I hit them with honest answers as well and get credits regularly that way. Besides the equipment buying I have over 9,300 credits in the bank, mostly from surveys. Tonight it was MyView Surveys from the offer page for 75. I didn't have any luck with Peanut Labs but they did throw me 5 credits for the attempt.. Got 75 yesterday from MyView, too. I didn't try any others yesterday or today.
I'm with you, hyena64. Without the surveys I couldn't afford to be here.