I watch my family’s pennies like a hawk. I only buy used on those rare occasions when I shop, and I employ countless frugal money savers like cooking from scratch, line drying laundry, walking errands, home haircuts, discount grocery shopping and DIY’ing any and all household projects. I’d sooner join the circus than keep up with those much maligned Joneses.
So yeah, I’m frugal.
But frugality alone is not enough.
It’s also important to bring home an income. And frankly, as high as that income can be, the better. Because some day I’d like to retire and have my kids graduate from college without crippling student loan debt. You know, normal goals.
My husband works full time as an emergency service worker, and I work part time as a hospital based labor and delivery nurse. And over the past six months, my part time work has taken more of a back seat to my responsibilities at home. My 17 and 19-year-old sons will soon leave the nest, and I want to savor these last few years of their wonderful company.
So I earn money outside of my job.
Call it a patchwork income, irons in the fire, side gigs or ancillary income, but the money I make outside of my day job can actually bring in a fair amount of money. Here’s what I do:
- I blog. I know, big surprise here. I made a conscious decision years ago to minimally monetize the blog. It would be extremely hypocritical to tell readers to consciously consume and support their local businesses, while posting affiliate links to Amazon and raving about amazing new products to buy. I do have two different advertising networks on the blog, which covers my blogging expenses with a enough leftover to feel like it’s an income stream. (I often laugh about about how I’ve invented the successful unprofitable blog!)
- I clean my mother’s guest cottages between tenants. There is great flexibility with this job, as it can be done any hour of the day, and only takes a few hours to complete. It keeps me humble, as it’s hard to get a swelled head about being featured on The Today Show when cleaning other people’s toilets. I end up doing this between one and five times per month, and the money really adds up.
- I sell stuff. Whether it’s jewels plucked from free piles, underpriced thrift store goodies or unnecessary clutter from the house, I am constantly working my eBay/Craigslist/garage sale/consignment store magic. This may sound like a pain in the tuchus, but it really isn’t. Craigslist is free and easy, and there’s a huge household consignment shop just a few blocks from the house. Garage sales are every few years and eBay helps to find non-local buyers for special pieces. This side gig can add up big time! At the moment I’m selling a drum set, a backpack, a Subaru trailer hitch, a Bruce Jenner T-shirt and an unopened case of motor oil from our old Subaru. Yesterday I sold a free pile lamp to the consignment store for $7.20, and it looks like my husband’s boss wants the drum set.
- I click around on Swagbucks and generally earn one $25 PayPal gift card per month. This will hardly get the mortgage paid, but it’s nothing to sneeze at. Might as well take full advantage of any and all money making opportunities!
- I pick money up off the ground. Okay this one will definitely not send anyone to college, but I track all the pennies, nickels and occasional dollars, and it eventually adds up. Around $35 per year. I call it my Found Change Challenge, and I invite you to join in!
- And of course, I work as an RN. I’ve been in the same job for over twenty years, so my hourly wage is pretty good. But I’ve learned how important it is to moderate my hours. Anyone who’s gone through the process of giving birth can imagine how stressful and tiring the RN side is. And when I work, I’m away from the house for 14 hours, so I’ve learned to prioritize my work-life balance.
What do you do for money? Do you have a day job that you supplement with side gigs, or do you choose to keep it simple? Please share your story in the comments section below.
Katy Wolk-Stanley
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.”
{ 43 comments… read them below or add one }
Mine’s a little bit patchwork-y too…I work for my church, doing music and I blog, mainly (though my blog income itself is very patchwork-y! Lots of small different streams with an occasional big one). I also sell things here and there. And I do a little bit of freelance writing.
I need to up my paid writing gigs!
Speaking of extra income…how are you finding the Everydollar budgeting software? Do you only budget expenditures for your “known” income (as in – from employment)? I am having some difficulty with the variances in our expenses due to bi-monthly water & power bills, but I assume that it will work its way out by budgeting 1/2 each month. Would be interested in your take on this software.
