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, and this list isn’t exhaustive. Here’s another list of ways to make extra money that’s not focused on teachers, but could certainly apply to teachers.  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?

What Happens if you Default on a Student Loan

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This post in collaboration with Paul Brian.

Believe it or not, student loans are one of the most secured loans a lender can issue. In the vast majority of cases, student loans cannot be discharged under bankruptcy protection, nor can they be negotiated away under a debt settlement program. If you have one, you will satisfy the terms, there’s simply no escaping it.

Here’s what happens if you default on a student loan.

First, What Constitutes Default?

The exact conditions of a default vary a bit from lender to lender, but in the case of Federally backed student loans, nine months of missed payments will get your student loan classified as being in default. It could also be found to be in default if you violate some other aspect of the loan agreement, or got the loan under fraudulent circumstances.

If any of the above happens, you’ll experience the following.

1. Forfeiture of All Loan Benefits

The loan will become due and payable immediately—including interest payments and late fees (if any). You will not qualify for loan forgiveness, deferment or forbearance. If you decide to go back to school and have a loan in default, you can forget about all forms of financial aid.

2. Assignment to a Collection Agency

Get ready for incessant phone calls, text messages and emails. These people have an uncanny knack for knowing the most inopportune moment to contact you and hound you mercilessly (while staying well within legal bounds) until you agree to a plan to repay the loan and stick to it. You can also be taken to court in extreme situations.

3. A Negative Entry on Your Credit Report

The default will be reported to the credit agencies, which will pull down your credit score significantly. A huge part of your credit score (35 percent) is loan payment history. A default on your record will pretty much wipe that category out. This will make it difficult for you to get a mortgage, rent an apartment, buy a car, get insurance and in some cases, even get a job.

4. Wage Garnishment

If your lender takes you to court and gets a judgment against you, the court will order your wages garnished until the amount of the loan (as well as fees and interest) is paid. This will mean an embarrassing situation at work and a large portion of your income will go straight to paying off the loan—before you ever see it.

Avoiding Default

If you’re concerned you might be about miss payments, contact your lender at once and try to work out some sort of an arrangement to help you stay on track. If you have a Federal loan, you might qualify for forbearance or a deferment of up to six months to help you get your finances back in order. If you’re still in good standing, you might be able to renegotiate the loan to lower your payments. The key is catching things as early as possible so you have the best options.

Getting Out of Default

The good news is default status isn’t the end of the world. All they really want is the money. Find a way to repay them in full and the default will be dismissed. Yes, it will take a while for your credit score to recover, but getting it marked “paid in full” will help.

Of course, if your student loan is in trouble, odds are many of your other debts are too. This is when you might consider hiring a debt relief firm.While these companies don’t deal with federal student loans, they could help settle your credit card, personal loan, and medical debt, which could make it easier to repay the student loan. As you explore this option, take some time to research information such as these Freedom Debt Relief reviews to make sure you choose a good company.

In conclusion, student loans might be some of the biggest loans you take on in your life. But unlike other loans, once they are taken out, payment is inescapable. Do everything you can to avoid defaulting on your student loans.

Worst Money Mistakes – Penny Stocks and Out of State College

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what is your worst money mistake?

For those of you that haven’t come across my blog – which I’m assuming is most of you – I should start by saying that my financial struggles and moronic financial mistakes is what led me to become a Dave Ramsey-trained Counselor and an Investment Advisor.

So, as I discuss my biggest money mistake(s), I will preface with: I realize that these are extremely dumb decisions. However, I made them, I learned from them, and ultimately they helped me grow into the person I am today.

Who Wants to Trade Penny Stocks?

Despite knowing the topic we were writing about today, I couldn’t only limit my response to ONE financial mistake because I have two that are pretty brutal.

The first involves trading penny stocks and losing $30,000!

Ever since I was in high school I remember LOVING the concept of the stock market and investing money. I don’t know what it was but it just fascinated me.

So, a few years ago I worked with some friends and one of our usual conversations revolved around investments. It was right around the time that Apple started to boom and my co-workers would always bounce ideas off of me and prod me for my input.

Well, one of these co-workers ended up telling me about this “hot” penny stock. You know…he heard about from a friend whose sister’s brother’s nephew worked for the company.

Anyway, he was told about this great new technology that was going to change the oil industry, and apparently this company had a patent on the technology that was going to make it happen! Cha-ching!

As with all penny stocks, this one was a sure thing!

After many hours of research and digging into the company and their product, I went ahead and invested all of my IRA into the stock. Please know that I would not recommend this for any of you.

Considering that I was young (and dumb), I figured I could afford to lose the small retirement savings that I had earned in my first year of employment after school. It was indeed a whopping $3,000 that I was putting at risk; what’s the big deal, right?

Well, after much speculation (which most penny stocks are surrounded by) the stock, and my portfolio, continued to go UP and UP over the course of a few weeks.

Instead of being a prudent investor (which investing in penny stocks throws that notion out the window) and selling off some of my shares to lock in the gains, I got greedy and thought that the stock would continue to rise.

I mean seriously, the rise was all based on speculation and the company hadn’t even landed a big contract yet. ‘Just think how much the stock could be worth when it lands with one of the big oil companies!’

Despite my IRA being worth $30,000 (yes, up from the $3,000 that I started with) I decided to stay put.

It’s needless to say considering this is a post about one of the worst financial mistakes I’ve made but I’ll say it: the value of the stock plumeted the two weeks that followed as the speculation dwindled and my “hot” penny stock turned ice cold.

I know…I know…I was pretty (extremely) dumb and got greedy. I gambled and I lost.

I wanted the get-rich-quick scheme and ignored all sound investing advice.

Attending an Out-of-State College

My wife and I were actually talking about this a few weeks ago, but I have come to learn to view my past differently than some.

While I could beat myself up over all of the ignorant decisions I’ve made over my life, I’ve realized that I wouldn’t be the person I am today without them. I wouldn’t be married to my wonderful wife, I wouldn’t work a job that I love, and overall I just wouldn’t be who I am today.

So, even though this post is about past mistakes I’ve made, I encourage everybody reading out there to embrace your failures, learn from them, and ultimately be thankful for them.

Life has a weird way of teaching us things and the reality of our world is that most of us learn from mistakes; we as stubborn people love to learn things the hard way!

Despite saying that, I acknowledge that my second biggest financial mistake was going to an out-of-state school and going into debt for all of it.

I know that my decisions were made in pure ignorance as I was never really taught anything about managing money growing up as a kid.

Nobody ever stopped to tell me that I was making a huge mistake by going $20,000/year into debt each year for college, and instead explained to me that I could choose to attend an in-state school and only pay half or a quarter of that!

Who am I kidding though?

Knowing me back then I’m not sure it would have mattered. I didn’t understand wise financial principles. I was ready to leave and have fun. I was ready to finance my lifestyle by taking on as many student loans that the lenders would give me!

…and I’m still paying for it today (literally).

Applied Knowledge is Power

Speaking from experience both personally and from what I’ve gained in coaching hundreds of invididuals over the past few years, writing this post about my moronic financial decisions will prove meaningless at the end of the day unless those that reading this will learn from the mistakes of others and not make the same mistakes themselves.

If you have children, I’d encourage you to teach them sound financial principles at a young age (or as soon as you can). Teach them about debt, living on less than they make, the principles of budgeting, investing and how to retire comfortably, and making smart decisions when they’re getting prepared for college.

Where most of us fall short in our personal development is that we don’t apply what we learn. Sure, we learn (as evidence that you’re reading this article) but what you do with the information is ultimately what will set you a part.