I have always been one to look for different ways to make extra money. I’ve tried survey apps, even just recently I took up trying them again. I’ve done Amazon Turk years ago. I partake in affiliate programs, have a farm, sell my art, and many other things I’ve tried along the way. Some have worked ok and others just aren’t worth it (surveys being one..ugh)

My cousin told me about this particular receipt app a year ago and so of course I had to try it! It’s simple which is what I look for in these types of money making things. I don’t expect to make even a good side income but for the little time it takes to scan a receipt, plus the fact that you can have it automatically scan for online receipts such as Amazon (I shop there a lot!) and your email, it is super simple and it doesn’t take too long before you have enough money to get yourself a coffee. Or save up to get an Amazon gift card which is what I like to do. I figure if I save that money until Christmas time, I can take a bit of a chunk out of the Christmas spending.

I also recently discovered that you can use multiple receipt scanning apps using the same receipts! Now that’s pretty cool. You can quadruple your rewards easily. There are some that take a little longer to upload your receipts, or have an extra thing to do, but these still don’t take much time at all, so I think it’s totally worth it. I mean, I figure on my down time, instead of playing a game on my phone or just doing something totally worthless, I can scan some receipts and make a little extra money back.

Let’s get into which receipt apps I use starting with my favorites. They all work great but there are a couple that are the easiest to use and have some extra features I love.

Fetch

Sign up with my referral code (6UQ67A) and get 250 points for your first receipt!
Download the app here to get started!

Accepts receipts up to 2 weeks old

Fetch is the one my cousin introduced to me. It’s still my favorite! Fetch seems to have more options for earning points, which in turn earns more money back. Their receipt scanner seems to be the fastest one so far. It’s very quick and easy to snap a receipt and upload. You get extra points for certain items, and buying a certain amount of those items. I think at this time, Fetch probably has a wider variety of brands and stores that they work with. You also get a daily reward spin once you scan a receipt for the day. You can connect your Amazon and Walmart accounts for e receipts, as well as your gmail or outlook email account to earn from email supported retailers.

Fetch does have a limit on number of receipts, as do all the apps, so sometimes I’ll have to wait a couple days to upload more. You can snap up to 35 receipts within a 7 day period, so when you hit 35 receipts, it will tell you you can’t snap again until a certain date, usually 2 days later. Most people probably won’t have that many receipts to snap within a 7 day period, but if you have a business, or farm or something like I do, you’ll probably hit that limit more often. The nice thing is, you can just save those receipts that didn’t get snapped, and do them once your waiting period is over.

Pogo

Sign up with my referral code (VBJ4PP) and get 250 bonus pts after you’ve earned 3,000 points in the app!
Download the app to get started!

Accepts receipts up to 2 weeks old

Pogo is my second favorite receipt scanning app. Again, a big one for me is speed. You don’t make much off each receipt so you don’t want to spend much time on scanning and uploading them. Pogo gives you that speed. You pretty much get the same amount of points each receipt though. They don’t have extra points for certain items and brands, but it also doesn’t take as many points as Fetch to get to your minimum payout. The nice thing too is that you can cash out to your Paypal account sooner. Pogo also does location rewards, so if you don’t mind them tracking your location, you’ll get extra points automatically and all you have to do is go in the app and click claim next to each one, on top of the points you get for scanning your receipts.

Receipt Hog

Sign up with my referral code spaf4522 , snap a receipt and get 5 spins for extra bonus points!

Accepts receipts up to 2 weeks old

Upload Limits: Up to 20 qualifying Coin-Receipt uploads per Receipt Hog week

Receipt Hog is another great receipt scanning app. This one is 3rd on the list because you do have one extra step after each receipt, although it doesn’t take much more time. They ask a question after you upload each receipt about who went on the shopping trip (Yourself, adult female, adult male, child under 18) so you choose who all went shopping with you. It doesn’t take much more time to click on an answer, but it is one more step to take.

Receipt Hog gives you more points for receipts with higher totals.

