I have worked at least part time since I was 17, so that would be almost 24 years. More years were full time than part time. After pulling our boys out of public school two years ago, I decided this past March that I needed to be home all the time. Now before you think, well duh! How could you homeschool and work?! Well, thousands of people do it. My boys were 11 and 12 when they left the ps. They are bright, self motivated learners. My work schedule was extremely flexible. I worked for Mosaic/Infores which scans grocery store endcaps, displays and special projects. My husband worked second shift (4-12). I could leave for work at 3am and go to my stores that were open 24 hours a day and be back home before 9 am.

The kids would be up, breakfast eaten and ready to work. So what was the problem? Well, just keeping those long hours caught up to me and as they get older their school work is more intense. They are in 9th grade this year and I want to make sure they have the most excellent education possible. Our local school system is in the paper often about the lack of students being prepared for college, industries not locating here because of the poor education, etc.

Anyway, I have always surfed the web for freebies. One day on a message board, I heard about ChaCha. I did some checking on it, reading articles, trying it out myself, etc. I joined as a Guide. Now the application was a bit intimidating the first 3 or 4 practice searches, but then it finally clicked and I am making some money.

You won’t get rich doing ChaCha, but in just 4.5 weeks of being a Guide while I am checking email, research school topics, etc, I have made $240 . Now that is no where near what I made working outside the home, but I don’t have the wear and tear on my car, the clothing costs, the food cost (goes up big time when you are tired). Another big advantage is that we are in a lower tax bracket and got double last year’s tax return. Doing the taxes last year as if I didn’t work showed us that this was going to happen and we also calculated that I only made a couple of dollars an hour after taxes, so it just wasn’t worth the time away from home. I would rather do the ChaCha. It will put us up a little bit in the tax brackets but since I don’t have all the expenses of working outside the home, it’s okay.

Next time you need to search for something,  let a ChaCha Guide help you