It's Official

My husband was given notice that he is being laid off. While this effect is not immediately, it does make me wonder what we'll do when there's no more paycheck from his job.

I realize that he can draw unemployment, but not sure how much that will help. I've been told he'll only receive 2/3rds of his paycheck, someone said he'll just get 70% of his paycheck and another has said he'll get the same amount he received from his job.

I think our best bet is to try and budget from the lowest amount and if there's more to work with then that's great news. In the mean time I at least have my freelance writing job for now.

Still in Question

I can't believe its been 4 days since my last post. I guess I need to try to update more often. I actually didn't think it had been that long!

With all of the talk of lay offs, life has been very busy. I've been working non-stop with the exception of weekends and even lately I've been working those.

This week is when my husband will know if he's being laid off or not. I'm pretty sure he's very nervous even though he rarely acts that way. His nervousness consisted today of, Well, this week I'll know. He's been pretty much counting down the time and spending a lot of time talking to his dad about the lay off.

I was also informed that one of my cousins was laid off at Acme Foundry in Coffeyville, Kansas. He was told that 75 people were laid off there, including himself.

My aunt who was suppose to get hired on at Spears in Caney, Kansas may very well be at risk as well. She was offered a job after she was let go from Amazon (they were weeding out full-timers to temp only), but that was several months ago. Now that every company has been laying off, I wonder if she'll still have the job to go to after she gets my uncle settled.

Jobs are scarce and more and more people are doing what they can to stay afloat. It's gone as far as some women are forming a coop with one man for a house. Not something I would ever do, but everyone is entitled to their own way of life just as long as it doesn't hurt anyone I guess.

The Economy Hits Home

I don't know about you, but this economy thing is really starting to make me wonder. I'm not worried, just wondering. We live in a very small town and already five big companies have laid off people and or are closing their doors. Now there is real talk of my husband being laid off at his job. Will it happen? There's a big chance. At first he assumed it was the bigger city laying off people, but as it turns out, it's now hit home.

We'll know within the next few weeks if he gets laid off or not. The only good news out of this is, it gives us a chance to move and I still have my job.

Paying Down Credit Card Debt

Instead of paying insurance for a year in advance, I've decided to begin paying off a credit card. The reason for this is, the interest rate on the credit card is much more than what we'll be saving on insurance. Right now the credit card I am wanting to pay off is not in use whatsoever. It's a closed account, so there will be no using the card for any reason.

The balance owed on the card is about $1200. I figure if I can knock out at least $100 or that amount in about 2 weeks, that's doing really good. This will all depend on whether or not I have enough work to keep me busy and also whether or not I'll have to make up any extra towards our house payment. I'll be posting updates and noting the amount being set aside for the credit card debt as much as I can. The way I figure it will take me about $12.50 a day extra to meet my goal. That's not bad at all! :D

If I find that the 12.50 can be easily made, I'll increase my goal for the two weeks after that. I am hoping to have that credit card paid off by December! In order to accomplish that, I'll need to make at least a $150 payment every two weeks. That's $18.75 a day. Not too bad, so we'll see what happens! I am very excited about doing this.

Another goal I need to be working on is buying a car so that I can pick up my kids without having to spend nearly $200 every trip. That's getting to be quite a bit! So I am going to see what I can do with the car goal as well.

Who Not to Write For

When you're a writer and barely scraping by, sometimes desperation seeps in and you begin looking at all of the different writing options that there are online. While many of the options can lead to some nice money, there are two that I don't suggest.

Hubpages

I think I started an account with them at one time. And then I found out that the only way you get paid is if someone clicks on a google ad, ebay and amazon. Like here, basically. Only you don't get all of your profits from those clicks. Hubpages takes 40% of your profits. Why do that when you can get 100% of your profits on places like blogger.

howtodothings

I used to have an account with these guys. Actually I still do, but I haven't written anything in a very long time. The reason is, they've changed things drastically. It used to be that you could write an article and get paid with gift cards. I loved it. But then they changed things. Just like Hubpages you post an article and get paid through revenues. Google Adsense only. The kicker is they keep 50% of your earnings from google adsense and they keep the rights to your articles. Meaning, you cannot use that article anywhere else. How insane is that? What a ripoff!

Now as far as whether hubpages gets to keep the rights to your articles, I'm not fairly certain. But I don't see a use for either of these sites. They are a waste of time, unless you just want to show off your work for nothing. You can do that right (blogger) here and earn some money doing it.

Those are so far the only two sites that I know of that aren't worth writing for in my opinion. Does anyone know of others? If so, why are they not worth it?