I’m figuring it out, and figure it’ll take a few months to get the true hang of it. But I am really liking it so far. No program will be perfect, but any program that I actually use will be a huge improvement over doing nothing.
Right now I am busy enough working full time. I am a CPA and do taxes and audits. I used to do taxes on the side as well, but no longer do that. When I get home, I just want to get my hands in the dirt and “play.” So, while gardening doesn’t make me money, it sure helps me save it. I also do some surveys, but don’t do swagbucks or any of those. I want to be off the computer when I leave work.
Two of my major “hobbies” are moneysavers or money generators: herb/vegetable gardening and bottlepicking.
Over 35+ years of gardening, I’ve learned to practice all the frugal gardening hacks there are, so I probably come out a little ahead once I figure in the cash value of dried herbs I give as gifts (have you priced Spice Islands/McCormick’s lately??). Not to mention the nutritional and psychological benefits of gardening.
And picking up NYS 5-cent deposit cans and bottles (plus any bills/change I happen to find on my walking routes) brings in $300-350/year.
I have multiple jobs! Im a stay at home mom to 4 daughters. Need I say more about that? I clean homes for people. I do landscaping garden work for people. I babysit on occasions. I have a shelf at my friends shop that I sell vintage thins and handmade pottery. I also clean for a friend who has a contracting business. Once they remodel I come in and clean it. As you can see this all adds up! Oh and its all cash baby!
We buy and sell homes and I do part-time cleaning job at the school.
I have taken to confiscating all money left in pockets at laundry time – not a lot of money, but rewarding to find. I also sell things on eBay as I come across them in my decluttering – mostly collectibles, some children’s toys, and I sold some lightly used running shoes as well. Not much, but every little bit helps!
I have long been a collector of money in the laundry!! Of course, when my kids were teens, I collected a lot more than I do now but my husband still occasionally gives me a contribution. I have a small piggy bank near the washer and just drop the cash in it. I only empty it every couple years these days, and it goes with my rolled change–I sell the quarters to my daughter for the coin laundry machines and roll the rest and take it to the bank to deposit every so often.
I’m quite frugal, pick up the few pennies I find on the floor (and the occasional quarter), use Swagbucks and Bing Rewards to earn a few Amazon gift cards, charge everything strategically so I can take full advantage of our credit cards’ reward programs (no annual fees and we don’t carry balances so it’s 100% free money to us), and shamelessly smooch off my husband’s salary. He works outside of the home and I take care of everything else save… mowing the lawn and painting the outside of the home as well as other home maintenance tasks. He makes the money and I manage it. It helps that we’re both homebodies so aside from occasional Amazon purchases and my husband’s video game addiction, we really don’t spend money. Unlike Katy, we don’t believe in subsidizing our kids’ college education because no one will be subsidizing “our” retirement. I worked for 15 years prior to becoming a SAHM and I will get a small pension but otherwise, not much is coming our way that we’re not saving ourselves. Oops, gotta go!
I’m going into the second month of being a frugal hausfrau, having quit a simply awful life-sucking job in mid-April to spend some time working on our house and looking for a part-time job. My only side gig at the moment is selling some stuff we’ve been decluttering, but every little bit helps.
Now my only side income is making and selling baby quilts. All the fabric is usually given to me, so my labor is the only cost. And since quilting by hand is my meditation, I don’t really consider it work. I just did a facebook post of my “careers” in the past 1o years since Hurricane Katrina: test scorer, assistant chief reader, mystery shopper, mock juror, focus group participant, reading tutor, IRS 1040 form date stamper, baby quilt maker. Before that I was a happy teacher of GT students at The Little Red Schoolhouse in the French Quarter in New Orleans.
I work a lot of odd jobs. I have my own home organizing business, but that’s not even close to full-time. To make extra income on top of that, I watch one of my oldest’s friends after school a few days a week and pet-sit for my husband’s cousins. In a good month, pet and baby sitting brings in a couple hundred.
