Internet access has become such an important fixture in our lives that, in most American households, it’s considered a required monthly utility, along the lines of the electric or phone bill. And as more people cut the cord to cable TV, cable companies are looking to their internet subscribers to make up for lost revenue. So perhaps it’s no surprise that the average cost of broadband internet service has been climbing quickly, approaching $50 a month in 2015.
While that’s not a terrible price to pay if you’re cutting a $100 cable TV bill down to zero or you rely on broadband internet to do work at home or school, not everyone is getting their money’s worth. That’s why we’ve scoured the web for cheap Internet providers, which we’ll get to below. First, though, here are some general tips to help anyone save on their monthly internet bill.
Six Tips to Lower Your Internet Bill
Compare Prices
As with any type of monthly service, one of the easiest ways to lower your internet bill is to shop around and compare prices occasionally. Just because the service provider you signed up with had the best price a few years ago doesn’t mean they still hold the title for the cheapest Internet service in your community.
It’s worth taking the time to shop around for a better price every year or two. However, be aware that choices can be limited in some communities, including both rural areas with few available providers and cities where one company has negotiated a long-term contract. You can see what internet providers serve your area using BroadbandMap.gov.
One option is DSL, which is delivered over a standard telephone line. For the average home user who casually surfs the internet and streams some movies, TV shows, and music, a DSL connection is usually sufficient. DSL also tends to be on the cheaper end of most internet options. With download speeds in the neighborhood of 3 to 10 Mbps, it’s usually fast enough to stream HD video — though probably not on a few devices at once (a key caveat if you have teenagers at home or live with roommates).
Another option is cable internet, which is delivered via your cable TV provider. While cable internet is typically much faster than DSL, it also tends to be much more expensive, and the number of users in your local area can affect your connection speeds, resulting in slow service during peak usage times.
A third and relatively new option is fiber optic. The benefit of a fiber optic cable system is that it can deliver information much faster and over much longer distances. However, this service is not widely available as most homes and businesses are not wired for fiber optic internet.
In addition to those broadband options, more alternatives are becoming available as technology advances. One avenue some consumers are taking is to rely exclusively on wireless 4G data from a cell phone provider. If you can get reliable 4G LTE service from one of the four main carriers — Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile – you can expect download speeds of 3 to 40 Mbps, which is well in line with most broadband internet options. What’s more, you can take your internet service with you wherever you go. However, as you’ll see below, these services are most economical in low doses — usually for those who use less than 2 gigabytes (GB) of data per month.
Depending on your usage and needs, you may be able to save money by switching to a different type of internet connection.
Downgrade Your Plan
Most casual home internet users don’t need a high-end internet plan; however, providers do try to market super-fast speeds to customers.For example, in the Boston area, Comcast’s cable internet options for existing customers range from the $50/month “Performance Starter” plan (with download speeds of 10 Mbps) to the $83/month “Blast!” plan, which gets you speeds of up to 150 Mbps (not to mention a splashy exclamation point).
Let’s be honest: We all like fast, but most people don’t need to be downloading stuff at 150 Mbps. So if you’ve never had any kind of delay or lag in your internet service and you’re looking to trim your expenses, it’s worth checking what speed you’re signed up for and whether you can downgrade without losing a noticeable amount of speed and reliability. If you decide the lower-priced plan is in fact too slow, your internet provider will gladly sell you back into the faster one.
Many internet providers, including the cheap ones listed below, will happily lease you a modem and wireless router for a few bucks a month – but as the months (and years) tick by, those fees add up.
Time Warner and Comcast charge subscribers $8 and $10 a month, respectively, for leased modems, which means an average-priced modem bought on Amazon pays for itself in about a year or less. And how long do you plan to have the internet? The answer is probably somewhere between a year and forever.
The only trick here is that it takes some research and a bit of technical savvy: Make sure the modem and router you buy are compatible with your internet provider. Most internet service providers maintain an online list of acceptable equipment (you can find Comcast’s here), or you can call them up to verify the model number. And if you don’t know the difference between a router and a modem, call a tech-savvy friend for help hooking them up.
