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I always tell my readers that skills + action pay off. Rosemarie Groner is a great example of that!
After working as state troopers with crazy schedules and shift work, she and her husband decided it was time to figure out how she could stay home with their son. They trimmed $23,000 a year off their budget, which gave Rosemarie the motivation to dig in her heels and start her blog Busy Budgeter.
She was soon making enough that her husband was able to quit his job, too, and start his own at-home business. Today, Rosemarie helps her readers budget effectively and save money.
Rosemarie Groner’s Life 10 Years Ago
When Rosemarie was a state trooper, she worked crazy, long hours, and her time was never her own. She had to deal with mandatory overtime, sometimes even working fifteen or sixteen days without rest.
Like many of us, she thought this was just the way work life was. She accepted it until she became a mom. She and her husband barely saw each other due to differing work schedules and adding a baby to the mix completely changed everything.
The time had come to make a change. She didn’t want her life to be this way for the next twenty years.
So they started researching work-at-home opportunities. But they were disorganized and over $30,000 in debt, living paycheck to paycheck. She didn’t think being a stay-at-home mom was an option for her. How wrong she was!
They got into budgeting and became super addicted to it, reducing their spending by over $23,000 a year. Wow! Rosemarie, you’re a rockstar!
When she started working for herself, her quality of life skyrocketed, and she became more efficient and faster. She works no more than twenty hours a week. If she doesn’t get it done in twenty hours a week, it simply doesn’t get done.
This strategy allows her to be super successful because she focuses on return on investment — activities that will bring in the most income and give her time with her family.
Rosemarie went from making $52,000 a year as a state trooper to making more than that amount every month. That’s SUPER impressive!
There are so many opportunities out there, but some people let fear hold them back from taking the next step. They may worry that it’s a scam. I get this all.the.time. with Proofread Anywhere and Work-At-Home School. Some people have never heard of the companies before, so they automatically assume they’re scams… but I always say there’s nothing scammy about skills.
That’s the whole reason we created Work-At-Home School — to show people there are possibilities. It gives people a springboard to find their fit with working at home.
How to Spot Work-At-Home Scams
Sadly, there are scams out there. Rosemarie and I are in agreement that anything that promises that you’ll get ridiculous rewards for little effort is a scam. It takes a lot of hard work to get to the point where you don’t have to work quite as hard anymore.
The reality is that skills are job security. If you know how to do stuff and people will pay you to do those things, you have in-demand skills. But keep in mind, your skills have to be in-demand skills that solve a problem.
Top 3 Improvements in Rosemarie’s Life Now
Let’s get back to Rosemarie’s story. I want you to know how her life has improved through working at home.
First of all, her budget is much better. When you feel stuck in a job you hate, it’s difficult to adjust your budget. The only way to do that is to spend less money on stuff you like spending money on. But if you can do work you love, you get excited about increasing your income.
Secondly, when she created her online business, she found she had so much more time than she did as a state trooper. Now she’s got time to do things like CrossFit and have date nights with her husband. Even better, she’s been able to take a month off here and there and just be a stay-at-home mom. There’s no way she could have fit all that into her old work schedule!
Lastly, Rosemarie has no interest in creating an empire. Her goal is to be a stay-at-home mom. Blogging lets her do this. Not only that, it allows her husband to be a stay-at-home dad as well. Blogging has allowed her to create the life she wants.
How She Reduced Her Spending by $23,000 a Year
My mind is blown by how much Rosemarie was able to reduce her spending. And it was by making really simple changes! The biggest change she and her husband made was refinancing their mortgage to historically low rates. Rosemarie curbed her book-spending addiction and started using the library. They started using coupons sparingly and getting cash back through Ibotta. They also found cheaper alternatives to name brand products they normally used.
To find what worked for them, they tried all sorts of things. You just gotta try!