However, I may start taking less odd jobs as my hubby can make more in one OT shift as a firefighter than I can make in one whole month. But I do like having money that *I* made. It’s a conundrum…
I’m feeling you….my husband is a doctor and so can make as much in an hour as I can in a month (or more…depending on what I do) but I still love the feeling that I have my own money for some things!
I sell on eBay in spurts – some stuff from my home decluttering, some from things I pick up at yard sales. I just recently made $400 sewing some curtains for a company that is converting a textile mill into apartments. I remembered why I hate to sew for the public – it sucks the joy right out of you to sew straight lines for hours on end. But if I HAD to, I could teach sewing lessons one-on-one or cooking lessons or other life skills I have (I am a Home Economist). I have thought about advertising that I would sew on Boy Scout and Girl Scout patches (troops at my church) or some other simple sewing task like that. Katy, one thing I wish were available that maybe you could do and make money doing it is a lending library for frugal books. I have some to sell or share, but think it would work better on a frugal site than on Amazon or eBay. Somehow set it up and charge customers to join – like paperback swap.com or something. Just an idea. LOL
I do some patchwork jobs, too – I write a column for a magazine and articles/poetry/essays/book and travel reviews for whoever will pay me, I make and sell jewelry online and in two local stores, I have an online vintage store and also sell other stuff online (collectibles, books, parents’ stuff), I run our school library (2 days a wk, plus some extra hrs), and I also save money by DIYing, cooking at home, careful shopping, etc. It adds up. The library job is for paying certain bills and expenses (hubby pays most of them), the rest goes into savings, from which I’ve bought a new frig and a new washer and am now saving for a used car.
I worked for non-profits for 30 years as a fundraiser and eventually had to leave as the stress was killing me and my quality of life (non-profits you are already NOT making the big bucks and with the awful economy experienced so many cut backs things were really bare bones). I had saved a lot (12 month emergency fund) and only had my mortgage for debt so I and my daughter have been living extremely frugally for the past 2 years. Savings is gone though so I have worked usually two jobs at a time (some really weird ones – I bell rang for pay for the Salvation Army (I also volunteered too); ever planted, cared for, and later harvested and bagged wheat grass and peas for a commercial company? Lots of drug connotations there since it was in Ziploc baggies,lol ) and this fall garnered a full-time job in the school system because as a substitute teacher/paraprofessional/secretary they appreciated my work ethic (nice to finally be appreciated :-). This summer I will be working the summer camp program which should be interesting and fun.
Last year in the fall I realized even though I was working full-time it wasn’t meeting our expenses (my salary has gone done by three-fourth’s). I saw a Care.com ad on TV and thought babysitting might be just what I needed for extra cash. Things work in mysterious ways – I also filled out a dog walker/sitter profile and that actually has been my Godsend. Not one childcare job has worked out but I have gotten one job for a wonderful lady who we have walked her dog 2-5 times a week after school and also when she had surgeries walking her dog three times a day for two weeks (very tiring but rewarding). She has currently booked us for the week between Christmas and New Year for $520 (I’m off from work anyway as school is closed, not paid for the time off however) – not bad right? I have another summer vacation home/dog sit booked with another family this summer for similar money. Walking in crappy weather (snow, rain, negative and high temperatures) has its disadvantages (pun intended about the “crappy” weather, picking up poop is obviously another negative). In addition I was hired by a dog walking/sitting company and have gotten many jobs through that. I am so grateful and its something I can do with my young daughter which working retail or other jobs your not allowed to bring them along, plus she is learning a job now that she herself will be able to do.
