Gazelling

The closest thing I can think of to describe what I've been doing lately is "gazelling". For anyone who is familiar with Dave Ramsey, you know just what I'm talking about. Only I'm not doing it for debt - I'm doing it for savings. Gazelling is basically working your toosh off to make as much money as possible in as little time as possible. Dave Ramsey recommends it for paying off credit card debt, but like I said, I'm in it for the savings. I've been working about a thousand piddly jobs lately to make as much money as possible. For all those interested in what I'm doing -

*ExpoTV pays anywhere from $2-$10 per video you submit to their site. This means making videos of yourself reviewing products, editing them, then uploading them. I usually make between 5-10 videos a day during Lauren's naptime, then edit and upload them at night when I'm doing other things. Between Donald and I, we've made over $2,000 doing this in the past two months. Not bad!

*SharedReviews.com pays me $10 for every product review I write. They have a limit of $100 a person, so you can only do 50 reviews. Right now they're in beta testing and only have $10,000 to pay out during this time, and they've already paid out $5000, so I've kinda been in a hurry to get my reviews in before they run out of money. I just found this site 2 days ago, and since then I've written 27 reviews. I need to finish up the rest of mine, plus do 50 for Donald before they run out of money. This will only get us $200, but every little bit helps!

*Of course I've been teaching my Kaplan course on Saturdays. I've also been picking up proctoring hours when I can. Proctoring only pays $7 an hour, but all you have to do is hold a timer for 4 hours while the kids take the tests. I don't even have to stay in the room with them! So, I just go in the conference room and work on other stuff during this time. Not bad!

*I just picked up a student for private ACT tutoring through Kaplan. This gives me an extra 2 hours of teaching pay a week, plus an extra 2-3 hours of prep pay.

*I've been doing demo events at Wal-Mart. These are really easy and pay pretty well ($70 for 5 hours). I could do more, but of course most of them are on Saturday mornings when I'm teaching my class. I've done two in the last week on weeknights, so hopefully more will pop up soon. My next scheduled one isn't until October 28.

*Brainfuse tutoring starts in two weeks! I'm hoping to get in at least 10 hours a week doing this for an extra $400-$500 a month.

And this, folks, is how we are able to save anywhere from $800-$1000 a month. We can only save about $50-$100 from each of Donald's paychecks, so most of it is on my shoulders. It's okay though. Even though I bitch, I like staying busy. THANKFULLY I am working on my last class for school and should be done in a few weeks, so that is one less thing to worry about. That is, until I start student teaching in January. That's when things will get interesting!