Sign an Extended Contract
If you know you’re going to be living in a place for an extended period of time, you can sometimes secure a lower promotional price by signing up for a one- or two-year contract instead of paying month to month. Just remember to shop around again when the contract ends, as the rate might go up after your promotional price expires.
Order Your Service Online
When I recently moved, I noticed there was a serious discount if I set up my future internet service online. This might be because you don’t have to talk to someone on the phone and use up valuable customer service hours. So, I looked online and there was a way for me to get Verizon FiOS internet for $40/month (without phone or TV) as long as I bought it for two years and performed the whole process online. It was very smooth, and I haven’t had a down day of Internet since they came to the house to set it up.
Skip Having Wi-Fi at Home
Depending on your needs, you may be able to skip paying for internet at home and instead rely on a combination of your office or workplace andpublic places offering free Wi-Fi. In addition to libraries, more and more businesses are offering free Wi-Fi to their customers, and it’s a good option if you aren’t a regular internet user.
A word of caution though: Do not access or send financial or personally identifying information, such as your bank account or credit card, while using unsecured public access internet. And note that you might also feel guilted into buying a drink or two at your local coffee shop if you’re going to be using their Wi-Fi for a couple of hours — if you keep that up, it’d be cheaper just to sign up for home internet service.
Cheap Internet Providers
If you’ve already tried the above or you’re just looking for some seriously cheap internet service, here are a few low-cost internet providers to consider.
Freedom Pop
You don’t get cheaper than free, and that’s what Freedom Pop offers: A mobile internet plan that allows you up to 500 MB of free monthly data over 4G wireless. For $3.99 a month, you can get 1 GB of data monthly; 2 GB will set you back $19.99/month.
Now for the catch: You do have to make a one-time purchase of a mobile hotspot (prices start at $49) to act as your Wi-Fi hub. What’s more, after you hit your monthly data limit, additional data will cost you $0.02 per MB. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but if you use up an extra 3 GB in a month — about an hour’s worth of HD video streaming — you’re suddenly looking at a $60 bill.
Freedom Pop is a great option for someone who just wants to check email and browse the web at a super-cheap rate. However, moderate to heavy internet users — people who plan to work online or stream music, videos, or games — would do better to get a more conventional plan.
T-Mobile
I switched to T-Mobile for cell phone service about two years ago, but then ended up switching back to AT&T after I couldn’t get reception in the rural area where my in-laws lived. However, T-Mobile has been adding coverage areas and making an aggressive play for subscribers. They also offer 4G wireless internet plans that start at $20 per month; for a reasonable $35 a month, you can get 6 GB of wireless data along with unlimited music streaming — so you can listen to Pandora or Spotify without eating into your data limit.
At 6 GB per month, you could send 100 emails a day, browse the web for a couple hours each day, and kill another two hours a day on Facebook without running out of data, according this data usage calculator. Still, it won’t suffice for families who watch a lot of Netflix, or anyone who intends to cut the cord to cable and rely on streaming video.
NetZero
NetZero has been around for quite awhile, and is well-known as a cheap Internet service provider. They, too, have joined the ranks of wireless internet providers. The great news is that like Freedom Pop, NetZero offers a free plan — up to 200 MB of data per month — for people who don’t use the internet very often. One gigabyte per month will cost you $24.95, plus a $3.95 monthly access fee, and the rates go up from there.
Juno
Like NetZero, Juno is a low-cost internet provider that has been around for quite a while. Its no-frills broadband DSL service starts at around $14/month, with speeds “up to 6 Mbps,” according to the company’s website. Compared to the $40 a month I pay and the average internet bill of $47/month, this represents significant savings over the course of a year for people who don’t need the fastest internet service available.
Century Link
At just $10 a month, Century Link is definitely a cheap Internet service – if you’re within their service area, and you’re not in a rush. With fairly sluggish download speeds that top out at 1.5 Mbps, it’s good for someone who just needs the basics and doesn’t mind signing a 12-month contract to get such a low rate.