In addition as a single mom I have recognized I need help as her Dad pays no child support and seek it when opportunities arise. I appreciate Obama care otherwise we would not have insurance. I appreciate the school breakfast and lunch program and how much that helps. Believe me in the summer when my daughter is at camp the grocery bill takes a hit. I have gotten scholarships for my daughter to attend camp, an instrument loan from the school (she is buying her own clarinet this summer with money she earned), a lap top computer for my daughter, a cell phone through Assurance so I can at least text/call (I don’t care about the latest cell phone although I do admit to a “little” cell phone envy at times). It has been extremely humbling but I am also extremely grateful and have learned as long as the bills are paid, we have a roof over our heads and food in the cupboards were great . Am I making a lot less? You betcha,, but our quality of life and my health are so much better.
I was listening to NPR yesterday, and they were talking about places around the country that continue feeding children through the summer. Worth looking into, depending on your geography…
It’s fascinating seeing how differently everyone structures their lives and livelihoods!
Thanks for the idea, locally they don’t but I’m planning on going to Aldi more this summer which should help our budget.
A few months ago I signed up for a players card at a local casino because I was meeting friends for a dinner there (and one of the perks included a dining discount with the card). For the past few months they send me a postcard that lists certain dates where they give you money to play the slot machines. You can’t just walk in and cash out, but you can keep any winnings. It is only a couple miles on my way to work, so I stop along the way. I have never spent any of the winnings or a dime of my own money. I have won anywhere from $400-$175 in a month. I have no interest in gambling at all, so if they stop sending the postcards, it won’t be a big deal and I will just move along to the next “side hustle”. I’m sure eventually they will catch on that I’m not a money maker for them.
Bonus: I also get a free coffee while I am there too.
Gambling your way to financial freedom. You may be the first ever!
I work full time at my County Library, and to help pay off my debt from a former relationship, I also take in sewing and sell on E-Bay and Craigslist. I have been making my own clothes for years, but now I mostly alter thrift shop finds, as it is less expensive than sewing from scratch. I also make my own curtains, etc, and always make any gifts I give. I recently sewed a stuffed bunny and made it an outfit in pink satin to give to a friend who recently had breast cancer surgery. It was well received. Wish I could share a photo, it was really cute!
Patricia you could share the picture on the Facebook group! I would love to see the bunny!
Thank you, I will try it.
Believe it or not – forgot to mention I try to do 1-2 Mom to Mom sales a year – love them but unfortunately my daughter is getting to old and bigger clothes don’t seem to sell. I love Mom to Mom’s because once you have it sorted and priced its a matter of one day in the weekend and you have cash in hand. I also have been taking things to the consignment shop which has been awesome from three drop offs of stuff this spring I got $150 and they got $150 for their food bank (church thrift shop). I am trying to push myself to do a garage sale this summer when I am off the last two weeks before school. I put it on here so guess I better make it happen! I also want to try Craig’s list since I have seen so many great posts on here. Our local police department has offered their parking lot as a safe place to meet for Craig’s listers, sounds good to me.
I work part-time as a Rehabilitation Assistant in a hospital, great hourly pay right there. Except this, I answer surveys online in exchange for gas gift cards and I do the occasional mystery shopper’s mission. That’s about it for the “earning” part (hubby works full time for the government). I focus more on the saving part I guess,
This is such a great post – so many frugal living sites are all about how to save money and it is so much of the same (cook from scratch, cancel cable, use the library) – all things that work and that I do. But the idea of bringing in more money is resonating with me these days. I work only during the school year and it’s already feeling a little tight here.
I do sell on etsy – though sales have been slow since Mother’s Day. I used to sell at a shop but the constant shopping to fill my space sucked the joy out of re-selling. I have recently begun to buy small furniture pieces to re-do and sell on Craigslist. The beauty of that is that I can make some $$ and have a creative outlet too.
Lawyer here. Hubby stays home full time with kids. Because I want to fund my kids’ college (love those 529s!) and retire (very) early, I also do things like Swagbucks although it is just a little bit. Just started ReceiptHog to get more Amazon cards. So far, easy peasy. We garden, cook, hand me down and generally live far below our means in an effort to get to true financial independence.
Great post.