• Less than $10.00 = 5 coins (~ $0.025)
• $10-$49.99 = 10 coins (~ $0.05)
• $50-$99.99 = 15 coins (~ $0.075)
• $100 + = 20 coins (~ $0.10)

How much can you earn? I’ve listed above approximately what each receipt is worth if you cash out for an Amazon gift card of $5. If you wait until $40 to cash out, each receipt ends up being worth slightly more. There are also bonus points you can earn as well as referral points which is nice.

• $5 Amazon Gift Card (or Visa or Paypal) = 1000 coins
• $15 Amazon Gift Card (or Visa or Paypal= 2900 coins
• $25 Amazon Gift Card (or Visa or Paypal) = 4300 coins
• $40 Amazon Gift Card (or Visa or Paypal) = 6500 coins

Sign up with my referral code spaf4522 , snap a receipt and get 5 spins for extra bonus points!

Receipt Pal

Currently does not have a referral link. If they offer one again, I will post it here. Generally when they do, you and I both would get extra points when you use my referral code.

Here is the direct link to their app

Accepts receipts up to 7 days old

Receipt Pal uses receipt cards that you fill each week. Once you fill them all, you can earn extra sweepstakes entries. I don’t pay too much attention to the sweepstakes entries, but it gives you more chances to win extra points.

Receipt Pal seems to have a little bit more restrictions on number of receipts you can upload each week. They also say that you can only submit a maximum of 5 receipts from the same retailer within a 24 hour period, so you’ll want to spread some of your receipts out if you have a particular store you shop at a lot.

Once all your green points cards are filled for the week (you get 5 cards, 4 receipts each) any receipts you upload after that will not give you points, but will give you sweepstakes entries. If you are at the end of the week and still have receipts to upload but have all your point cards filled, then just save those receipts for the next week if you don’t care about earning sweepstakes entries.

Receipt Jar

Sign up with my referral code MELIH3CRM and start snapping and earning today!

Accepts receipts up to 7 days old

Receipt Jar is another good one. You only need 1000 points to get $5 and they give you lots of options to redeem including to your Paypal account. Easy to scan and upload and there are ways to earn bonus points as well.

How many points do you earn per receipt?

• Below $10 = 5 points
• Between $11-$50 = 10 points
• Between $51-$100 = 15 points
• Over $100 = 20 points

Most types of retailer receipts are accepted but things like hotel fees, electricity bills, phone bills, train/bus tickets and taxi or rideshare receipts are not.

How much have I earned so far?

Each receipt app is a little different and has it’s own limitations and rules, but during the time I’ve been using them, they all seem to get me to enough points to cash out around the same time frame/number of receipts uploaded.

I’ll give a breakdown of what I’ve earned so far from each app. I’ve been with Fetch the longest and only started the other apps a couple months ago, so I may update these earnings in a couple more months when I have more time with the other apps.

Fetch:
2022 earnings- $35
Jan. – April 2023 – $30

Pogo: March-May 2023 – $16

Receipt Hog: March-May 2023 – $15

Receipt Jar: March-May 2023 – $5 (I didn’t use this one as much at first because it kept lagging when uploading receipts. It’s not doing that so much anymore. Might have been my internet, I’m not sure)

Receipt Pal: March-May 2023 – $10

Grand total so far from January 2023-May 2023 = $76 That’s almost $20/month. And I only started using the other 4 receipt apps in March this year, so I could have earned more.

Remember, if you sign up using my referral codes above for each app, you will get extra points at sign up too, plus you’ll help me out ;-)

I’ve decided to challenge myself. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t lol but I think this time will work! I decided to start a Youtube channel for the Mom Venture blog and first off document a deep clean in preparation for Christmas. We got some cleaning and decluttering done the day before Thanksgiving in the main areas of the house, but there’s still so much to do. So if you want to see follow along, head on over to my youtube channel. I’ll post the introduction video below as well.

