RV Traveling from a Small Town called, Coffeyville, KS

Living in a small town has its challenges and Coffeyville, Kansas is no stranger to a challenge. 

• There are very few mental health options for my ADHD, or my son's Autism. As a matter of fact, there is only one facility, currently in town. 

• If you're interested in adopting a healthier lifestyle, there are a few businesses that cater,  but they come with a StarBucks price tag. Most of the families in this town, simply cannot afford that luxury. 

• We are limited on the availability of jobs unless you don't mind working fast food at minimum wage or foundry work. 

• The town itself has a lot of downfalls. For example: The county is one of the highest county taxes in the area and small businesses like El Charros are feeling the financial struggle due to on going construction projects like 11th Street. 

So with that said, we have decided it's time to move out of this town and travel the U.S. Moving out of Kansas has been a goal of ours for a long time, I just never considered traveling full-time until here more recently. 

Nevertheless, the biggest challenge will be the financial goals we need to accomplish in order to travel full-time in an RV. 

Currently, I'm busting my butt at a local business as a head housekeeper. The pay is barely above minimum wage. It's a job that really takes its toll on the body as well. 

There are a lot of other challenges we will need to take before we can just hit the road also. Getting rid of all of the stuff we have accumulated over the years will be another challenge for us. 

Not to mention preparing my youngest son for his own goals and challenges he will face.  

One step at a time. One step at a time. So without further ado....

Goals for February 2020:

1. Sell my 1986 Honda Magna Motorcycle -  This is a huge goal for me, because I purchased the bike on a whim. At one point in my life, I thought I wanted to own a motorcycle, but over the recent years, my goals have changed. The funny thing is, I've owned my bike for several summers now and not once have I tried to learn to ride it. The only thing I am doing is wasting money just to own it, in tags, insurance and taxes on a yearly basis. Plus, it's one less vehicle we have to take when we travel. So it's just time. I am hoping to get $1000 out of it at least. 
2. Promote my Novel series, "The Generation." -  It took a decade to write the book and another decade to decide to publish my Novel, "The Generation" through Amazon. Now let's hope it doesn't take another decade to be on the best seller's list, shall we? 
3. Clean out the last two drawers of my chest of drawers - This one seems fairly simple enough, but not when you have ADHD. It's a must to minimize everything if we are going to travel in an RV, however.
4. Finish one craft - Here we go again with the ADHD. But if I can finish one craft, not only am I pairing down stuff I have, but I can also sell it for a profit! Side hustle? 
5. Set Up Disability for my son's Autism - I'll be honest here. This one is already ongoing. We are actually waiting to hear back on the claim, so I may have to check up on this one since I have not heard anything from the government since Christmas Break. The one thing I did not do was guardianship for now, simply because it's a costly court date I cannot afford. We chose Power of Attorney instead, since the only two needs for him currently are financial aid and medical. 

And let the goals begin! 

Joy Smith, also know as The Insane Writer, is the author of the Sci-Fi novel, The Generation and the website, The Fight Within Her. She can be found on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.

August Financial Goals

Instead of updating once a week on my financial goals, for now I have decided to update once a month. If I have more time I might try to update twice a month, but I'm way behind on work due to this bug that I cannot seem to shake, so I need to spend time trying to get well and also concentrate on getting my income back up.

I do have the rest of August's financial goal, so I will share it with you. I want to thank those who have been visiting google ads and kontera ads. They not only help the companies who use my page, they help me in increasing my income as well. So, thank you!

Google Adsense: $0.29
Kontera Ads: $0.00
Private Sales: $56.00
PepperJam: $10.00
Payu2blog: $5.00
SocialSpark: $11.00

So for the rest of August, my profit was a total of $82.29. This is only a quarter of what I should be making a month in order to pay bills. Looks like I'm going to be looking for extra freelancing work this month if I want to catch back up and then some!

The Real Rules For Working at Home Part 1

For many at home parents, the idea of making a little money online sounds great. But, for some there's still that question of.... "How do I get started?"

If your goal is to make a little money online, the first thing you want to avoid are work-at-home scams.

The Number One Rule in this is: Any job asking you to send them money in order to make money is a SCAM. Simply put. You can argue all day long that, "Ohh, I can make money and get my money back by joining this program." However, I just don't and won't buy it. Now don't get me wrong, there are people out there who have made money this way, but I am a firm believer that you can make money online without having to spend money. Why? Well, because for most of us who are already on a tight budget, spending (wasting) money is something we simply can't afford.

Now let me add this. If you're spending money on a domain or upkeep for your website(s), or something along that line, that's different. What I am talking about is those work-at-home programs that ask you to send them money in order to get the job and then never pay up.... or ask you to send money and tell you in little tiny print that, "You could make money, but it's not a guarantee."

Number Two: You simply cannot expect to start a blog or a website and make big bucks overnight. It just doesn't happen that way. What you should expect is to make a reasonable amount of money overtime and then work your way up the ladder from there.

Number Three: It takes time and a lot of work to make money. Even an at-home job isn't something as simple as a few clicks and you're rolling in the money. It takes a lot of hard work and patience to make your blog or website a killer success. Even after you begin making money, you can't just expect the blog or website to run by itself. You'll still have to update it in order to keep things fresh if you want to keep earning money.

Number Four: You can't expect to earn a steady amount of money if you just rely on one source. Soo many bloggers like John Chow, can tell you this. It's been known as the phrase: "Don't put all your eggs (ads) into one basket." And of course, it's true. This goes for more than just ads, however. If you write reviews or articles like I do, you can't limit yourself to writing for one source or company such as payperpost. You have to get out there and keep yourself open to other resources as well.