I respect your hussle. I am also proud of the $36K I contribute to our household even though I don’t technically have a job.
1. I am a full time graduate student. In the humanities that means that if you get into a decent program your tuition is waived AND you get a living stipend.
2. I rent our home on Airbnb. The shared economy has gotten a lot of flack lately for not paying fair wages, but I make about $100/hour I put into Airbnb rentals.
3. I write a personal finance column for a local news outlet.
4. I invested our savings when we were in our 20s and footloose and fancy free to save like bandits. Now we earn a pretty healthy return that is of course reinvested. It’s like saving extra money you didn’t even know you had.
I can’t say I have multiple income streams but I was inspired by you to start paying better attention when I am out and about for money on the ground. The most I ever found at one time was three dollars.
I do mturk.com sporadically. It is very low-paying at first, until you qualify for better “HITs” (the mturk term for a small job) Some HITs pay as low as $0.01, but if they’re super-fast, the hourly rate can be OK. Some HITs get better with time, and while at first the hourly rate is ridiculously low, once you gain speed at the task they’re OK. Once you have a history, you qualify for more and better HITs. You can use the payment on Amazon, or transfer to your bank account.
The plus side is you can do it whenever you want, for as long as you want.
Earlier in my career when my “day job” income was leaner, I had several side hustles, including selling some things on ebay, craigslist and at consignment stores, doing online surveys, and paying more attention to earning rewards on credit cards to use for gifts and travel miles. In total it amounted to around a couple hundred bucks a month, which really made a difference. Now that I’m mid-career and self-employed (in a specialized and technical field), I can take on one extra work case per year (about ten hours of work) and earn more a year’s worth of side hustles, so it just didn’t make sense from a time-management perspective to continue the side income efforts. I’m still super frugal about outgoing money, though. It doesn’t take more time to buy used, drive a car forever, not replace things that work fine but aren’t the latest model, etc. Also, I talk regularly to my daughters about the ways I used to make money, and why I don’t do them anymore, because I want them to know how to be resourceful where income is concerned.
I work part-time which means I do not make a lot of money, but I do have good benefits including health, dental and vision insurance. We need the benefits since my husband has his own business (no benefits), so my part-time job is important to us. To add to my income, I volunteer to work out-of-town when I can which means I get per diem, mileage, etc. Amazingly, every time I do the laundry, I find a few coins. Also, when I clean out my purse, there are coins to be found. — my pin money reward!
My “day job”, for many years, was day, night, weekends. For 15 years I kept up a frenetic pace, enjoying my work but liking the money and how quickly I could pay off loans, car payment, etc.
3 years ago my elderly mother was terminally ill and I had a 5 year old who cried when I was on call and needed to go back to work. This was it for me. I began to work part time- took care of my Mom at the end of her life ( we were super close) and when she passed had no regrets about what I “didn’t do” because I did everything for and with her I wanted.
Shifting gears and slowing my professional life ended up costing me my job 5 months ago, but that’s ok. When you live below your means it allows you financial freedom to work less and still be fine. I’ll head back to a 32 hour a week job come the Fall, but in the meantime I’m savoring the Summer I’ll get to spend with my son.
How wonderful that you were able to give your mother your full love and attention. Thank you for sharing.
~ I work part time as an insurance agent for a very small agency. I get paid an hourly rate plus commission and I have pretty much total flexibility with my work hours.
~ I’ve been selling on Amazon for 3 years. I started when my previous job was eliminated and it helped pay the bills for the time I was unemployed. I sell books, sewing patterns, games and a few toys. I used to sell DVDs and CDs but they are dying technologies and when it comes to DVDs AZ has put so many restrictions that you can’t sell most because they are restricted. The highest priced item I sold on Amazon was a professional architecture book that I sold for$225. I bought it at a church sale in a box of books for $1.
~ I use coupon apps that pay in cash. I use Ibotta, Checkout 51, Saving Star, Snap, Shrink, Shopmium and Berry Cart. I also use Shopkick from which I’m
getting ready to order a $50 Lowes GC.