I’ve always had a horrible time keeping up with keeping my home neat and tidy, or even somewhat neat and tidy. Deep cleaning pretty much never happens aside from vacuuming and mopping when things get too bad… so I thought, let’s see if I can challenge myself to record my progress in each room. I want to get all the areas that I’ll be decorating cleaned first so we can get Christmas decorations up asap. Then I’ll move to doing more thorough cleaning like wiping walls, cleaning mopboards, decluttering drawers and cupboards, washing windows inside and out, dusting hard to reach places, etc…

After Christmas, I plan to tackle the master bedroom and make it more cozy for the hubby and I. I also want to tackle all my cupboards in the kitchen and laundry room. I’ll pull everything out, get rid of things I don’t need and completely reorganize things into spots that are more useful. I haven’t done that since we moved here 6 years ago!

We live on a farm and have 3 dogs, 3 teenage boys and a couple cats that are in and out of the house, so things get dirty and dusty fast! There are places that I haven’t dusted in a long time so I’d like to do a thorough cleaning of dust. I’m sure it would help the air quality in the house greatly as well, especially in the winter when we don’t have doors and windows open as often.

So I hope you’ll follow along! I’m starting my Youtube channel with this Great Christmas Clean Up but I am also wanting to post more farm house recipes and just farm house living, homeschoooling stuff and the like. If you’d like to see more about the actual farm, you can hop over to my Ankeny Hill Farm website and Youtube channel as well!

It’s almost Thanksgiving and my home, of course, is a mess. Who do you think is hosting Thanksgiving? You got it… Yours Truly. So I have exactly 2 days to get things cleaned up. Thankfully my mom helps a ton since my parents live on the property with us, but still, I like to try and do most the cleaning and preparing my home myself. I love and appreciate the help, but she does so much already with helping keep my kitchen clean and laundry done. I don’t like feeling like I can’t do it myself either. It’s hard though when you feel like there’s so many different things going on and you get easily overwhelmed by the house work. It’s always been a huge struggle for me. I’m sure some of you know what I’m talking about!

I see these farm house bloggers that always have their homes so clean and perfect and I definitely get a bit envious. And don’t tell me they only show the perfect parts on social media! lol Maybe some of them do, but I know plenty of people that keep their homes nearly spotless pretty much all the time. I hate that I struggle with it so much.

So, I decided to write this post because I was looking for ideas to write about and typed in some keywords in the Google Keyword tool to see what was popular for home organization. It seems a lot, and I mean a lot of people search for home organization services! lol I totally get it! My problem is that I would have a home organizer come in, get everything organized and looking awesome, and think that I’m going to keep it that way. Ha!! funny joke! But seriously, after looking up these home organization services and browsing their websites, it’s something I would consider!

I probably just need to put more focus on cleaning the house every day. It’s just so hard! My brain is just not wired like that. I know I can make myself do it. I just wonder how in the world some are able to just more naturally keep things in order in their home. Ugh!

I guess this is just a venting post but I will post some links to home organization services below in case any of you are interested lol

Home Organization Services (Near me…Jefferson, Oregon)

Elizabeth Regalado, Pro Home Organizer

“I help busy women by creating beautifully functional, organized spaces, so they can feel at peace at home and get on with their lives.” Elizabeth Rgalado

The SORT

Simple Organization, Realized Techniques!

Master Your Disaster

“Assisting others in creating harmonious living and office situations is something I was born to do.” Karen Brooks

Bright Space Organizing

Bright Space Organizing delights in creating spaces filled with beauty, function, and joy!

Tailored Organizing

Professional organizer near Portland, Oregon specializing in decluttering, organizing and space-planning for busy people who have other things to do.

Thea’s Organizing Services

We help individuals, families and businesses reduce the amount of stress in their life by creating room for success through ORGANIZING. 

It’s interesting… I wrote the paragraphs below on my instagram story back on October 14th 2019 just 5 days before I ended up slipping outside and breaking my ankle! And a few months before the Covid pandemic began. It just goes to show you that it’s true. We have no idea what’s up ahead in this path of life so we better hang on to God’s hand!

