What To Do In Addition to Saving

Cananda.com:

She advocates finding that few hundred without a second job, from income streams most people have never considered.

Among her ideas:

1. Get paid for your hobby. Say you like knitting doggy sweaters. Don’t just sell them at craft fairs. Sell patterns, too, or take photos of cute dogs in duds, then market greeting cards.

2. Not ready to put a suite in your house? What about renting out storage space or a parking space?

3. Touch base with businesses that pay you to introduce people to their product or service. (On her website, she tells other financial professionals that “the more customers you send us, the more money you can earn.”)

4. Consider network marketing, such as with Mary Kay cosmetics.

5. Become an affiliate of ClickBank, an Internet service that sells digital products.

Piercy also points out several thrifty ways to keep afloat:

1. Pay with cash. Studies show that credit cards entice consumers into spending more, she says. She finds the comfort level for a lot of people is $20, meaning that a purchase of less than that doesn’t register as significant. But those smaller debits or credit-card charges really add up.