30 Days of Financial Action -- Day Two: LEGIT Online Data Entry

Yesterday, I mentioned that I found a legitimate source for online data entry. There are a lot of scams out there, but there are a few real, legit options too.

Many legitimate online data entry gigs require you to work set hours and/or meet weekly or monthly productivity criteria (or even daily or hourly!). None of those options would work for me since I already have a full time job and lots of other responsibilities. Plus, I was looking specifically for options with flexibility.

I stumbled upon an organization that has since changed names a few times, but at present is called The Smart Crowd from a company called Lionbridge. 

Because of privacy issues, I can't really share much in the way of screenshots, but here is the current home page:

You are NOT going to get rich with this, and you are most likely NOT going to be able to even pay your regular monthly bills. It's very low paying data entry work, but for me, the flexibility to do it anytime from anywhere in the USA are great.

Typically, I earn enough money to pay for my monthly gas and a bit more, if I'm really on top of things.

When I first signed up with The Smart Crowd, I took a few typing and data entry tests and then had to sit back and wait. Several weeks later, I received an email stating my application had been approved and I could begin working.

When you are finally set up, you log in and see a list of jobs, each falling into a type of data entry category and each with their own rules for processing. You click on one and are taken to a screen with a box on top showing a clip to enter and a blank box for your data entry. Below that, there are two preview windows of the next two snippets to be typed or entered.

The main screen, after logging in, also shows you a break down of your productivity and earnings for the current month, current week, and current day.

At present, pay out occurs on the 15th and the 1st of every month if you earn a minimum of $30. This past month, I earned $48. My goal kept increasing as I moved past $30, and I had hoped to reach $60, but real life got in the way of those plans -- real life is one of the reasons I like the flexibility of this gig!

As I mentioned, you aren't likely to be able to pay your bills off of this data entry option, but you will earn enough for a tank of gas and a few other things if you really buckle down and stick with it. However, if life interferes, it's not a big deal to drop it for a day, a week, or even several months and then pick right back up again.

If you are interested in trying it out, click HERE to learn more about The Smart Crowd data entry.

What little side gigs do you have going on? 

Are you following a cash envelope system to get your finances straight? Check out this download-and-print cash envelope on Etsy. It's fun, inexpensive, and you can print as many copies as you need! It doubles as a coloring page too:

Check out Day One of my 30 Days of Financial Action:

The exceptional value of a penny

A penny is worth so much more than it's literal one-cent value. If you think about it, in the United States, no other denomination of money has any value without the penny.

So, I want to know -- do you pick up pennies when you see them on the ground? Do you keep them and count them up? Do you always make sure to have four pennies in your pocket, just in case?

Or, do you think of pennies as annoying wastes of space or having little value?

I ask because I recently watched THIS Marie Forleo video in which Marie spoke about money habits, including habits like picking up change if you see it in the street or organizing your money neatly and in order in your wallet.

I started thinking about the vast difference between how I treat my money versus how my ex treated money while we were together (and I suspect his habits haven't changed much).

My ex used to HATE pennies. He hated them so much that he would literally throw them out the car window while driving or in the trash if he was at home or out walking somewhere! Can you believe that?

He was LITERALLY throwing away money!

We kind of had a constant ongoing argument over pennies. I believe a penny is much more than simply one-cent. A penny is a lot of value that can add up quickly -- one penny alone may not be much, but ten pennies is a dime. 100 pennies are a dollar. A thousand pennies are ten dollars. And so on...

Pennies have extraordinary power and value that I cherish. 

Every time I saw my ex throwing away pennies, I felt a rock drop in my stomach. He saw himself throwing away a nuisance. I saw him throwing away our financial stability and our son's future (like, throwing away college tuition). 

Next time you see a penny on the sidewalk, pick it up. Take it home and drop it in a cute piggy bank, jar, a box, or whatever receptacle makes sense for you. Make a habit of dropping all of your change into this container! It will add up faster than you might think and it could potentially save your financial butt or at least ease a tight financial spot.

There have been times when money was tight and my little piggy bank (that actually looks like a monkey) has gotten me through. I may not have had enough paper dollars to buy all of the groceries we needed or to get gas to drive to work, but because I have the habit of tossing ALL of my change into my little piggy bank, I was able to see myself through in a pinch. Right now, I have almost ten dollars in change in that little coin bank with another couple of dollars in change in my wallet that I'll be dropping into the bank soon.

And, this may seem silly at first, but lately I have been working on changing my mindset around money from one of stress, dread, and worry to one of appreciation and blessing. Every time I drop coins into my little bank, I say to myself, "Thank, you Universe for this blessing" before inserting each coin. At first I didn't notice any effect from this habit and it seemed like it was just wasting my time because I don't just say it once and drop in all of my collected coins. Nope, I say it for each individual coin I put in my little bank. Now, however, after several weeks of doing this, I find that this ritual helps me to slow down, calm down, and appreciate that I CAN and I WILL dig myself out of my financial hole.

Getting debt free is about baby steps, persistence, and understanding that I can do it -- even if it's one penny at a time.

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Did you like this post? Check out these posts as well:

• Paying debt one penny at a time
• Zero food waste and my budget

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DEBT TRACKING:
Original total: $110,000
Paid off yesterday: $0
New total: $109,950 

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Coming soon -- a blog post about how I am using coloring to motivate my debt pay off plans. Want to join me on my coloring to debt freedom plan? You can get your coloring pages in my Etsy shop -- it doesn't matter which pages you select; what matters is that you get started. Look for that blog post later this week!