Earn Extra Money For the Holidays – 10 Ways to Boost Your Gift Budget
November 13, 2008
It’s hard not to break out the credit cards during the holidays when you don’t have any extra money to buy gifts. Budgeting and planning ahead of time for Christmas gift shopping is the key to staying away from getting into holiday debt. However, some of you have budgets that are too tight to save extra money for the holidays.
One option is to simply spend less on gifts, another alternative is to earn some extra income. There are many ways to do this, but many of us want to find the quickest and easiest way to do it. This is tough to accomplish, because as we all know that making money hardly ever comes easy. Here’s a list of ten different ways you can earn some extra cash for the holiday season.
Surveys & Trial Offers You can fill out surveys or trial offers on sites like FusionCash or CashDuck. When I was using Fusion Cash on a daily basis back in 2007, I made $134.50 in three weeks.
Sell on Craigslist. Pick out 10 to 20 items around your house that you can sell for $5.00 or more, and start listing them on Craigslist. It’s free to list stuff for sale, and they give you up to four photos to upload for free. I highly recommend putting photos in your listing. Two years ago, my wife and I sold a ton of furniture and home accessories all on Craigslist, because we didn’t want to move a bunch of stuff that we weren’t in love with.
Resell on eBay. This is a little risky, but I saw that Wal-Mart is selling a playstation 3 for $399 plus a $100 gift card with the purchase. If you bought the playstation, resold it on ebay, you’d only be out the tax. You would have a $100 gift card to spend on gifts at Wal-Mart. Be careful on this one. Only buy something that you know you can resell for the same amount of money.
Do Some Odd Jobs. Do you own a pressure washer? Print out fifty fliers and stick them in the doors around your neighborhood. If you get five jobs out of it, you’ll make a few hundreds bucks for the holidays. Do you love dogs? Put out some fliers to start walking your neighbor’s dogs.
Change W-4 at Work. This sounds weird, but SO many people end up with a surplus of tax dollars withheld at the end of the year. Lower your W-4 withholding number to what it should accurately be, and you’ll start getting more money put in your paycheck. Don’t let the government get a free loan on your money!
House or Pet Sit over Thanksgiving. Many people go out of town for Thanksgiving and they hate knowing that their house is just sitting there. Solicit your services to watch their house or pet. You can also water their plans and take in their mail.
Start Blog Writing Online. It will take too long to start making any money from starting your own blog. Christmas will have come and gone long before you earn a few bucks. Instead, start writing for someone else’s blog. Check out Problogger Job Board for tons of different paid blog writing jobs. Pick a subject that you are passionate about.
Perform a Research Study. I know, you don’t want to be a lab rat, but if you live near a research university or hospital, they might have chances to make $500 to $2,000 participating in a study. I did three studies when I was in college, and I made a total of $1,900 doing them! I am still here, and I haven’t grown a third arm yet.
Make Crafts for Sale. Christmas time is the peak season for all things involved with crafts. If you are crafty, then start making Christmas ornaments, embroidered kitchen towels, wall hangings, door decorations, and anything else you can think of. You don’t even have to purchase a booth at a local fair or craft expo you can sell your items online at Etsy.com.
Free Money. You can earn an extra $50 when you sign up for a TradeKing account or a ShareBuilder account and make a trade by the end of the month. They give you $50 for trying out their service, although it won’t cover your whole gift budget it should be enough to pay for at least one present.
There are a tons of different ways to make money, but it takes some effort on your part. All you need is a little bit of drive and creativity to earn extra income. Do you have any other ideas to share with everyone? You can leave it in the comments below.
The dogsit-over-thanksgiving tip is excellent! The kennels fill up, people procrastinate and then freak out about not being able to find a dogsitter. We have two dogs, and taking in another one for a few days is no big deal. Clients like in-home care as well. Thanks for the useful post.
Well, you can earn extra cash at home. Simply put, companies around the world need people just like you to create ads and post them online. In return, many of them will pay you nicely! It really is a win-win scenario for everyone!
Won’t help for this year, but maybe next…
I just try to shop a little every month. Then I’m done by Sept or Oct and just have
to worry about some mailing costs in Nov for the few that get mailed.
And start early next year – with the after Christmas sales!
Remember garage sales are great places to find things new in boxes at great prices also!
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