My Future Prospects

If I go back to school, it's going to be at least a year from now. The earliest I could possibly start is the Fall 2013 school year. This means I don't want to get a job that will demand a long term commitment from me - unless it's a job that pays sufficiently well so that going back to school would be undesirable. I'm actually applying for a grant program that would make it unnecessary to go back to school. It's called HBOTT and instead of paying for you to go back to school, it pays you to work for an employer at comparable wages so that you can receive on the job training. It sounds good, and exactly like what I need, but I'm not sure I'll meet the eligibility requirements.

I'm a pretty stubborn person. Anyone who knows me well will probably tell you that's an understatement. When it comes to finding a job, I find myself resisting looking for minimum wage jobs that I could have gotten when I was in high school and probably by now would be some sort of manager. The reason I resist is not because I feel like those jobs are beneath me, but it makes me feel even more like the last 8 years of my life have been a waste. I'm 26 and at the moment I don't have any sort of meaningful prospect for my future.

Finding a job is hard. There is a lot of stuff listed on Craigslist, but I've been moving away from checking that because the number of scams on there is ridiculous. I've applied to most of the stores within a 5 minute drive from here and haven't heard back from anyone. I've applied for several full time teller positions at banks that were advertising the job and haven't heard back from anyone. Most places I ask for an application tell me to apply online, but then when you check the website you can only apply for specific positions that are listed as open, and there are no open positions. You don't have the chance to fill out an application and leave it in case a position becomes available tomorrow. I'd say about 80% of the places I go to apply at fit this scenario.

I'm sure I'll figure something out eventually. I'm just glad I found a way to be productive in my spare time. I know I'm not the only one that is being effected by tough times, and that's why I'm sharing the methods I've found to make a few extra bucks. The ones I've blogged about so far are relatively short and fit well into one post.  Next time I'll talk about what is my second best money earner, Swagbucks.

Introduction to Beer Money

Well, as I'm sure as obvious to you, this is my first post. Here's a little blurb about myself and the situation I find myself in. I'm 26 years old, married with no kids. My wife is going back to school for graphic design (and if she wasn't so busy with school I'd get her to make awesome graphics for my blog) and working a part time job. I am currently unemployed.

Finding a job in this economy is pretty tough, especially when you're as stubborn as I am. You see, I have my B.S. in Computer Science from the University of West Florida. That's not as great as it sounds because unless you specialize (UWF is a small school and didn't offer any specializations) you learn a bunch of theoretical knowledge that you could later build upon by getting a Masters degree and becoming a professor or researcher and then pursuing your Doctorate. I literally did not learn anything a normal business would consider practical. When applying for jobs I get asked if I know SQL or if I have any experience networking. I have to say no, but I am a good learner. That hasn't cut it so far. No one in the real world cares if I know the difference between Bubble Sort, Selection Sort, or Merge Sort. No one cares that I know how to represent data in a binary tree, an array, or linked list. None of the stuff I learned matters.

A binary search tree

What I want to do is go back to school to do something along the lines of a Network Administrator. I really can't do this though until Julie (my wife) finishes up with her schooling. We just simply can't afford for two of us to be in school. While looking for jobs, I stumbled upon a concept that has changed how I view using the Internet. I came across this concept one night when I was taking a break from job searching and browsing Reddit. This concept is called Beer Money. The idea is to devote small amounts of time doing something online that pays a fairly small amount of money, and at the end of the month use it to buy beer. It's almost like free beer because you put very little effort into collecting the money for it. Of course, this money doesn't have to be used for beer, but the concept remains the same. I was intrigued so I started trying different websites. Some were recommended by others, and some I found on my own. I've been doing this exactly 3 weeks now and I've earned $205.14 in cash and $40 in Amazon gift cards. Plus I have somewhere around $20 pending.


My goal with this blog is to share the sites I have found. The ones I liked and the ones I disliked and why. I'll review them and post guides on here with the steps I take every day. I plan on getting up one review at least every 3 or 4 days. I've been working on the first review and I'll hopefully have it up in a day or two.