Legit work at home opportunities?

[Jimmy9190]

I have a friend who has racked up a few thousand bucks in debt, mostly credit cards. His budget is strapped, almost every penny he and his wife bring home goes right back out again for their mortgage, utilities, food, and other normal expenses. Luckily they have no car payments. He wants to pay it all off asap and not be in big-time debt like that which will take forever to pay off if he is only able to pay the minimum payments. He also wants to try to save up and put cash away for emergencies.

He has a decent job, her job is OK but does not pay as much. He makes about $25K per year, works 40 hours a week but is looking for some type of work at home/customer service/data entry work he can do in his spare time to help pay down his debt. He has a family and does not want to work 80 hours a week, but I told him it will take some sacrifice to get where he wants to be. If he can find the right part time gig, his wife may take it up too, but they both agree it is best for either him or her to take the responsibility for the house right now and let the other one try to earn some extra cash. Anyone have any leads I could send his way on real, honest, legitimate work at home jobs?

 

[bubbatime]

Dog walking pays around $30 day. Could take up lawn care and mow a few lawns on the side. Could get a sales tax certificate and open an eBay business. Could also hit up all the yard sales on Saturday and Sunday and resell those items at a flea market or online. Some people do this as their full time job and do pretty good for themselves.

 

[spackard]

Google for Mechanical Turk.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Mechanical_Turk

 

[Mr Nice]

How about looking for a better paying full-time job ?

 

[Drew99GT]

Most online jobs are complete [censored]. The legitimate ones are customer service, data entry, or transcription, and I've read they are drying up. Transcription has the most jobs available, but it's highly specialized and takes formal education.

Can he get a part time job? Fedex and UPS are always hiring for package handlers and they pay pretty good if you want to get up at 2 am and work your rear end off for some extra dough.

 

[Jimmy9190]

Originally Posted By: LT4 Vette
How about looking for a better paying full-time job ?


They are both doing that every day. The job market where my friend lives is not exactly stellar and they cannot afford to move where there are better job opportunities. Plus his wife has elderly family members living nearby and she does not want to move far away from them.

 

[Mr Nice]

I wish both of them luck, it's a tuff job market for all career fields.

 

[Donald]

At Disney you can hire yourself out at $130/hr to be a handicapped member of a family to get the family to the front of the line.

 

[michaelluscher]

YouTube AdSense?

 

[eljefino]

Deliver newspapers at 4 am? Deliver pizzas friday and saturday evenings? Bartend/waitress fri-sat?

Florida has lots of geezers, maybe be a CNA or HHA and spend overnights one or two shifts a week with someone who's on death's door. Wife did it in college and she could do homework, surf the net, etc and just had to be there if the patient woke up and had to use the bathroom. (Had to keep them from falling out of bed, wandering off in the woods, etc.) There's not much to the training and you could get okay money doing on-call per diem or at a bigger outfit like an understaffed nursing home name your schedule.

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: Jimmy9190
He has a decent job, her job is OK but does not pay as much. He makes about $25K per year, works 40 hours a week but is looking for some type of work at home/customer service/data entry work he can do in his spare time to help pay down his debt. He has a family and does not want to work 80 hours a week, but I told him it will take some sacrifice to get where he wants to be.


Can he find a higher paying full time job? Part time job and especially those that work from home pays very little, and if he can put in more effort (i.e. longer hour, but not 80hr/week long), there may be better paying ones out there that he can be good at.

 

[04SE]

You can make $250 a month here locally by donating plasma at the octapharma joints if you don't mind being around the druggies looking for a fix and bums looking for booze money. There are some real winners at that place when we drive by it. But hey $250 a month for sitting in a recliner for an hour or so eight times a month is easy money.

That is $500 a month if they both do it, again EASY money.

 

[Jimmy9190]

Thanks very much for the ideas guys. I will pass them along.

 

[HardbodyLoyalist]

Does he have any specialized skills or training?

If so, he should be looking for moonlight work. If, for example, he's a carpenter, then he could do weekend handyman work.

+1 on the eBay business, too. If you live in an area with a lot of estate sales (i.e., retirement havens), they're great places to source cheap stuff for resale. You have to start with something you know about, though, and specialize at first---power tools, for example. You basically need to be able to look at an object and assess (within 10%, anyway) what it's worth on the used market in a matter of seconds. There's definitely a learning curve, however, and everyone will make some expensive mistakes along the way. There's also a learning curve to eBay itself, and it's a notorious sharks' den.

 

[Pablo]

Is he courteous, kind and willing to listen and learn? Can he do sales in a gentle way? Work and little and not have thin skin?
If he has those things and is very patient, have him contact me. No instant money by any means with Amsoil, but with time a steady monthly addition.

Also, look at a business within his hobby/knowledge sphere.