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Post your underpants on eBay and market them as once worn by Kirstie Alley.
Well, it sort of a dangerous job, but pizza or chinese food delivery can help bring some extra cash. The independent restaurants may pay you under the table plus tips, or no pay but tips only. You have to pay your own gas so if you drive a gas guzzler, this won't work.I get a decent salary at a job that keeps me busy for about 50 hrs, Monday to Friday.
Unfortunately, there's been some family health issues that have caused a toll on our finances and my wife and I just came to the realization that the debt we've accumulated is pretty much unbearable and if we can't find a way to bring in a bit more coin, we need to sell our house. This is my nightmare coming true.
Anyone have any ideas as to what I can do to earn a decent amount of extra money? I think an extra $250 for each weekend would be enough.
I know I could easily get a part time job at a restaurant/retailer or something but I'm worried that my much higher salary from my career will throw me into another tax bracket, and the amount I'll owe come tax season will render most of the extra work useless. I'm not trying to avoid taxes, but I don't think a part time job at minimum wage will be of much use in this situation.
Any ideas? Any input at all will be appreciated.
I'm not a good enough musician to do lessons, and I don't have much experience doing tech jobs (other than very basic setups without any fretwork).
I have some gear I can sell and maybe get $700, but that's it and will only buy a few more weeks.
I'll scour my local classifieds, but again any input is greatly appreciated... I think I need to get creative here, but nothing is coming through. Maybe your input will help spark an idea...
All the best,
Matt
I was a bit unclear in my initial post. The real issue is that my wife has had health issues and unable to work for 10 or so months and my salary isn't enough to cover all of our expenses.
We've already made a lot of cuts to our lifestyle to help (no more eating out, packing lunches, cheap groceries, nothing extra, no more jamming and paying for rehearsal spaces, no more strings, etc) but it only took us so far.
I was trying to find a secondary job months ago but my wife flatly refused it (and she still is). She doesn't think that losing the house is that big of a deal and would rather me have the weekends to relax, but feeding the bank $20k just because we couldn't make it to the 5 year mark is my main deterent. Also, we adopted a few animals before this happened, and will have to put some of them up for adoption if we have to move to an apartment, which I don't want to do all.
We're at the point now where I don't want to ask our in-laws to help any further and my career pay check alone is still not enough. It seems now the only thing we can unload that we can't afford is the house.
It seems we'll have to sell it unless my wife can find a job in the next few weeks (she is better now, but taking a 10 month health leave seems to be a red flag to possible employers).
This whole situation has pissed me off... Maybe it's my ego, but I hate that I have to rely on my wife working. I hate borrowing off of her parents who can't really afford to help us either. I'm not the provider I'd like to be... Should have been smarter during and after high school. I aimed for a middle class job with limited room for promotion. Then again, at the time I never wanted to get married and was fine not owning a house, then I met my wife and everything flipped upside down.
Anyways, I'm rambling now. I'm not at home at the moment but will take some time and dig through these comments a bit more. I appreciate everyone's advice.
How's it goin'?I get a decent salary at a job that keeps me busy for about 50 hrs, Monday to Friday.
Unfortunately, there's been some family health issues that have caused a toll on our finances and my wife and I just came to the realization that the debt we've accumulated is pretty much unbearable and if we can't find a way to bring in a bit more coin, we need to sell our house. This is my nightmare coming true.
Anyone have any ideas as to what I can do to earn a decent amount of extra money? I think an extra $250 for each weekend would be enough.
I know I could easily get a part time job at a restaurant/retailer or something but I'm worried that my much higher salary from my career will throw me into another tax bracket, and the amount I'll owe come tax season will render most of the extra work useless. I'm not trying to avoid taxes, but I don't think a part time job at minimum wage will be of much use in this situation.
Any ideas? Any input at all will be appreciated.
I'm not a good enough musician to do lessons, and I don't have much experience doing tech jobs (other than very basic setups without any fretwork).
I have some gear I can sell and maybe get $700, but that's it and will only buy a few more weeks.