Final Thoughts
Ultimately, having Internet service is something of a necessary expense these days, especially if you need a reliably quick internet connection to work from home as I do. However, I want to encourage you to negotiate heavily with your internet provider. Whether that means looking for better deals online, getting prices from a few competitors, or simply calling and asking if they’re really offering you the best price and what they can do to keep your business, advocate for yourself and make sure you’re getting the best price.
Lastly, we can’t guarantee that all of the internet providers above will offer great customer service or reliability. Many people have been happy with the companies above, but you can certainly find some negative reviews online — and cable and internet providers (even the expensive ones) are consistently ranked among the worst companies for customer service.So, we urge you to do your due diligence before signing a contract with any internet provider, and if possible to make sure people in your area have been happy with the service provided by that company.
After reading books like Rich Dad Poor Dad and 4 Hour Work Week, I became interested obsessed with making passive income.
Whenever someone needs additional income, the stereotypical suggestion offered is to “get a part-time job.”
But what if you don’t have the time or energy to put in all those extra hours?
I know I didn’t. Plus that wasn’t as appealing as making money while I was trading time for money.
For that, you may need some passive income ideas – ways to make money with little investment of time and effort on your part. And a great benefit to this is if you are trying to pay off debt quickly, this is a huge help to that!
Here’s a list of quite a few passive income ideas, so it’s likely that you’ll be able to find at least two or three that will work in your situation.
1. Invest in Lending Club.
There is probably no passive income that is more perfect than earning interest on safe investments, such as U.S. Treasury securities and bank certificates of deposit. The problem of course is that those instruments pay paltry returns – generally less than 1%. It may be passive income at its finest, but you’ll never be able to relax or retire on returns that are that low.
That makes now the perfect time to talk about Lending Club. It is a web-based peer-to-peer lending platform where people come to get loans, and investors – looking for high interest opportunities – provide the funds for those loans.
Lending Club provides an opportunity to earn interest rates in excess of 10% per year – which is about 10 times what you will earn on more conventional interest-bearing investments.
Now let’s be clear on one point: those high rates do come at a cost. Unlike bank investments, Lending Club loans can go bad, in which case you will lose principal. However, there are ways to minimize those potential losses. I talked to a LendingClub adviser and they recommend starting out with an initial deposit of $2500. Since you can invest as little as $25 in a single loan, you can actually buy into 100 different loans with a deposit of that level. So you don’t have to worry about a single loan going bad and ruining your investment.
Despite the risk of default, it’s very likely that you will earn far more on your investments at Lending Club than you will at a bank and I have averages just under 9% during the eight years I have been investing with them. Investing larger sums of money in different ways can be beneficial, whether it be where to invest 10K or where to invest 100K, we can help you get a better understanding of how to invest your money.
If you’re already using credit for some of your purchases, pursuing credit card rewards is an absolute no-brainer. Most top rewards cards let you earn anywhere from 1-5% back on your money, and that’s with almost no effort on your part!
If you’re already using credit for convenience, you can also earn a huge sum of cash in the form of a signup bonus. The Chase Sapphire Preferred® card offers one of the best opportunities out there. After spending just $4,000 on the card in 90 days, you’ll earn 50,000 points worth $500. On top of that, if you add your spouse as an approved user, you score an extra 5,000 points. That works out to 59,000 points for just $4,000 of spending you were going to do anyway.
Even people who don’t spend a lot can normally put that much on credit if they charge regular bills, groceries, gas, insurance, and all of their other expenses on a regular basis.
Our post on the top six cash back credit cards for 2016 offers an array of additional options to consider as well. With the right card, you could earn anywhere from 1-5% back on your money with almost no effort on your part. Read more about the top offers here:
If travel is your thing, we have seen people who are using bonus offers on travel rewards credit cards to save thousands of dollars on travel each year. You can really score big with these deals.