“Oh Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself: It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.”

Jeremiah 10:23 KJV

I read this the other day and realized there is a lot to this verse. The way of man is not in himself. Jeremiah knew this. So many today want to “find themselves” , “be yourself”, “you do you”, “look inside yourself for the answers”. There is something about being yourself as far as using the uniqueness that God gave you and not trying to act like someone else. However, when we take “being yourself” to the point of following what “feels” right instead of following the Lord, then it’s all wrong. You’re then trying to follow your way within yourself.

It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.

We have no idea where our life is going to lead because we can’t see the future. How then can we direct our own steps in this life? We don’t know the path. We don’t know what lies ahead! I talked to my btc class Sunday evening about this. God is the only one that knows the future and can see what’s ahead in this path of life. We HAVE to trust him to direct our steps. We HAVE to follow his steps or we WILL get lost.

I explained to them that when they go hunting or go on a hike with their parents, their parents might know the trail well, so what do the kids do? They stick right with their parents so they don’t get lost. If you stop, get distracted, or try to go off on a different trail, you’re going to get lost and possibly fall prey to a dangerous animal or even a dangerous human, or fall and get hurt or killed.

That’s what it’s like with God. We just can’t get through this life without him because he knows the best paths and he knows what’s up ahead. He knows the dangers coming and can prepare us for it. If we get tired, he will carry us. We do not know all this. I can have ideas of what I want to do with my life but I have no idea what’s ahead. I have no idea if I’m going to end up with cancer or get in a car accident, or lose my job at some point, or the economy tanks and I don’t have enough money to “follow my dreams”. What then?

How about we just follow the Lord and if he allows us to have some of the things we’ve dreamed here on this earth then awesome. If not, then who cares? This life is short and we have much better promises in eternity that will happen for sure if we just follow to the end!

For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps

1 Peter 2:21

(Disclaimer: This post may contain affiliate links. If you click the link and purchase something, I make a very small commission. This does not affect my thoughts on the product and all products that I recommend on my site are ones that I use or have used personally)

Ok, so I’ve always had a hard time thinking of things to pack for my husbands lunches but also, finding something to pack them in. It’s especially difficult if I want to make him a salad, attempting to push more veggies on him. And many times he ends up not eating his lunch because he didn’t feel like it or he ended up going out to eat or someone at work bought everyone lunch. Then we end up with a wasted lunch because it inevitably gets soggy, or gets left in the care or something and then it has to get thrown out. So then I end up feeling like it’s pointless for me to make a lunch for him at all.

That’s where we’ve been the past year or so. Pretty much just him buying lunches at work instead of me making him one. That gets expensive… And he’s decided that he wants to get serious about taking a lunch from home every day. Awesome! Let’s save some money!

So I started with looking up good lunches for husbands/men. Of course there are a lot of foofoo ones that I’m like “really? My man won’t eat that lol!” Then somehow I got onto searching for lunch boxes and found the bento boxes on Amazon.

I ordered a couple different types since I wasn’t sure which one would work best. The cool thing is that they both are great for different things! One is better for fitting a sandwich into plus some other items like veggies with a little cup for putting a dip or salad dressing in. The other bento box is better for salads or other more compact things than a sandwich. It’s nice to have 2 so that I can use the clean one the next day while the other one is getting washed, although they are very easy to wash by hand. It’s also nice if he accidentally leaves one at work, at least I still have the other one.

I’ve found that so far he is eating more of the veggies I’ve included than he used to. I guess using a bento box with all the compartments and stacking, helps give me a few new ideas for lunch items as well!

Here’s the main bento box that I really love so far. The other one is great too and I will post a link to it, but this one has a removable cup with it’s own lid for the dressing or dip, and it has a thin ice pack. You can either put everything on a sandwich and put it in the bottom compartment (It will squish down a bit if you put everything on it), or you can keep the lettuce, tomatoes, etc.. in the top compartment to be assembled later.