Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

4 Side Hustles for Teachers

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If you’re currently a teacher, you likely know that while this occupation can be rewarding, it doesn’t pay very well.  You may be looking to supplement your income in the evenings or the weekend.

If you’re a former teacher who is now staying home with your kids, you may be looking for a way to bring in money utilizing your teaching skills.  However, you’ll need flexibility so that you can do your work when your children are sleeping at night or napping.

Luckily, there are plenty of ways to earn a side gig with your skills as a teacher.

Private Tutor

Teacher Hustles
Make Money as a Teacher

One of my friends worked at Nielsen, became a high school math teacher, and then stayed home when she had children.  For the last 10 years, she has been a private math tutor.  She gets her clients from referrals from her former colleagues and through word of mouth thanks to satisfied customers.  She makes several hundred dollars a month and enjoys being able to still teach even though she is no longer working full-time.

VIPKID Tutor

If you have a bachelor’s degree, you can get apply for a job at VIPKID teaching children in China how to speak English.  Most of the available tutoring hours are very early in the morning or late in the evening when your kids are likely already in bed.  You can set your own schedule and decide how many hours you want to work each week.

Depending on your experience, VIPKID may pay up to $22 per hour.

Curriculum Developer

Many former teachers make a nice income developing curriculum and selling it on Teachers Pay Teachers.  Other teachers are always looking for quality curriculum material and homeschoolers also take advantage of the site.

Online Teacher for Gifted Students

A number of prestigious colleges such as Johns Hopkins, Duke, and Northwestern offer online classes for gifted children.  You can teach here, and the schedule offers flexibility as you can decide what semesters to teach and what classes to teach.  You’ll be able to challenge gifted students, and you’ll have students who will likely challenge you, too.

If you don’t want to work with gifted students, you can also look at the many online schools available for K-12 students.  You can teach from home, and you may have to have a live course or tutoring once a week.  My kids were enrolled in an online school this year, and every time they had a tutoring session or interacted with their teachers, the teachers always worked from home, which provides a great deal of flexibility.

If you’re a teacher looking for extra income, you can see that there are a variety of ways to do that.  If you’re a teacher who opted to stay home with kids, there are many ways you can work from home using your skills and keeping current so you’ll be able to reenter the teaching workforce should you decide to in the future.

If you’re a teacher or were a teacher, have you found ways to turn your skills into a side gig or part-time income stream?  If so, what do you do?

Can You Earn a Stable Income by Only Freelancing?

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Many ambitious professionals are turning to freelancing in order to advance their career and make extra cash. In fact, studies suggest that freelancers will soon comprise a majority of the US workforce. What’s more, there are lots of well-known benefits to freelancing. After all, freelancers get to be their own boss, set their own schedule, and follow their passion. However, it’s understandable for prospective freelancers to wonder about the financial viability of such a job. At the end of the day, can you really make a good living just by freelancing?

How Much do Freelancers Make?

Unfortunately, the answer to this question depends on a number of factors including your experience level, skills, personal connections, and industry. However, it’s not unreasonable for freelance writers, for example, to make anywhere from $40,000-$60,000 per year. And while that’s hardly an opulent salary, it’s certainly enough to keep the creditors at bay. It’s important to remember though that these figures are just estimates. Certain freelancers with highly sophisticated knowledge of an industry or web-design practice should be able to attract high paying jobs. Indeed, B2B companies will pay top dollar for freelancers who are familiar with an esoteric product like a chamber slide or a high pressure homogenizer. Alternatively, new freelancers without much experience and with few connections could find it difficult just to make ends meet.

Financial Drawbacks of Freelancing

While on paper freelancers may seem to make more money than their traditional, nine-to-five counterparts, the reality is that there are certain financial considerations that only freelancers have to deal with. For one, most freelancers operate as independent contractors. As such, freelancers have to cover all costs associated with their business, such as office equipment and startup expenses. Furthermore, freelancers are unable to access certain benefits like group health insurance, which are usually provided by an employer. Instead, they typically have to pay a premium for such services.

Do Industry Trends Affect Freelancers?

The short answer is that the fluctuations of the stock market and changes within a given industry inordinately affect freelancers. Harsh though it may sound, business owners will typically cut ties with a freelancer before they think about laying off any full-time personnel. On the other hand, freelancers can make a killing in a market that’s riding high while large corporations have plenty of capital available.

Is Freelancing a Good Idea?

In the end, each professional is different. They have different goals, dreams, and preferences. So while it is possible to carve out a career working solely as a freelancer, it’s probably a wise idea to take on a few side projects first before you commit yourself fully to this path.

Get Your Phone Service for Less with These Two Programs

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Phones.  They’re a necessity for keeping in contact with others, having access to emergency services, and getting directions when you’re lost.  Yet, if you aren’t careful, the convenience of a phone can cost you anywhere from $50 to more than $200 a month.

My husband and I have cut corners with our phone service, and we couldn’t be happier.

Ooma

save money on phones
Save Money with These 2 Phone Services

We chose Ooma for our land line.  Ooma is a system that operates through our internet connection.  We pay $14.99 per month, which includes call waiting, caller ID, and free long distance.  Oh, and that free long distance?  Apparently that means anywhere because my husband has been able to call his family in Japan at no extra expense to us.  Sweet!

While we love Ooma and the price we pay, there are sometimes glitches with this service.  For instance, when our internet goes down, we don’t have telephone access.  Occasionally the connection is not as good as I would like.  However, these inconveniences are not regular occurrences, so we happily stay with Ooma.

Ting

My husband and I have had cell phones for a few years, but they were flip phones from Tracfone.  While they served us well for a few years, we got frustrated with Tracfone’s customer service whenever we had an issue.  We also wanted to upgrade to smartphones.

When I won a giveaway for a free Ting smartphone, we decided to also get my husband one and switch our service over to Ting.

Ting is a unique company that charges based on the services that you use.  Our average bill is $34 a month for both of us to use our smartphones.  I love that price!

Billing is based on how much you use.

Each line costs $6 a month.

Up to 100 minutes a month costs $3.  One hundred to 500 minutes is $5 per month.  (This goes all the way up to $35 for 2100 minutes.)

Up to 100 text messages a month is $3.  Up to 1000 is $5.  (My husband and I primarily keep in touch during the day through texting, and we never get close to 1000 texts.)

Date is $3 for 100MB, $10 for 500MB, all the way to $20 for 2GB.

In addition, you can set limits on how much usage is available.  I imagine this is very important if you’re on a budget or if you have a teen with a phone.  You can ask for notifications when you reach a certain level of minutes, texts, or data.  You can also choose to suspend service when you hit a certain limit or someone else on your bill reaches that point.

The best point?  There is no contract with Ting.

We’ve had our phones for about 6 months now, and we’re pleased.  In addition, any time I’ve had questions, their customer service has been fantastic.

Ting has also branched out to providing Internet service at the same great value.  Unfortunately, that services is only available in a handful of towns in five different states.  I hope my location is available for Internet service soon!

Have you tried either of these services?  Did you like or dislike them?  What do you do to keep your phone bill low?