Okay, I think I've said enough for now. If you have something to add to the above, please feel free to comment. I'd love to hear what you have to say.

In the meantime, I'll be sharing how to get started in working at home and obtaining goals for making money, in future posts!

John Chow and Why I Won't Succeed

If you don't already know, I'm a fan of John Chow and his blog. Not only is he famous for making money from his blog, he is also an inspiration to many people...including of course, me.

In his latest post, John talked about "The Biggest Problem Standing Between You and Success." My first reaction when I started reading his post was, "Oh No. Not another, it's all your fault lecture."

What I learned was, it really is my fault. It took John Chow to actually get me to see that, unless I start looking at things differently, I won't succeed. I won't be where I want to be in my life. And I don't want that. I want to reach my goals in life. Not just financially, but every part of my life.

After reading John's post, I also took a look at the comments other readers left for him. Some disagreed while others agreed and even added their own thoughts on why many of us are not able to succeed. One comment that stood out was from a blogger named, Steven Truong. In his comment he mentioned that while most people are motivated, they are too lazy to do what is necessary to succeed.

Is he right? In my opinion, I think so to some level. While not everyone will agree, I believe that John Chow's post, "The Biggest Problem Standing Between You and Success," is definitely worth the time to check out.

A Quick Update: There is a great interview video that Steven Truong did with John Chow. He left the link for us in comments, but unfortunately the full link didn't show. Luckily we're all smart enough to just click on Steven's site and search for that great video.

But, to make things easier, here's the link: John Chow Video Interview at Affiliate Summit West
2008

Please be sure to leave a comment for Steven and thank him for the great interview/video!

This week's goals, etc.

I apologize for the two day delay in writing a new post. Things have been very busy for me lately and continue to be. I've sat down and made myself a goal of writing at least 6 articles per a day. Not too far fetched I don't think. Generally if I set my mind to it I can wrap out about an article per an hour since the articles are between 450 and 550 words. At most it's 2 hours per article. So I can write for 6 hours a day or 12. I am aiming for 6 hours a day. The money will be used for our mortgage payment and to pay off some old debt.

Wish me luck! I will try to post my progress each day this week to give myself a sort of boost.

This and That

Tomorrow is the last day to vote on my story, if you'd like. For more on that, see my Last Post.

Moving on, a few people have mentioned that the purple on my blog is a little harsh on the eyes. Because it has been mentioned by more than one person now, I am considering changing the colors. I am not sure what colors to go with and I doubt I will get to it this week, but I will get it done eventually.

Today has been a very busy day with people coming in and out all day long. I finally managed to get chairs for the wedding and my Aunt has volunteered to bake my cake, so the only thing left to do is to pick up the license tomorrow, get white dress shirts for all of the boys, a pair of black dress shoes for Q and get some decorations. Whew! I still have to find out whether or not it will be raining that day or not.

The interesting thing will be... I invited both of my aunts who have been feuding with one another for several years now. Sigh. I am hoping they will be respectful enough to at least hold the feuding for that day. And I am sure they will. Heck, maybe they'll even get over their battle and forget the past. Of course that is wishful thinking!

I still have to write up the ceremony for our friend who is marrying us. I guess after work, I will do that tomorrow. Speaking of work I just submitted 40 article ideas to my boss. That should keep her busy for a while. HA!  

My goals for this month is to pay off a past bill that my fiance didn't know he had. Not sure what's next after that. I will probably pay off a small bill that I have been paying on from my past. I am really excited to be getting the bills paid off and to be debt-free! This month will be hard though because of the wedding, T's birthday and Q's appointment. Then In September we'll be headed to Oklahoma for my oldest son's surgery.

Well, it's time for me to say goodnight. Until tomorrow......

Procrastinating My Ass Off!!!

I don't know what has possessed me to do everything else, but what I need to really be doing lately, but here I am not doing it! Generally, I can wrap out about 4-5 articles a day, if I set my mind to it, but lately it's dwindled to struggling with 1 article a day. Not good since I have a deadline to meet by the 30th of this month. Now you would think since I'm kid-free for a few days I would really get some work done, but nope! My housework hasn't gotten done either. I just don't feel up to do anything. sigh. So to cure me of this mess I have gotten into, I've decided to borrow the idea of another blogger and write my goals on my blog. Maybe if I do that, I can accomplish a lot more. Right now my main goal is to get everything wrapped up and ready for the wedding. This hasn't been that easy of a task. I sent invitations out a week ago and yesterday, I realized that I would have to move the wedding to accommodate all of the guests. Thanks to a very dear friend of mine, I now have a new site for the ceremony which is right around the corner from the original site. I still have yet to talk to the officiant, get the cake, rings or marriage license. I also need to get white dress shirts for all of the boys, chairs to seat the guests in and wedding decorations for the reception and ceremony. Whew! My first priority is to re-send my invitation to my cousin. I received it back in the mail yesterday with a insufficient address label on it. So I checked the address I have for her and it was correct. I called her to confirm the address and it's the same address. I wonder who screwed up at the post office?? Sigh. After getting the invitation sent back out, I will finish an article that is due. Then I am off to shop for bridesmaid dresses with my friends. After that I will start another article and if not two and get those done. Then I'm going to bed and starting my day all over again. I should actually start a things to do list again since that helped my procrastination problem, somewhat. I big goal after the wedding is to pay off our debt and save money for the trip to Oklahoma for my oldest son's surgery in September. A lot to do, but I think if I break it down, it will help!