plans for joining a garage sale this month and I am giving up many of my treasured books. I am also planning to change our life insurance with term insurance so which will save us about 1000 dollars a year but I plan to take that money and put into an investment of some sort or towards the house we eventually want to buy.

I still really want to sell that duplex too because it is just such a big deal all the time. The good news is that the wiring issue I posted about yesterday is because my hubby who went over to fix the doorbell left some wires exposed and they just need to be covered wires. So the only replacement will be the wires for the doorbells. It will not cost a small fortune to fix the duplex. If we do all or most of it it will just be a few hundred dollars.

I have a good size savings that I have designated toward a house down payment and I was afraid that I was going to have to dip into that to fix things at the duplex. I have a 2 week check sitting here that should cover most of the repairs. It was going to go to savings but now it will go to repairs. No big deal since I only work 4 days in a two week period it will just take another two weeks to put that much in savings. Things could be so much worse so I am trying to be positive.

My hubby seems to be not so sure about moving far away now. We have a long way to go with saving and can decide that later. We live in an area hit hard by the housing market crisis so if we were to by some miracle sell the duplex we could find a great deal on a small version of the kind of property we would want and give it a trial run. We would have to commute to work a little further like maybe 30-45 minutes instead of 10-15 minutes. I saw a house with 2 acres for 80 thousand dollars only about 15 minutes from our house but I don't want to look too much just yet. We could raise some chickens and have a huge garden and still work our jobs and if we hate it we could stay where we are and just keep a small garden and just keep a few hens for eggs. 2 acres or so is still manageable as a yard and would be great fun for an additional dog.

Friday Finances

It is no secret that I am a big fan of Dave Ramsey. I would love to get my husband on the plan with me but he doesn't want to work with me. He doesn't spend a lot of money until he wants something big. He gets irritated every time I try to talk to him about it. He insists that he doesn't spend money that I do. I don't spend that much money either but he seems to think that paying the utilities, rent and mortgage and buying groceries is my expense. I am not sure how to get him on the same page as I am on. He is fine with parts of the plan he just doesn't want to help or talk about it. So I am stuck working on it myself and having to change things when he feels like putting in his 2 cents. I asked him for one thing for Christmas and that was for him to read the The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness with me and get on the plan. He still responds with I don't spend money and didn't get me anything for Christmas.So I just asked to go out for pizza for Valentines day because I am craving pizza and I won't be disappointed.


Anyway I canceled all the credit cards and the only debt we have is the mortgage on the duplex we are trying to sell. My goal is to save enough cash to only take out a small mortgage on the next house we buy or pay cash. We will not move until the duplex is sold because we don't want to house payments. Right now we rent from my mom and step-dad because they had an extra house when they got married and it was bigger than the unit of our duplex we lived in. It was empty for awhile so we moved in.

So we just don't borrow money anymore and we have some of the Baby Steps finished.
Baby Steps
1. Save $1000 (we have this done)
2. Pay off Debt with the Snowball method except the house. (I think we have this done too unless the duplex would be counted since it is not our residence.)
3. Save 3-6 months of expenses for you completed emergency fund (we have more than that but the extra is for our housing fund)
4. Invest 15% of income for retirement. (I want to talk to my husband about this before we start and he won't really discuss it. So I have not done much I started myself a small IRA)
5. College Funding for Children (we are not having kids so we can skip this one)
6. Pay off home early
7. Build Wealth and Give

So we are doing pretty well but it is hard to move on without my husbands input. I don't want to tell him what to do or be a nag. I can't do his retirement for him they won't let me and he doesn't like to make decisions. So I think when I am going to sock away all my earnings from the next three months and see how much I have. Then talk to Ryan about this again. I will at least put 15% of my earnings into my own IRA.

I am trying to relax about the money thing because the problem is not that we don't make enough money. I don't need to work a full time job and I don't need to try so hard to make money at home although that would be a dream of mine. The reason I have such a hard time relaxing is because I like to have a plan and I can't make a plan without my husband on board. I want his opinion and I want to include the things he wants to save for.

I highly recommend any books by Dave Ramsey and I am also a member of My Total Money Makeover where I can work on a budget and track my progress. The best thing about this is that I get all three hours of the radio show and can put them on my ipod.

Sitting Here Listening To Dave Ramsey

I am sitting here heating my leg that hurts from two days of one hour on the treadmill. I am listening to the Dave Ramsey podcast from yesterday. I am sore but I am feeling motivated. I went very slow on the treadmill only 2 miles in an hour but I a am sore. I have been lazy and I have to start over again the hip I broke last year is really weak from not working it. I had to stop my cleaning to rest. Sometimes icing helps but heating seems to help more when it is cold, go figure.

