Make the most of your summer: Great ways to save some spare cash

The weather is warm, and your social calendar is filling up fast. From music festivals to weekends at the amusement park to summer holidays, you’ve got big plans for the summer. But what if your budget isn’t as big?

You can pay for all those fun activities that come your way this summer if you take on more work. The trick is coming up with ideas that will make you enough money that don’t involve a regular office job or a service industry position that you will find boring. Here are some quirky ways to make extra cash.

Sell your stuff
Not the stuff that you still use, of course. But selling your unwanted items can be a great temporary way to make some extra money. Everything from old books to old clothes is marketable, especially with the help of web sites that enable users to post their items for sale, such as Ebay or Gumtree. You can always do what I’m doing and sell old CDs and unwanted DVDs with a site like musicMagpie.

Work from home
If you have a marketable skill like typing, a good telephone presence, or the ability to organise documents and create schedules, you could also get a job as a freelance administrative assistant, writer, or telemarketer. With the advantages of computerised communication and the Internet, many of these part-time jobs can be done from home, which is a way to make more money without having to spend on transportation.

Turn a hobby into a job
If working from home sounds like a boring way to make money, you should consider the things you do in your free time at home already. Any hobbies like baking, gardening, or crafts making has the potential to earn you money if you sell the products of your work. This is also one of the easiest ways to get started making extra money because you already have the equipment and supplies at home.

Teach other people to do what you do.
Charging for tutoring lessons is also a good way to put your hobbies to use for you. Whether you decide to offer academic lessons in maths, science, or languages, or you choose to go the creative route with guitar lessons or tutoring sessions on gardening or cooking, you can create a solid list of clients that continue to come back to you — which means that you’ll have cash for all seasons.

Recycle
This isn’t in reference to collecting pennies for each aluminium can you can find. There are other, bigger items that you can recycle for a good amount of money, including old mobile phones, computer parts, and ink cartridges. Research places that will take these items for cash, and you could actually be doing your family and friends a favour by taking them off of their hands.

Fill your schedule with all the fun plans you want to make, and then make it happen. These five ideas prove that making money for your summer lifestyle is easier than you think. Or, if you’re like me (hell-bent on financial independence) you can make this extra cash work for you by lending it through a P2P lending company, paying down any debts or start building a small fund to create that business you keep talking about but don’t actually bother with. Whatever you decide to do with the money, enjoy the rest of the summer!

Tagged debt, employment, hobby, home, job, music magpie, recycle, saving, savings, self employment, sell, summer, work