The work at home field is full of scams. If you have spent much time at all looking online for that perfect work at home job you’ve probably seen far more scams than actual jobs. It’s rough out there.

The reason for this is that it’s so easy to set a scam up and have people fall for it. Websites cost very little and a scam can be set up in just a few hours, waiting for the unwary.

If you want to work at home in customer service there are a few things you need to look out for in order to avoid the scams. There are real jobs out there if you can only find them.

No matter the work at home job you want, be careful about paying when you apply. There are a few legitimate companies that do charge for a background check, a practice I personally disapprove of, but it’s something you can also see in outside the home jobs. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve written about being protective of your kids when they’re online. There are lots of dangers in the sites older children love to visit most, such as MySpace or even in their email. Monitoring their usage is vital.

However, you can’t be standing behind them every second, and that’s where a quality software solution comes in handy. Today I read about one I hadn’t heard of before.

SpectorSoft has a software that can help. It can be used for Myspace tracking and other online activities. You can have it alert you to the usage of certain keywords or phrases, so that even if it happens in IM, chat, email or MySpace you’ll know about it. Read the rest of this entry »

I did this post last year too and confused a forum friend who saw the title of my post last year. Yes, it was on purpose. He made the natural assumption about such a title until he read it.
Last year, I called my post Quitting Cold Turkey. That’s the name of the recipe my sisters invented to take care of Thanksgiving leftovers. You know how boring turkey sandwiches get, but there’s much more you can do with excess turkey.

This year, since we weren’t hosting anyone we only have the leftover turkey my mother-in-law foisted off on us. That was about enough for a lunch and a dinner, so I don’t get to make that recipe… yet. I am thinking about buying a very small turkey sometime in the next few weeks to make. After all, it’s very cheap meat and the bones are a great soup base.

What do you do with turkey leftovers?

[tags]thanksgiving,turkey,leftovers[/tags]

This Thanksgiving weekend I’ve seen a lot of blog posts about what people are thankful for. Just thought I’d join in the crowd.

I’m thankful for my children and my husband. They make life difficult some of the time but much better than it would be otherwise most of the time. I can’t picture living any other way.

I’m thankful for the ability to work at home. It allows me to take the time I want to be with my family.

I’m thankful for the Internet. Without it, working at home would be much, much harder. I don’t know exactly what I would be doing, maybe medical transcription running tapes and reports back and forth, or maybe not even working at home, but I doubt I would be having half as much fun.

I’m thankful my car still runs. Hope I didn’t just jinx myself there, as the poor thing is getting old and showing it. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the big things that slips for a lot of work at home moms is that perfectly clean house. You know, the one all stay at home moms are supposed to maintain.

Even for a stay at home mom, keeping a perfect house is one heck of a lot of work. Any time the kids are at home you can count on new messes being made. It’s not easy keeping up with the messes, and the kids can only help as well as is appropriate for their ages. Often that means they make more messes than they can clean well.

But it gets worse when you add a work at home job into the stay at home mix. Suddenly there’s something more demanding hours of your time. Depending on exactly what you do you can’t always limit things to just when the kids are asleep… especially if you want time with your husband. It’s a tough mix.

Working at home is serious, even though many people think it is little more than a hobby. I speak from experience in this area, as it took literally years to get my inlaws to understand that first my job as an at home medical transcriptionist was a real job, and then that my home business did indeed bring in real money. Read the rest of this entry »