Sometimes the best way to manage debt is by finding ways to either reduce it or negotiate concessions such as having your interest rates reduced or your payments waived for several moments. But there are other instances where the best way to manage your debt is by finding ways to earn extra money to pay it off. Thanks to today’s sharing economy it’s relatively easy to find gigs or part-time jobs. Depending on your full-time job you might be able to take on more than one gig, which would help you get rid of your debt even faster. Or given your circumstances you might even be able to combine three of the following gigs.
Run out of space in your garage or drive way
If you have extra space in your garage why not turn it into a moneymaker? There are people with classic and exotic automobiles that may be looking for space to garage their “pride and joys.” If you live in the center part of your city you might be able to lease space on your driveway for people to park during business hours when you’re not there anyway. As an example of this we recently saw an ad on Craigslist offering off-street parking near our downtown area for $200 a month.
Drive people around
Maybe you’ve heard of Lyft and Uber. These are the two ride-sharing services where you earn money by picking up people and driving them to their destinations. It’s a pretty simple concept. You register with one of these companies and then download an app to your smart phone. You receive alerts whenever people near you need rides. Lyft claims you can earn $35 a day driving for it. Of course, how much you earn will depend on how many hours you’re willing to work a week and whether you’re willing to drive during prime times. And you’ll need to have an automobile with four doors, at least five seatbelts and that will pass a safety inspection.
Be a friend
This probably never occurred to you but you can get paid for being a friend. All you do is sign up on the website www.rentafriend.com and could soon be earning anywhere from $20 to $50 an hour just by being someone’s friend. And yes, there are people out there willing to pay to have someone attend a concert with them, go to a family outing, travel or take a trip to the beach. The way this works is that people looking for a friend search on their ZIP Code. If they decide to contact you the two of you then negotiate the details. The other person pays you directly depending on whatever hourly amount the two of you agreed on. Rentafriend says there are people that earn as much as $800 a week doing this, which is not small change by anyone’s yardstick.
Rent out that spare bedroom
If you have a spare room in your house you could turn it into a cash cow. Just register with Airbnb, sit back and wait for someone to rent it. How much you can get will be based on several factors, the most important of which is probably location. If you live close to a beach in Florida or California that extra room could be a gold mine in the winter. If you live in Cleveland you should be able to make really good money during next year’s Republican convention. And while you probably won’t rent out your room in a small town like Hershey Nebraska very frequently it could still earn you some extra cash.
Teach a language?
If you can answer yes to this question you could sign up on the site www.italki.com and earn extra money teaching adults in your native language. To get started you will need to create an introductory video and a profile. People interested in learning the language you teach will contact you to schedule online teaching sessions via Skype or VoIP software. Italki takes care of all the marketing, scheduling, payment and student management. This leaves you free to concentrate on teaching. Just as important, it costs you nothing to teach on italki and you could earn anywhere from $25 to $50 an hour.
Write content for websites
If you’re a decent writer you could create content – or articles – for websites. Everything you read on the Internet was written by someone and in many cases that someone was a content writer. You will need to create a portfolio of stuff you’ve written to prove that you can write clearly and logically. You may have to write free initially in order to build a reputation. Two good places to start are by bidding for jobs on Upwork.com and Freelancer.com. Don’t expect to make a lot of money initially because there’s a slew of low-priced competition out there. But if you stick with it and create a good reputation you might be able to earn what the average content writer earns, which is $35,200 — just working evenings and weekends.