3. Try out index funds.
Index funds are a type of mutual fund that provide you with a way to invest in the stock market that is completely passive. For example, if you invest money in an index fund that is based on the S&P 500 Index, you will be invested in the general market, without having to concern yourself with choosing investments, rebalancing your portfolio, or knowing when to sell or buy individual companies. All that will be handled by the fund which will base the fund portfolio on the makeup of the underlying index.
Scottrade is our recommended online broker for buying index funds. They make the research and process of investing into different funds very easy. We recommend them over other options because if you ever start to look at other types of stock or mutual fund investments (see #5) you already have the account set up and it is easy to move your money over. On top of that the cost to get your account going is super cheap and the cost per trade very affordable. If you are not familiar with them, check out more details in our Scottrade review. They have become one of my best accounts for investing.
With any broker you are free to choose a fund that is based on any index that you want. For example, there are index funds set up for just about every market sector there is – energy, precious metals, banking, emerging markets – you name it. All you have to do is decide that you want to participate, then contribute money and sit back and relax. Your stock portfolio will then be on automatic pilot.
If you are looking toward retirement with your money then we would look at opening a Roth IRA. It will shield your savings from any future taxes and you can withdraw all earning tax free once you hit 59 1/2. It is one of the best ways to save money for retirement.
4. Make money for tasks you’d do anyway.
Yes, you can make some money doing some of the things you’re already doing.
For example, InboxDollars allows you to make money by searching the web, shopping online, playing games, and more! Swagbucks also allows to to make money doing similar activities. It’s amazing. Take advantage of these websites and make some extra money!
5. Invest with a robo-advisor.
Putting money into an account and letting an algorithm manage the investments is about as passive as you can get. Robo-advisors like Betterment allow you to set your willingness for risk in the market and then manage the account for you. The algorithm will do all the work for you and keeps your portfolio balanced. The fees are very reasonable and much less than with an account managed by a person. You can learn more about how Betterment works in our Betterment investing review.
6. Put your photography to work on the web.
Do you like photography? If you do, you may be able to convert it into a passive income source. Photography websites such as Shutterstock and iStockphoto can provide you with platforms to sell your photos. They may offer either a percentage or a flat fee of each photo that is sold to a site client.
In this way, a single photo could represent a cash flow source since it can be sold again and again. You simply need to create your photo portfolio, put it on one or more photo platforms, and then the activity becomes completely passive. All the technicalities of the photo sales are handled through the web platform.
And yes, that’s me in a stock photo you can purchase from iStockPhoto.com. My good is a photographer and has uploaded a few hundred photos to their platform and makes a good residual income from it.
7. Write an ebook.
This can be a lot of work upfront, but once the ebook is created and marketed it can provide you with a passive revenue stream for years. You can either sell the ebook on your own website or offer it as an affiliate arrangement with other websites that provide content related to your ebook.
8. Sell your own products on the internet.
The possibilities here are endless – you can sell just about any product or service that you like. It could be a product you have created and can manufacture on your own or it could be digital in nature (such as software, DVDs, or even instructional videos).
You can set up a dedicated website for this product or service, unless of course you have a website or blog already in place. Alternatively, you can also sell it on an affiliate basis, either by offering it direct to websites and blogs related to your product or service, or through a platform such as ClickBank.
If you make a lot of money in your current job and you’re not sure that you can make a similar amount by selling products online, think again. Awhile back, I interviewed Steve Chou from MyWifeQuitHerJob.com. In our podcast interview, Steve explained how his wife quit her job to become a stay-at-home mom.
Now, being a stay-at-home mom is a full-time job – but Steve Chou’s wife also started an online business that replaced her former salary and started bringing in a six-figure income! Wow, right?
You can learn to sell products online too and make quite a bit of money. While it’s not entirely passive, it’s certainly more passive than getting up and heading out the door to work every morning!