I have been eating my healthy breakfast most days. Here is what I eat either french toast on light whole grain bread or waffels or pancakes from Hodgson Mills Whole Wheat Buttemilk Pancake Mix. What makes it amazing to me is that I make my own topping. I use four bags of my favorite frozen fruit. I mix and match today I will be using mango and peach two bags of each. I thaw them and put them in a food processor. I puree them and then throw them in a big pot with a half cup of brown sugar. I cook them on medium heat for about 30-45 minutes. Then I put one third of a cup in in little zip lock containers and freeze them I take out one each night for the next day.

I going to have to rework my food budget so I can eat healthy. I have heard a lot of people say it is cheaper to eat healthy and the only thing I can say for that is NOT. Especially when you live somewhere that gets cold in the winter. Fresh fruit and veggies get really expensive and they don't even taste good. They go bad quickly as well. A lot of the whole grain products are expensive or they taste like crap and many of those have crap like high fructose corn syrup in them. I trust Hodgeson Mills to have natural ingredients.

I am rather disappointed about having to change my budget but I suppose it will be worth it in the end. I want to follow the plan Dave Ramsey out lines in his books. My husband and I are pretty well on our way but there are a few things holding us up. I need a job and will have one for at least two months by March it will be full time. It will be part time after that so I need to find something part time after that. If I could make a few hundred a month at home some how it would be great, I will keep working at it but it doesn't seem possible.

I really want to sell our duplex but the housing market in Toledo Ohio is really bad we have so many foreclosures they are selling houses so cheap. If we didn't have something to sell we would be able to find a great deal but the buyers know that and we can't even sell the house for what we bought it for. We realize we will never recover the money we put into the house but we would like to sell it for what we bought it for. We don't like the whole landlord thing it is a pain in the butt. So my prayers are for the house selling right now. I don't want to try to pay it off right now I just want to save for a good down-payment for a house with a half acre to an acre where we can have another dog and a huge garden. The only debt we have is the duplex so it would really help us if we could sell it but it has been on the market like two years.

When I get back to work we can save all the money I make but we will have a little extra expense because I will have to drive to work so our gas and vehicle maintenance will go up. What we would really like to do is save to pay cash for a house or at least a fifty percent down-payment. We don't really want to look at houses again thought until we sell the duplex then we can decide what we need to have saved.

I Lost Some Weight and Made a Few Dollars

My Work From Home News
I have been using Amazon Mechanical Turk and I have made a few dollars to go toward books. You can also have them send it to your bank account but I just want to use that to support my extreme addiction to reading. It is easy but I learned quickly that you have to be careful what links you click on or you will end up with computer issues. They disable many of the harmful links but don't always catch them right away. I have earned money faster with that than any other method but it is still not much. In a week I have earned about 5 dollars.

In about 6 months I have only earned a little over 17 dollars with adsense and I only earn something reasonable with Adgetize (on my Dark Novels blog) when I post, click and pay for an ad. I might set something up for this blog if I can figure out how to make a better button to click. I might be able to do it myself with a program I have but who knows can hurt to try. I have never made enough to pay for the ad thought. I could if I had the time to click the maximum ads a day and post so if you always have time to do that you should be able to pay for your ad. It is not a bad program and if you have a lot of visits and ad clicks you can make more money. I am going to try to keep up on that a little more and see if it begins to generate more traffic. Right now I need to keep posts on my blogs too.

My Weight Loss News
I weighed myself just before I started this healthy eating plan of mine and I am embarrassed to say I weighed 165. I weighed this morning a little over a week later and I was 163.  I am only going to count it as one pound lost and attempt to wait at least a week to weigh again so I am not so disappointed if it goes back up a little this week. My weight loss goals for this year are to loose (starting at 165) 40 pounds; 125 is a normal healthy weight for me as I am just barely over 5 feet tall. I am hoping for about a pound a week but there is some leeway since there are 52 weeks in a year. I am sure there will be setbacks and stress so that will give me 12 weeks in case I get sick or have to work a ton and can't get on the treadmill. 

I am feeling motivated because I have never been this heavy in my life and I am sick and tired of this weight. I know I will feel a lot better once I loose 15 pounds because I will be able to fit into more that the two pairs of pants I keep washing and sweat pants. I got a hot topic gift card for Christmas and I intend to get a pair of pants when I loose some of the weight.