Preface: Last year I decided to express my thanks during the month of November for something new each day, as so many others have done before me. I never finished this series, so that’s my goal this year. I am re-posting the ones I wrote last year and adding new ones. This was originally posted on 11/17/12 (with slight changes made today).

In early 2011 I began mystery shopping, and it has been such a blessing to us.

It all started when Brennan came home and mentioned that the Hotel Hershey had been evaluated by mystery shoppers from Forbes/AAA recently and they had just received their scores. I couldn’t believe that someone could get paid to get a massage! 🙂 I was familiar with the concept of mystery shopping because my mom and grandma had done it when I was younger; so, I decided to look into it for myself and have found it to be a really fun hobby!

Since March 2011, I have completed 460+ shops.

Mystery shopping provides us with abundant “free” date nights. We can mystery shop movie theaters, tons of restaurants (ranging from fast food to fancy), hotels, sporting events, concerts, etc. This has been such a blessing to us because we strive to live as frugally as possible and this allows us to still “date” each other frequently (which is very important)!

On the practical side, we hardly ever pay for oil changes, brake inspections, shipping packages, etc. anymore. There are so many ways to get paid for things you need to do anyway! This has saved us so much money in the past three years!

Mystery shopping is challenging and requires a lot of detailed observations; but, once you get the hang of it you develop a system. Brennan is a great help on these shops because he can help me remember the details when it’s time to enter the shop into the system and he really enjoys it as well.

Finally, mystery shopping has been a way for me to bring extra income to the table which has allowed us to pay off our debt so much faster. Since I only work part-time currently, it has made me feel like I am contributing to our family finances more, which I love.

I’m very thankful that God has provided this opportunity for us to date, live frugally, and have fun through mystery shopping!

(To read more about how to get into mystery shopping on your own, read this post.)