9. Invest in real estate.
This probably falls more in the category of semi-passive income, since an investment in real estate is always at least a little bit of an active venture. Still, once you have a property that is established and fully rented, it’s mostly a matter of managing the property and keeping it performing well.
Additionally, there are professional property managers who can manage your property for you, usually for around 10% of the monthly rent. This professional management can make the investment much more passive, but will take a bite out of your cash flow.
According to Brandon Turner, an active real estate investor and co-host on the popular BiggerPockets Podcast,
“The key to success with rental properties is buying smart. Not every property is going to provide a good return or prove to be passive. Understanding how to analyze potential real estate opportunities is incredibly important. As the old adage goes – you make your money when you buy!”
Another benefit of investing in rental properties is the loan pay down. If you obtain a loan to buy the property, each month your tenants are paying off part of the loan. Once the mortgage on the property has been paid off, your cash flow will increase dramatically, allowing your mediocre investment to skyrocket into a full-fledged retirement program.
It wouldn’t take many paid-off properties to provide a pretty great, and mostly-passive, future for you and your family.
10. Make YouTube videos.
This is a venture that is growing rapidly. You can create videos in just about any area that you like – music, tutorials, opinions, comedy, movie reviews – anything you want . . . then put them on YouTube. You can then attach Google AdSense to the videos, which will overlay your videos with automatic ads. When viewers click on those ads, you will earn money from AdSense.
The keys will be to create compelling videos, to promote those videos on social media websites, and to create enough of them that your income will be coming from multiple sources. There’s a good bit of work that goes into creating videos, but once a video is done it can become a completely passive cash flow source for a very long time.
Thousands of blogs are created every year, and thousands are either completely abandoned by their owners sometime afterward. If you can buy blogs with a reasonable amount of web traffic – as well as a demonstrated cash flow – it could be a perfect passive income source.
Most blogs employ Google AdSense, which provides a monthly revenue stream based on ads that Google places on the site. There may also be affiliate programs generating additional revenue. Both income sources will be yours once you purchase the blog.
From a financial perspective, blogs usually sell for 24 times their monthly income. So if the site generates $250 a month in income, you can likely buy it for no more than $3,000. Translation: a $3,000 investment will buy you $1,500 per year in cash flow.
You may even be able to purchase the site for less than 24 months earnings, if the site owner is particularly anxious to get out. Some sites have good “evergreen” content that will continue generating revenue even years after the site has gone silent.
Bonus tip: If you were to buy such a site, and then to reinvigorate it with fresh content, you may be able raise the monthly revenue enabling yourself to sell the site at a later date for substantially more than what you paid for it.
Finally, instead of buying a blog, you might want to create your own blog. You can make some money either way!
12. Pay off a credit card (or two or three).
Reducing a fixed expense is the financial equivalent of creating passive income. This is certainly true when it comes to credit cards. Let’s say that you owe $10,000 on a credit card, on which there is a monthly payment equal to 2% of the balance, or $200 per month.
By paying the card off, you’ll be free up $2,400 per year in cash flow that would’ve gone to the monthly payments.
That’s like getting a guaranteed 24% return on a $10,000 investment. Good deal?
Much like writing an ebook, there’s a lot of work upfront. But once that’s done, and the book goes into the sales stage, it becomes a completely passive venture.
This is especially true if you can sell the book to a publisher who will pay you royalties for the distribution and sale of the book. You’ll get a percentage of each sale made, and if the book is fairly popular, the royalties could be substantial. Just as important, the royalties can continue flowing for many years.
Mike Piper from OblivousInvestor.com did just that. He wrote a book, Investing Made Simple, which was sold strictly on Amazon. He had decent success with the first book that he created an entire series of book. Those books now net him over 6 figures per year. Not too shabby.
14. Set up a website selling a product.
If there is a product that you are particularly knowledgeable about, you may be able to sell it on a dedicated website. The technique is similar to what you would use for your own product, except that you will not to be concerning yourself with product creation, but only with the sale of someone else’s product.
You may even find after a while that you are able to add other products that are related. Should that happen, the site could generate substantial revenues.
