When I was a kid, we’d do near anything for a bit of money, all kinds of small jobs. There were chores I had to do, but I was allowed to earn money from my work. For example, when I was the goosegirl, taking care of all the geese in our little village, I wasn’t paid to take care of the geese. I was expected to protect the geese, take them to places where they could eat themselves fat, and report any sickly geese to the owner of it. But in the process of caring for the geese, I was allowed to collect the down they shed and feathers, and I could sell those to the villagers and people outside the village, too, and I got to keep the money. My folks took their share of the down and feathers without pay, and they took some for the needy who couldn’t afford to buy the down and feathers from me, but the rest was mine. Later, when I was taking care of the chickens, I was allowed to keep the extra eggs and sell them, and when we slaughtered a chicken, I could sell the feathers when I could find a buyer. Feathers were made into dusters, basters, and artists used them as brushes or in art projects. As I got older, I would accompany the older people to harvest mushrooms and wild herbs and I was allowed to keep and sell what I collected in my baskets.
When I moved to the States, we lived in cities, not rural villages, so I didn’t have my geese, chickens, mushrooms, and herbs from which to make spending money. Instead, I started collecting tin to sell, and scrap iron, and aluminum. I weeded neighbor gardens and babysat their children, and when sodas were made in cans – I’d collect pop tops and make trivets, belts, and curtains from them and sell them and the crushed cans. I made macrame belts and curtain tie-backs and cat toys to sell to neighbors. I did pet and plant sitting. I paid my way through college as a photographer.
When my children and I were homeless for a while, one of the ways we made money was collecting plastic, glass, and aluminum and selling them. Those paid for gas money, groceries, school supplies and field trips, and occasionally, clothes or shoes. I gave lectures and demonstrations at herb stores and colleges. I wrote articles and stories.
After we got into a home of our own, we continued to collect cans and sell them to pay for the electric bill. I still dog-sit for money to pay the phone bill. I make and sell herbal teas to help with the mortgage. I grow and sell or barter herbs and veggies and do some lawn care for others (just finished chopping down and sectioning up a tree). I train small dogs and sewed and took in ironing.
A lot of people look at their bills as one massive lump of bills. They think they need one job that will pay enough to cover all those bills at once. It can be pretty scary, thinking your whole life depends upon one job, especially now, with budget cuts, layoffs, and businesses disappearing.
But – what if you broke your bills down individually and looked at income sources to pay each bill by itself?
You can collect enough cans to easily pay your internet bill each month in a single Saturday morning once a month. Mowing lawns or shoveling snow can pay for groceries or a credit card bill. Babysitting in the evenings and on weekends could pay part or all of your rent/mortgage or your car note or insurance. Designing websites could pay for your Netflix or magazine subscriptions. If you set it up so each of your bills has its own specific income, you won’t stress so much about having one single paying job to pay for everything. And if one source of income dries up, you either do without what it paid for or find a new source of income. You don't lose everything because you lost your sole source of income.
If you have land, you can grow crops to sell – herbs are popular and profitable; flowers, especially edible flowers, are also popular. This is seasonal sales, so use the money from these seasonal businesses for annual or seasonal expenses. How about having worm bins and selling the worm castings?
You can start out with just paying one bill this way, then in a couple of months, when you’re comfortable doing this, pay another bill with its own income source, and then another, and pretty soon, you’ll have only what you really need and the ability to pay for it regardless of your main source of income.
You can track all of your sources of income and the bills they each pay in a spreadsheet – OpenOffice has a nice one that’s free. Some of your micro-businesses may have expenses attached – gasoline, oil, spark plugs, lawn mower, edger for mowing lawns, or gasoline to haul the aluminum cans to the recycling plant, for example. Your micro-business has to earn enough to cover its expenses and pay at least one of your bills or it isn’t worth doing. Your spreadsheet can help you manage that.
Yes, it takes time, but once you've discovered your personal revenue streams and settled on a system, it really doesn't take so much time after all. You can tuck these micro-jobs into the odd minutes of your life. You'll be busier, but you'll also learn that with the right time management skills, you'll find you have more leisure time. Keep your "day job" for the health insurance, retirement, and savings so you can build up a cushion or start making investments, and use the micro-jobs to pay your bills.
And if you are among those who get laid off or who are asked to take a pay cut, you’ll still be able to pay your bills.
It's something we can do to make our lives more comfortable and secure until we can get our government and our economy back on track.