Rosemarie says their biggest issue was that they were chronically disorganized. They had piles of laundry you’d have to crawl over to get out of the house. Dirty dishes were left in the sink for days, so they couldn’t cook even if they tried. They didn’t take out the trash regularly. Every part of their life was a hot mess.
She attributes this to never learning to be organized and having such a chaotic work situation. Once Rosemarie got out of that bad work situation, she gained back time and made changes.
She and her husband are impulse people, and a huge factor for them was learning to work with their personalities, not against them. One huge way they worked with their personalities was to use cash envelopes. If something came up that they wanted to do or buy, they literally couldn’t. They’d have to go all the way back home and get more money. By the time they got home, they’d have had time to question whether they really needed it or not… and the answer to that question was “Probably not!”
Another thing they realized is that credit cards just don’t work for them. Some people can use credit cards responsibly, but according to Rosemarie, she and her husband are not those people.
I totally agree it’s smart to work with your personality. After reading Gretchen Rubin’s The Four Tendencies, I discovered I’m a rebel. which basically means I don’t process expectations at all. So if somebody is saying, “You should do this,” I’m not going to do it.
Overcoming Difficult Moments
Giving up your day job and working from home can be scary. There are going to be moments when you want to give up.
Rosemarie struggled with self-doubt. No matter how good you think you are, there will always be doubt.
The key is sticking to what you say you’re going to do. Rosemarie says instead of putting something off, make a commitment to yourself to stick to it. Even if it’s something small, it’s still progress.
She says you should stick with your goals in spite of the objections you receive from people around you. Think about how good it will feel to say I told you so!
You know I’m all about skills! Rosemarie has solid skills now. She’s honing them every time she works on her business.
Why Do Some People Quit?
Not everybody who starts their own business will stick with it. They might let lack of support, self-doubt, or fear hold them back.
I think you gotta ride the wave while you have the energy to do work. I had a habit of losing steam. A lot of people get the motivation initially but then they kind of fizzle out. I feel their pain.
Rosemarie says people quit because of overwhelm. There’s so much to learn and do. And there are no clear signs of success at the beginning. You can’t tell if it’s going to work out. Everybody starts with the mentality that it may never work.
When you’re learning a new skill, you have to invest in education. She invested nearly $1,000 to save time on figuring out things on her own. But you have to implement what you learn or you won’t get results.
You won’t know how to do what you’re supposed to do. When that happens, do what someone else is telling you to do. Once you’ve got that in place, then test to your heart’s content. Feel free to switch things up and figure things out. You can make it better and make it work for you.
People think they’ve got to find the perfect job or the thing they’re passionate about. We don’t realize what our brains are capable of. We don’t realize that we’re not at capacity — that we can learn new things.
I remember spending hours and hours just trying to figure out one tiny thing in WordPress, and I thought I was terrible. I thought for sure that everything was going to fail, but it didn’t.
If I had waited for things to be perfect, I wouldn’t be where I am today.
Quick Tips for Starting Your Work-At-Home Life
So how do you figure out what your first move should be to create your work-at-home life? Rosemarie says you should figure out your why. This is individual to who you are. What you want is going to be totally different than somebody else.
Ignore the past. Don’t base your future on what you’ve done or been in the past. Start afresh.
You can learn skills and how to locate people who need those skills. Relationship building is the bedrock of business. If you stop thinking about yourself and about how you can get hired and start thinking about how you can become friends with other people, figure out what they need, and figure out how to learn the skills to solve their problems, then you become valuable to them.
It’s not about scamming somebody into thinking you know how to do stuff. It’s about becoming valuable to somebody else, and if you can figure out how you want to provide value, then it becomes almost effortless. It becomes something natural and even fun.
How You Can Get Started
I know Rosemarie’s story will speak to a lot of people, especially moms, who want to create a life they’ll love. Debt and disorganization don’t have to stop you from achieving your goals.
If Rosemarie’s incredible story made you realize that you can be an amazing mom or dad AND successfully work at home, then you’ll want to check out Work-At-Home School.