If you are able to have the product drop shipped to customers directly from the manufacturer, you won’t even have to get your hands dirty. That may not be 100% passive, but it’s darn close.
15. Invest in real estate investment trusts (REITs).
In #10 we talked about investing in real estate. But let’s say that you want to invest in real estate, but do it in a truly passive way. You can do that through a real estate investment trust. This is something like a mutual fund holding various real estate projects. The fund is managed by professionals, so you never have to get involved.
One of the big benefits of investing in REITs is that they typically pay higher dividends than stocks, bonds, or bank investments. You can also sell your interest in a REIT anytime you like, which makes it more liquid than owning real estate outright.
16. Become a business silent partner.
Do you know of a successful business that needs capital for expansion? If so, you can become something of a small-time angel investor and provide that needed capital. But rather than offering a loan to a business owner, you instead take an equity position in the business. In this way, the business owner will handle the day-to-day operations, while you will act as a silent partner who also participates in the profits of the business. You will probably want to look at some business credit card offers in order to get a feel for how to manage your business finances while keeping tracking of how your partner is handling everything.
17. Become a referral source.
Every small business needs referral sources in order to maintain sales. Make a list of small business providers that you use on a regular basis and feel you can recommend to others without reservation. Then contact the owners and see if they have any kind of cash referral offers available.
You can do this with accountants, landscapers, electricians, plumbers, carpet cleaning services – the list is endless. Keep a list of these businesses, and be ready to refer them to your friends, family and coworkers. You can earn a fee on each referral just from talking to people.
Don’t overlook referral programs at work either. If your company offers a referral bonus for either new employees or for new customers, then take advantage of that plan. It’s easy money with virtually no work.
18. Rent out unused space with Airbnb.
Airbnb is a concept that has only been around for a few years, but it has exploded around the globe. Airbnb allows people to travel all around the world and to stay in accommodations that are a lot less expensive than traditional hotels. They do this by staying with participating Airbnb members who rent out part of their homes to travelers. By participating in Airbnb, you can use your residence to accommodate guests and earn extra money just for renting out space in your home.
How much you will make will depend upon the size and condition of your home and your location. Naturally, if your home is located in a high cost city, or close to a popular resort, your income will be much higher. It’s a way of earning money on space in your home that might just be sitting empty otherwise.
19. Build an app.
Apps can be an incredibly lucrative income source. Think about how many people today have smartphones. Come on, it’s just about everybody! People are downloading apps like crazy – and for good reason . . . .
Apps make people’s lives easier. Whether it’s an app that helps people put together nice pictures for their blog or an app that keeps track of tasks, there are helpful apps out there for everyone.
You might be asking if there are so many apps out there, why would you want to attempt to create an app? Isn’t there a lot of competition? Well, yes, but fresh, creative ideas can win. If you can come up with something unique, you can make quite a bit of money. Simple – yet unique – apps can be pretty passive.
Don’t know how to code? No problem. First, you can learn. Check out Nathan Barry’s success in his inspiring article, How I Made $19,000 on the App Store While Learning to Code. Nathan also put his design expertise to work in an ebook teaching others how they can design their own apps.
Second, you can hire a developer to build your app based on your idea. This could end up being an expensive option, although it will probably yield a professional-looking app.
The end result is an app that has the potential to make you some relatively passive income. Don’t downplay the idea to build an app – it’s a good one!
20. Create an online course.
Everyone is an expert at something. Why not create an online course about your passion?
My buddy Ramit Sethi at IWillTeachYoutobeRich.com is an expert at creating online courses. He has made an insane amount of money selling his lessons. Most people would be happy making a fraction of what he makes online.
There are a number of ways you can produce and host your own online course. One very simple way is to use a website like Udemy.com. Udemy as over eight million students and is a great way to get your content in front of others for their consideration.
Once you create an online course, it can work for you while you sleep!
