Supplementing Your Income

[wimbly11]

Do you supplement your income in any way? I use coupons and freebies but wondering if there are any other tips that SC member can offer.

[Springbreeze]

I will be following this thread.

[Cake]

I spend about 20 minutes a day entering contests. Mostly I win event tickets and FPCs but every once in a while a bigger prize.
If I win something I can't or don't want to use I sell on Kijiji. Concert tickets (at half price) sell very quickly.
I consider that supplementing my income.

[wimbly11]

Thats a good idea Cake! I enter some but I'm not dedicated to it!

[alicia]

I blog and do a small amount of freelance writing. It's an extra few hundred dollars a month. Nothing major, but it's a little bit to help.

[spanishpoet]

I also blog, but have yet to make any decent money from it. I've mostly found coupons, kijiji, surveys, some mlm opportunities and reward programs bring me in a little. Each month I do a review and post how much I made from each source under the Extra Cash folder (http://www.moneysavvyme.ca/blog/category/extra-cash)

Looking forward to what others have to say.

[Purdee]

my husband

[amira84]

I havent done anything yet but i like cake's idea to dedicate atleast a few minutes to enter your name into contests. I'll try to do that for a while a see what happens.

otherwise i collect pcpoints, sdm optimum points, rebates on checkout51, snapsaves, zweet and any money from MIRs, i consider them extra money because i spend this money on "extra" shopping, and from August-December i keep saving all this money to spend on either black friday or boxing day. It doesnt put a huge burden on our budget and feels nice to spend something that we saved smartly!

[wimbly11]

I've thought about blogging, especially now that I will be on maternity leave soon but I'm not really sure where to start or what to blog about lol

[Retiree]

We collect air miles, scene points, checkout 51 rebates, and we eat a lot of cheerios, when they have a movie promotion (lol) as we have a movie date about once a week. I never make special purposes for coupons but if coupons are for items we use regularly, I do coupon. I also price match. I'm not sure if I would classify these things as "supplementing our income" but they do help the budget.

[sweet sparrow]

It helps to blog about something you're passionate about. If you blog about silly putty when you really couldn't care two beans about silly putty, it comes across in your writing and to your audience. I'd say you'll be pretty busy adjusting to motherhood for the first few months at least and, for me, I found my writing was not it's best when I was going on two hours of (consecutive) sleep or less, or constantly diaper changing, feeding, etc.

When you're feeding or holding the baby during naptime, you'll have lots of time to think about what you'd like to write about. The problem is coming up with something original, or presenting something old in a unique way, because there's tons of bloggers that write about the more common topics. This is where that passion comes in handy.

[wimbly11]

Do you find you make enough money to make blogging worth it?

[walkonby]

If I wasn't so dang lazy I'd go get myself a PT job somewhere, but I am still enjoying the newness of retirement, so for now no supplementing.

[sweet sparrow]

If I wasn't so dang lazy I'd go get myself a PT job somewhere, but I am still enjoying the newness of retirement, so for now no supplementing.

Three cheers for laziness! I'm tempted to say I'm lazy, but the part of me that handles all the packing of baby necessities, cooking, handwashing diapers, socks, etc. argues loudly.

About maternity leave, there's actually a lot of restrictions on the income you can earn. Basically, you should earn no money because it will be sucked out of your EI benefits, and it's dollar for dollar, so you'd be working for nothing. Unless you have zero EI benefits, I wouldn't consider this an option.

When you're on the paternal leave portion (after 17 weeks), you can earn up to $50/week or 25% of your benefit payment, whichever is higher. Anything after that is sucked out of your benefit payment.

My memories on this are fuzzy, so you might have to look into the exact amounts and dates. I chose to pull in zero income for the entire mat leave because it would take away from the time and attention I could give to the baby. Bond building became the priority at that point.

In terms of making money in blogging, it depends what avenue you take. If you're starting out with your own website, it will take awhile to build a following and the income will potentially be nothing for several months. It may work out differently, but I'd be prepared to put in a lot of work for no pay at the beginning. If you write for someone else's website, the pay depends on how much you want to work or how much the little one allows you to work. Here, it also depends on the quality of your work and how much someone else wants to pay you for your thoughts. Consider this as working for someone else and might be their supplemental income too so your pay might be lower. But, you get the benefit of reaching their audience and subscribers.

In terms of blogging, I don't think it can be viewed as a main source of income. If it was just about the money, I wouldn't. The pay nowhere near covers the time, research, etc., but it's a bonus for talking about something I love.

Have you thought about reselling finds from garage sales, refurbishing kijiji items, selling your own items, etc.?

[coupon girl]

-I do surveys ,checkout51 and snapsaves -also sell a few items on kijiji-use coupons ,price match always -as I am currently not working it all helps out in the bigger picture