Illustration: Naomi Wilkinson
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In my 20s, while working a 9-to-5 job, I moonlighted as a babysitter and a freelance writer. The few hundred bucks I brought in each month from changing diapers and staying up till 2 A.M. doing articles helped me crawl out of debt and build a nice savings cushion in just a few years. Today, finding ways to make more is a necessity for many of us: Hourly wages have been at a near standstill since the 1970s, while the cost of key expenses like housing and healthcare has increased dramatically. Thankfully, it's never been easier to boost your bottom line, with so many websites and apps linking us to paying opportunities. These are just four ways that intrepid earners have found to generate a steady stream of extra cash each month. You might be inspired to do the same.
To save for a place of her own and pay off roughly $38,000 in student loans and credit card debt, Heidi Hall, 29, bought a vacuum. The Bethesda, Maryland, data analyst began cleaning houses earlier this year through
TaskRabbit, a virtual marketplace that connects freelancers with locals who need help with tasks like cleaning, moving, and minor repairs. Hall earns an average of $22 per hour on TaskRabbit, netting between $600 and $700 a month, working evenings and some weekends. "I'm a people person, but my day job involves sitting in front of a computer. TaskRabbit hardly seems like work because I get to meet and network with people I normally wouldn't encounter."
Side Hustle
More than one-third of the U.S. workforce engaged in contract, supplemental, temporary, or project-based work in 2013.
