I am supporting a family on a single income
I became a Mechanical Turk the day I heard about the website on NPR. I am supporting a family on a single income while my wife finishes school and cares for our child. Sadly it is not enough. Despite working 50+ hours a week and traveling frequently on weekends, often working 7 days straight for 2-3 weeks on end, I just don’t make enough money to get by. Most months see us $200 - $300 shy of expenses so to avoid putting loads of debt on my credit cards I have had to start pulling out of my reserve fund to make ends meet. I am very good with money and save where I can, but no matter how much I scrimp and save some unforeseen event keeps cutting into my savings. Granted my reserve fund was intended for just this purpose, but there is only so much pulling out I can do before I tap it out. To try and make up the shortfall I now use mTurk to try and make an extra couple of bucks every month to kick back into savings. During good months I can use it to build up the coffers and in the bad months I use it as a buffer to avoid tapping too heavily into what little savings I have managed to amass. I work on it during my lunch break and at night whenever I can. Unfortunately most of the tasks do not actually pay much when you break down how much time you spend on them, but the hours are flexible and since I watch the baby at night while my wife is in school and travel a lot a second job on the weekends or at night is not very tenable.
