These days, many of us are on budgets so tight that all of our pennies have already been pinched to the breaking point. With the cost of food and gas and heating remaining high, it’s hard enough to afford the necessities, let alone extras like holiday gifts and entertainment. Although there is nothing wrong with having a frugal Christmas, there is also nothing wrong with wanting to treat your families to some small luxury, especially if you’ve been bare bones all year.
Here are a few ideas for earning some extra cash this holiday season:
Babysitting
There are many extra opportunities for childcare jobs during the holiday season. Many parents need childcare to fill in the gaps left by schools and daycare closing for vacation. In addition, childcare is needed to attend holiday parties and sometimes to get a few hours to shop or do other holiday preparations without the children.
Word of mouth is often the best way to get babysitting jobs, as many parents are reluctant to hire complete strangers. Let everyone know that you are interested in babysitting jobs and your qualifications and experience. You can also put ads on Craiglist or sign up for placement websites like sittercity.com or care.com.
Handyman (or woman!) Work
Can you put up holiday lights and other decorations? Deliver and set up a Christmas tree? Do yardwork? Make minor home repairs? You can translate these skills into doing odd jobs for people who are too busy or physically incapable of doing them on their own.
Again, word of mouth can be a great way to get work. Do place ads in Craigslist and other free, local sites. You can also ask if you can put small flyers on bulletin boards in local stores, churches and community centers.
Housecleaning
Many people want their houses to sparkle for their holiday gatherings and will gladly pay for somebody to come in and clean those baseboards and dust light fixtures and all the other little jobs that get neglected during the year.
If you’re not comfortable trying to find work on your own, contact local housecleaning services and ask if they need any seasonal help due to increased demand and/or their regular cleaners needing time off.
Seasonal Employment
If you’d like to get a seasonal part-time job working retail, warehouse work or deliveries, the earlier you start applying the better. Competition for these jobs can be fierce, especially with the economy being in such bad shape.
Treat looking for seasonal work as seriously as you would any other job. Don’t just rely on the newspaper classifieds or online sites to find work. Hit the pavement and make phone calls. Don’t forget about temp agencies and event staffing services, they often need extra people on call during the holidays and some jobs, like banquet serving and bartending, might even yield tips.
Make Money Online
This one is tricky, not only do you have to be on the lookout for scams, some online money making methods, such as displaying ads on your blog or website or doing paid surveys, might not pay out in time for the holiday season.
Two legitimate ways to make money online that do pay fairly quickly are writing for certain content sites and doing microjobs for sites like Amazon Mechanical Turk and CrowdCloud have low payout minimums. Be aware that the work is likely to be tedious and not terribly lucrative.
Think about Your Skills
Can you craft personalized gifts? Bake and decorate amazing cakes, cupcakes and cookies? Cater a meal for 12? Sew Christmas pageant costumes? Wrap beautiful gifts? Run errands? Chauffeur seniors and the disabled? Take care of pets and plants? Assemble toys, furniture or other things? Set up an aquarium?
Chances are that you do have skills that other people would be willing to pay for. Sit down and make a list of the skills and resources that you have at your disposal and figure out a way to make them pay.
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The only thing I would say about the babysitting is it could be awkward if those children play with your children anyway. Otherwise, nice list!