I'll scour my local classifieds, but again any input is greatly appreciated... I think I need to get creative here, but nothing is coming through. Maybe your input will help spark an idea...
All the best,
Matt
Thanks for checking... It's going a bit better. Since wife is now able to look for a new job, she's able to go on EI and she just got her first cheque, which will definitely help. She can only qualify for it until July though. She's hit the ground running looking for a new job, but for some reason she isn't getting any call backs. She still does not want me to get a second job, but if she isn't close to something by June, then I'll need to find something.How's it goin'?
Thanks for the kind words. Yeah, we're both used to each other working and making $60k + salaries. We kind of figured if one of us lost our jobs, we'd be okay for a month or two. We were not prepared for 10 months of it though, especially since my wife has usually earned a little more than I do (did?).That sounds like the classic want my cake eat my cake.. Look this is the 21st century man.. having to rely on two incomes is not uncommon.. I got laid off in June of last year .. and I just now .. today got a starting date in 3 weeks for my new job.. If my wife did not make so much we would have been screwed.. Granted my severance lasted through December of last year.. but this year has been real slender... There is no shame whatsoever in being in a situation where your wife has to work.. this is not the 60s man... I don't know how it is in your world.. but in my house we always had a two income situation.. In my opinion you are right in wanting to hold onto the house if you can.. if loosing it will put you 20k deeper in the hole right off the bat.. Your wife needs to step up... at the very least she needs to suck it up and deal with you having to work more.. It would only be temporary... maybe what 2 or 3 years worst case.. and maybe one year if she manages to get another job that is decent relatively soon.. Either way two jobs for you needs to happen if you can swing it.. I had to work two jobs for two years from 03 to 05 to get rid of some debt. For a while I counted my days off when I only had one job to go to. It happens. How old are you guys? If you want to keep the dogs and the house.. and get rid of some of the excess debt that has accrued.. you both will ave to make some sacrifices.. If I had not found something by May I was going to be driving UBER. Fortunately I found a job making .59 less than I was at my old job.. where I had been for 28 years.
Amazon Mechanical Turk - Welcome
Never tried it, but my brother knows people who have, plus it's through Amazon, so I doubt it's sketchy. I've looked at it and definitely will try it out. Some time. Maybe soon... Hmm... Minor inspiration here.
Best of luck. Sorry to hear about your situation. At least these things aren't permanent.
Thanks for checking... It's going a bit better. Since wife is now able to look for a new job, she's able to go on EI and she just got her first cheque, which will definitely help. She can only qualify for it until July though. She's hit the ground running looking for a new job, but for some reason she isn't getting any call backs. She still does not want me to get a second job, but if she isn't close to something by June, then I'll need to find something.
Thanks for the kind words. Yeah, we're both used to each other working and making $60k + salaries. We kind of figured if one of us lost our jobs, we'd be okay for a month or two. We were not prepared for 10 months of it though, especially since my wife has usually earned a little more than I do (did?).
We've trimmed down our spending a lot, but we're still eating somewhat healthy... Trying to avoid the mac & cheese diet, but we'll see, we may need to stoop to that in the next few months if my wife can't find a new job after July.
The absolute last thing we want to do is sell the house. We've realized that in Toronto, or neighbouring suburbs, the housing market has just blown up in the last few years and our property is worth an extra $200k more than it was when we bought it 3 years ago... It's great for resale, but if we do have to sell it, most of it will have to go to debt and paying back the rest of the mortgage and we won't be able to keep much it. Also, if we sell this house now, we'll likely never be able to buy another one, and may not even be able to buy a decent condo and will be stuck renting for the rest of lives. My Mom has rented her house since she was 30. She's now 67 and while her rent is dirt cheap, the house is not hers and she's poured a lot of money into it for no return... It would also be nice to keep our house so my Mom has somewhere to live if she ever needs it...
