Avenues to create extra income (pay, taxes, rate, mortgage)
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I consider myself to be a homemaker/stay-at-home-mom with a couple side gigs...
1) I provide pet sitting/dog walking for pets in my neighborhood. I have a LLC and I'm insured and licensed. I pay taxes, but I also get to deduct things like a portion of my ebike, phone and internet bill. I also got to contribute a little to a SEP IRA and converted it into my roth IRA. Most of the time I don't work more than 3 hours a day. Around vacations (like right now) I work 7-10 hour days.
2) Related to the above... for a year I turned two bedrooms into cat boarding rooms. I made about $1000 after paying off the expenses. It wasn't "worth" it in the end. Sometimes the cats were just great, but we had a couple that were miserable (meowing non-stop) and that in turn made us miserable (because we spent way too much time with them trying to make them feel better). It got to the point where I felt like I was always working. Still.. I realized if I fully embraced it, it would have been a more profitable alternative to renting out the rooms to humans.
3) I run a "gifting economy" from storage closet. Basically what happens is that people in my neighborhood are free to use my storage closet to trade with each other and I allow for "donations" that I (or others) then go through. Sometimes I find stuff to keep, but more often I either post items to our facebook group to see if anyone wants the items or I'll bundle up the unwanted items and take it to a thrift store that gives you points for donations. We get 90% of our clothing from this particular thrift store and I'm very careful to only go when we've collected maximum points per visit. So yeah, it's not income generating, but it generates 30% off of our entire family's clothing needs for the year in addition to affording us many useful household items like lamps, kitchen gadgets, decoration, office supplies, free clothing or shoes (I won't have to buy shoes for 5-8 years because of one generous participant!) and furniture.
I know buying and reselling works if you have the right product. My husband's friend bought a bunch of broken arcade machines locally. He watched as the repairman fixed one machine and learned enough to fix the rest himself. Then he sold the machines for a nice profit.
I used to do the same with fancy sewing machines. Bought used ones along with all the accessories, kept the accessories I wanted, and sold the rest at auction. I usually made around $1000 on each machine. I haven't done it in a couple of years, but I still have a few machines I need to get rid of. I have a feeling I might break even or lose a little now.
My friend's 5 year-old goes around the neighborhood asking for recyclable cans. He saved enough to buy an iPad!
I have built budgets (in Excel) for folks and showed them how to track spending and prioritize their financial goals, whether that's paying down debt, freeing up cash, etc. This is an extremely limited side gig as it's really only for folks who come to know me. I don't advertise it. But I do make a decent bit of side income off it, all things considered.
I've also built websites and come up with basic public engagement plans (social media, mostly) for some local businesses here who were stuck in the 1990's as far as the Internet is concerned. This is a more lucrative side gig as folks are mostly willing to pay a lump sum 1/2 way through and at the end, as opposed to an hourly rate, and I'm a quick worker.
In the past I got hooked up with one of those temp agencies who specialized in event promotions. Show up, hand out samples or otherwise engage with the public around a product, make $15 or $20 an hour. (Probably a lower rate in a cheaper part of the country.) They're usually on Saturdays. It was a pretty good gig that can pay your monthly car payment.
I've made money teaching older people how to use the computer in their own homes, working with family businesses that had a grandkid set up their website in 2002 and never updated it, planning social media and marketing strategy for small businesses, and doing motivational speaking at conferences.
Right now, grad school takes up most of my non-full time work experience, but I hope to market myself more to small businesses who need a marketing refresh when I've completed the degree.
Garage sales or Auctionzip.com, you'd be amazed how cheap things go for at the local auctions around you. I've purchased full bedroom sets by Henredon and dining tables by Theodore Alexander for under $200. Get yourself a $250 trailer from harbor freight and load up on the weekends, then resell everything on ebay and craigslist. I've been to big 3 day farm auctions where newer riding lawn mowers sell for $20-$50. Even if they don't work you can usually get $100 each on something like that from a local guy who fixes them and sells them.. This does require time, some money, and the ability to get stuff home. But I bet you could do $500-$1,500 extra a month with just 2 or 3 auctions.
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