Money Matters
noffgurl
member
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
GTKY: Extra Jobs
What are some of the things you do (besides your main 9-5) to bring in extra cash?
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Re: GTKY: Extra Jobs
Mystery shopping - usually an extra few hundred/month plus reimbursements for very p/t work.
Take pictures of hotel event boards - very flexible p/t job, Independent Contractor for the company, Extra $1300/month. Total of about 6 hours/week.
Rental income - own a duplex, live on one side/rent out other. $1200/month
Participate in Focus Groups and/or Mock Juries. Sporadic, not consistent, but I typically make an extra $100-$200 a few times a year.
I've also merchandised and passed out samples to earn extra income in the past. The average pay is about $12/hour...$18-$20/hour if liquor samples (that was nice!)...but when I am working f/t, it is not enough pay for me to spend the time.
Work CC points
Church daycare (now on a substitute basis)
I have a family that is interested in me getting the kids off the bus several days a week and working on homework and housework for several hours. They have 4 kids and it would make me $15 an hour on top of my office job.
I love working with younger kids so it hardly feels like work!
Love: March 2010 Marriage: July 2013 Debt Free: October 2014 TTC: May 2015
I bring clothes to the consignment shop a few times per year
I sell things on Amazon/Craigslist
I have a part-time job at the grocery store for a few months
Holy Shit, I just did the math, that was an eighteen year time frame with only a few patches when I wasn't in school or working on average 50 hours a week.
Babysit on the weekends. I used to do it at least 3 Saturday nights a month, but it was getting too much, and I do it once a month, if that.
DH and I both work a lot of OT, which adds up to be more than any PT job would pay us.
We use CC for reward points.
I work as an editor of a series of magazines and I can boost my own income by keeping more of the copy editing work to myself (rather than sending to subcontractors) and/or by writing the occasional article myself - I usually choose to prioritize free time over the extra income, but the opportunity is there and it's nice to keep my hand in the writing game from time to time.
And I've done some guest blogging but never been paid for it, lol.
I took a day off of work once to work as a movie extra for the day. I sat round for 10 hours basically doing nothing. They had to pay all of us overtime since we were there so long. Now I know how boring being a movie extra is I don't think I will do it again, but it was worth trying once.
I plan to start with AirBnb. Full house when we are OOT and guest room when we are home. I don't think we'll get much action, but we are very conveniently located for a couple of big events that happen every year.
I have worked for probably dozens of mystery shopping (MS) companies over the years and am signed up with over 100. The hardest thing about getting started is you don't know which companies have clients in your area, so you just need to sign up with a bunch of them.
A legitimate MS company will never charge you a fee to join them. You can find a huge list of legitimate companies at www.volition.com. The website is free. The list of companies you can find on the website is free. Plus there is a HUGE forum frequented by both mystery shoppers and MS companies. Lurk around on it and you will probably get a good feel for if this is something you want to do.
One MS company I will specifically suggest is GAPBuster because they recently acquired a large national client so I'm guessing they probably have shops in your area. And they are a good example of what I mentioned in my first paragraph. I signed up with them YEARS ago. But they didn't have clients in my area, so I never gave them a second thought or did work for them. Then, out of the blue, they send me an e-mail in December asking me to re-verify my information and my interest in working for them, because they will be having shops in my area come January. I picked up a bunch of shops in January and just got paid today for those...$140 in fees plus $70 for my reimbursements. All those shops combined took me about 7 hours, including driving time, doing the shop, and entering the report....though not 7 hours at once. 30-45 minutes here and there.
If you, or anyone else, has additional questions, please feel free to PM me.
@formerlyGDaisy09, you hit on one of the "cons" of MSing. Taxes can be a huge hassle, depending on how organized you are. It used to be, none of the companies issued a 1099, unless you had earned over $600/year that year with them. But the IRS has been cracking down on these independent contractor (IC) gigs and changed the rules a few years ago. I'm not quite sure exactly what the new rules entail, but I've noticed I get a lot of 1099s each year, even with companies I didn't do much work for.
It's not too bad if I keep up throughout the year. I set up a basic spreadsheet by month. And enter the MS company, the job, the fee, my expenses/reimbursements, and my mileage. When I fill out my taxes, after entering the 1099s, I add up the rest of my MS income not included in the 1099s, then subtract all the expenses/reimbursements/mileage as a grand total. However, if I didn't do this to stay organized, it would be almost impossible to figure it all out.
And it is SUPER important. I do a good amount of fine dining shops. So, my 1099 for those companies will show an income of like $1,000...but 90% of that is reimbursements for my meals. Definitely don't want to pay taxes on $900 that was NOT income! I also keep an electronic copy of all my receipts/business cards/etc. Also organized by month/year.
I run a custom cake business out of my home in my free time. It honestly doesn't make much money once you consider the expenses, and if I was really paying myself a wage it would be a bust. But, it's fun and gives me a creative outlet.
I also work CCs for points which is like free money