I don't know, this whole situation has left me pretty miserable. I'm also not doing myself any favours. If any of you have followed my recent TB activity, you'll see me wondering which bass to buy next and things like this. For some reason, I cannot stop daydreaming what my next gear of choice will be even though I can't afford anything. I have a $200 gift card for my local music store, and there's one pedal that would be near there that I really want (Source Audio Aftershock), but this store doesn't stock Source Audio products... Anyway, my brain won't stop daydreaming about things I cannot have. I can't even focus on playing bass because I'm so preoccupied with these thoughts and stress about our situation and my job (which has been a nightmare lately). And then whenever I look at the price at anything, it bums me out even more. It's a vicious cycle. It also makes me feel like a spoiled brat, but I just can't turn the GAS off. I keep trying to get off TB thinking it will help, but coming here is truly one of the only things that makes me smile lately due to the stress of my job, our situation and everything else... I do think daydreaming about this stuff, helps me realize this is temporary, and keeps me looking to the future, but sooner or later, I need to dial back the hope and focus on reality... I don't know. Sorry for the rant.
Thanks for sharing your story and the inspiration!Be encouraged.
We got a house in 2003 when I was 48 but we were not really ready for it and due to some poor decisions on our part and Murphy's Law .. we wound up doing a short sale on the house in 2010 and began renting. Initially with this house I had a plane.. we would have had the house paid off by the time I turned 68 ... which is actually 7 years from now... and then I could retire .. but that is not how things went. We began renting in 2010 with a plan to revisit getting another home within 3-4 years. Midway through 2012 our first landlord needed their house back.. so we had to move.. which set our plans back because once again the plan did not go fully as planned.. In the summer of 2012 we moved into a new town home . We had planned on not renewing the lease in June of this year and trying to find our own place again... even though we knew we would never pay it off figuring we would have to pay to live somewhere and given the way rents are in the DC Metro region at least if we were paying $1500-$1700 it would be for something we would own.. Once again our plans got upset and in April of 2015 I got a call from my manager as I was preparing to go to a work that I was being downsized.. so don't bother to come in ... My last official day was in June of 2015... The first thing I did was buy a car because I had been driving a company car since 1990.. I figured I would worry about paying for it later but down here oit is hard to find and keep a decent job with no car, and it is hard to get a car with no job. I had a 6 month severance package so I was not worried too much and I had some personal stuff going on with my youngest son so in a way it was a blessing in disguise that I now had the time to deal with these issues. In June of 2015 we renewed our lease where we were and put the plans to buy up in the air until I found another job. Once again ..... our plans were knocked off track. In October of 2015 I was notified that my landlord was moving back to the area and we needed to be gone in 45 days. I was freaking out because the process of renting had been a very tedious one. Due to the short sale our credit was not that good but over the years since then I had been working very hard to rebuild it. That same week we began looking for a place to live but my wife had been obsessing over houses for a few months and she found some realtors that we could work with so instead of deciding to rent we decided to try to buy.. To make a long story short.. on December 4 we moved into our current home.. it is bigger than the one we were renting previously, and the mortgage is $183 less than the rent we were paying. It is a townhome.. but it is ours.. If someone had told me a year ago that it would be like it is now I would not have seen it.. the job part yes... I was actually surprised that it took me this long to find one.. but I expected to.. the house.. I just did not see coming.. So I say all that to say... be encouraged... Know that the tunnel will end... always be wary of lights ahead until you can be certain that they are not oncoming trains and be prepared to hug the wall if need be, but be reassured that you will get out of that tunnel.
This sounds like a great idea. My wife can certainly assist me with this. I'll look into it. Thanks!OP, do you own a car? If so, try hooking up with a buddy and contact one of the outfits that is hired by bar patrons to drive their car home. I have a friend who is doing this each weekend to "augment" his income and is doing quite well.
You are hired by a person who intends to be "over served" at an outing. They don't want to drive their car home, but they also don't want to leave it for the night. You meet them at the assigned time and place. You drive them and their car to their home, your buddy follows you in your/their car to the customers home.
You get paid, usually cash and move on to the next customer. In some cases, the drive to the customers home is not local and can add up to some substantial funds.
There are a few of these services within the GTA, can't hurt to connect with them for details.
Fishheadjoe