Thursday, November 8, 2007

A Little Extra Income.

In the spring of this year, business at my workplace slowed and like so many other businesses, my employers cut everyones hours. I can understand that, from a business point of view, every dollar saved on labor goes directly to the bottom line as profit. However, my bills did not slow down and I didn't want to cut down on my investment program. I also didn't like the idea of getting a second job. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with working. But like Ronald Reagan once said, "I know hard work never killed anybody, but I figure why take chances." At any rate, I determined that I really only needed to make an extra $20 per week to keep up with my bills and my investments. So instead of getting an extra job, I decided to see if I couldn't drum up some extra work on my own.

I got the idea to cut grass on my days off. As it turned out, my next door neighbor needed someone to cut grass for them. They had the mower and weed eater, all I had to do was provide the labor, for which they paid $20 each time I mowed. So I had my $20 extra per week. In the mean time I had put the word out among friends and aquaintances that I was available for odd jobs in case they were needing any help. Little by little I picked up extra work here and there, doing window cleaning, steam cleaning carpets, painting and most surprising of all some commissioned art work. I say the art work was surprising because I'd never really thought about making any money at it. As it turned out I sold over $250 in sketches I did in my spare time.

What did I learn from all this? I found out how easy it was to make money without a regular job. I just wanted to make an extra $20 in income per week to cover the cuts at work. As it turned out, when I actually started looking for ways to make extra money without an extra job, I ended up making anywhere from $250 to over $500 extra per month. Since I always have three days a week off from my regular job, it was not really a problem to work one of those days.

Now I'm looking at ways to turn this experience in to a part time business. I've come up with a lot more ideas for making extra cash and I'm pretty excited about the whole thing. Who would have thought that there were so many different ways to make extra income?

No comments: