Extra Income - Why It Pays To Put In A Little Work To Make A Little More.

In our quest to become financially independent, my wife and I often dream up ways to make some extra money.

Sometimes these ideas are so off the wall that only she and I find them “reasonable”, and other times they could actually fly as real ideas. There have been several times when one of us has come up with “it”, THE idea that is going to bring us millions of dollars. And then it passes, we forget about it, several months go by, and sure enough, we end up seeing that someone else went a step further and actually created the product/idea/service and it is paying off well. While we don’t regularly act on our day dreaming, we do have other ways of bringing in some extra income every month that we normally put towards our vacation fund.

One big thing we have learned to do is to purge our house of the things that we no longer need or use. Neither one of us is a packrat, but over time things do tend to pile up around one’s house if one is not careful. So every month or so we dig through closets, go through our bookshelf and CD collection for things that can bring in some money. Trent over at The Simple Dollar spoke about selling his movies not long ago, which is something we do quite often as well. It is a good way to both free up space around the house, clear out the clutter to make you feel more organized, and possibly even bring in some much needed cash.

Because I was thinking of writing this post yesterday, I decided to spend some time tallying up our sales and other ways we brought in money last month other than our day jobs, to maybe inspire you to think of alternative ways to make money on the side. We are not involved in buying and selling, flea market shopping or anything like that. Its just that we bring in some extra money every month from a variety of sources, as follows:

Selling books and DVD’s on Half.com - $59.63
Selling old stereo equipment on Craigslist - $25
Running 2 blogs and reaching Adsense payout Dollar amount. (If you use Adsense, you know what this amount is)
Recycling all of our bottles, cans and glass - $7.00
Selling CD’s to SecondSpin.com - $17
We have also sold furniture on Craigslist, because there are always people looking for a bargain on decent furniture. But none this month.

Total for the month of January? Over $200. All for doing nothing. Of course, we cannot keep that up every month, but even if we sell that amount a few times a year, it adds up and allows us to take a nice vacation free of credit cards.

Sure, it requires a little extra work here or there to go through your stuff, work on your online venture, or whatever else you could do to make some cash every month. But when the hard work pays off and you can see the amount in your savings account go up, it is well worth it. Who wouldn’t like to have extra money instead of some old junk you never use?

“A savings account ensures you have a little for a rainy day. A credit card will prevent you from saving and even land you in debt. Mange your money sensibly.

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