~ I’ve sold stuff on our local FB yard sale group. Some stuff I had and some stuff I bought for resale. In October, I brought a vintage football Little Tykes football toy chest back from Tennessee on my back seat that I bought for $7 at a thrift store. My son and I had gone there for a college visit so I insisted we go thrifting while we were there. I held on to it for a month and sold it in December for $50. I could have sold at least 4 of them if I had them!
~ I recycle metal and cable. My husband pulls out old cable as part of his job as an IT Specialist. It used to go in the trash so I asked him to bring it home so I could see what I could get for it at the recycler. I also save all our aluminum cans instead of giving them to the county. I go to the recycler about 4 times a year and I normally get between $25-45.
~ I also recycle ink and toner cartridges at Staples. Due to my husband’s corporate account with Staples, my Staples Rewards level is their highest and allows me to recycle 20 cartridges a month instead of 10. I get the empty toner cartridges from work, my church, DH brings them from work and yes I have even dug one out of the trash at our office building. I also buy them at church sales when they are priced 50¢ or less. I have used this to buy my kids school supplies, all our printer paper and school supplies I take on my mission trips to Nicaragua. I even bought a $250 camera that was on clearance, combined with a 25% off coupon and my Rewards and paid a total of $14.
~ I teach canning classes in the summer to women that I know that want to learn to can. I also have taught couponing classes before. I don’t make a lot but I get paid to teach something I love. One of these days I’ll talk to the community college about doing it as a CE class.
~ I also pick up money. In the last month I found 21¢, 10¢ and 2 $20 bills- all at the grocery store on 3 different trips and 3 different stores!
What a great post!
* I work a full time job
* I use coupon apps ~ mainly ibotta but also checkout 51, saving star and snap by groupon
* I sell items on our local Facebook garage sale site, ebay occasionally
* pick up found change
* enter contests! I have won things from free food coupons to a trip. If it is something I can’t use i sell it 🙂
* redeem my swag bucks for paypal (thanks for the suggestions Katy, for some reason I hadn’t thought of that and was doing amazon)
Great blog post! Being frugal is only one side of the coin, bringing in extra income is the other. And you do it with joy!
I have been the primary breadwinner for a number of years, but hubby was before that and is slowly transitioning again. I just cut back my hours at work….not doing any side jobs but I am doing a good job of frugal grocery shopping and frugal shopping for clothing and necessities.
I work *almost* full time at my “career” job and sell stuff (mostly our own cast-offs) when I get around to it. My husband cooks and tends bar for the same restaurant, so while he has his regular shifts, he’s always got his ear to the ground to pick up more if we need the extra cash. We have two small boys so striking that work-life balance is especially important right now.
I work full-time as an I.T. Security Analyst/Incident Handler at a University.
I’ve been thinking about putting stuff on e-Bay or etsy. I have a lot of old books, so this will take some investigation on what I should charge for anything rare. I’m decluttering my house, but we live WAY out in the boonies, so I don’t know how effective Craigslist would be, because I’m not willing to meet someone in the city who may or may not show up to purchase an item. It’s an hour away and the town where I work is is 40 minutes from the house. I think e-Bay would serve me better. I usually donate clothes and household items to one of the shelters in town.
I pick up change too. I love to do that – found change is fun. I joined Swagbucks, but I haven’t used it like I should. I think my job is getting in the way! LOL!!
Katie, was at a garage sale today, poking around in several FREE boxes, pulling out small odds and ends that I can use for Operation Christmas Child boxes in November, and I found a penny. They’re throwing money away, I thought, and immediately thought of you. 🙂 Need I add, the penny immediately went into my wallet….
1. I complete Pinecone Surveys and choose the cash option for my payout.
2. I volunteer at our local coop and receive 18% off coupon cards for my service.
3. I am a paid childcare provider for my church.
4. We have a yard sale.