What do you put in your online course? Good question. You can add video lessons, checklists for completing steps you recommend in your video lessons, small ebooks to supplement the lessons, audio files for people listening while traveling, informative interviews with likeminded experts, and a whole bunch more!
In fact, you can create several packages at different price points. Some people will want everything, so you can include ‘the works’ for the highest price point and then have two lower price points so that you can receive the largest possible volume of orders.
21. Make an online guide.
If writing articles or creating videos isn’t your thing, and you want to make money online, try creating an online guide.
A good example of this comes from Pat Flynn’s website, SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com. On the website, he has a map of the United States that allows someone to click on any state to see the security guard requirements for that state.
By providing specific information in a guide-like format, you can make money through some of the means already addressed: advertisements through Google AdSense, affiliate links, and even memberships you can sell from your online guide. It’s a fantastic idea!
22. Outsource most if not all of your business needs.
If you’re spending too much of your time on an existing business running it yourself, why not outsource most if not all of your tasks? Yes, it will require you to give up some control, but in many businesses it’s the only way to free up your time so you can focus on other tasks that will result in more income.
If you don’t want to hire employees, consider hiring freelancers who work as contract laborers. Look for freelancers with a strong work ethic who provide quality results.
Here’s a list of tasks that you might want to outsource:
Bookkeeping
Writing
Web design
Editing
Task management
Social media marketing
and so much more!
Yes, many people can turn their existing businesses into passive income businesses. As long as the main product or service isn’t something only you can do, you can transform your business into a passive moneymaker.
23. Try affiliate marketing and make sales.
This is a passive income technique that is better suited to people who have blogs and active websites. You can sign up to promote certain products or services on your site, for which you will be paid either a flat fee or a percentage of the amount of the sale completed.
This isn’t as hard to do as you might think, since there are thousands of companies in the world who want to sell their products in as many places as they can.
You can find affiliate offers either by contacting vendors directly, or on dedicated websites, such as ClickBank. It’s always best if the product or service is one that you are either very interested in or is highly relevant to your website.
Bonus: Purchase high dividend stocks.
By building a portfolio of high dividend stocks, you can create regular passive income at an annual rate that is much higher than what you get on bank investments.
Just as important, since high dividend stocks are stocks, there is always the potential for capital appreciation. In that way, you can earn passive income from two sources – dividends and capital gains.
You can make this process very easy and affordable by opening an account with Loyal3. They have over 65 preselected large companies that you can buy as much or as little as you want with no fees. 42 of the 65 stocks available on Loyal3 pay dividends and 27 of them have raised their dividend annually for at least 5 years. You cannot get simpler than someone else picking the companies or cheaper than no fees.
If you want to do the research and investing yourself, you will need a brokerage account to purchase these stocks and complete the research needed.
I’ve purposely provided a long list of passive income ideas in the hope that there is something on this list for everyone.
Have you tried one of these or are you thinking about trying one of these ideas now? Leave a comment! I look forward to hearing from you.
Viewers of the BBC’s iPlayer service, which enables you to catch-up on TV rather than relying on live broadcasts, will need to ensure they have their details to hand in “early 2017”, as they’ll need them to access the corporation’s online services.
Viewers of the BBC’s iPlayer service, which enables you to catch-up on TV rather than relying on live broadcasts, will need to ensure they have their details to hand in “early 2017”, as they’ll need them to access the corporation’s online services.
Loans are almost impossible to repay for many people who need them most.
One former lendereven said the industry made him feel like a “modern-day gangster.”
But what can you do? You need money now.
I understand. I’ve been strapped for cash, with horrific credit, the tap of my parents already run dry, and my next freelance payment barely visible on the horizon.
The desperation is real. But I’ve never taken out a payday loan.
A stop at your nearby — oh-so-conveniently-located — Check ‘n Go should always be a last resort. Like a last-last,wayafter you’ve tried everything you can think of, after asking everyone else in the world, so far down the list you barely even consider it an option… resort.
Because you can do better.
Avoid the outlandish fees and impossible interest that just put you further in the hole, and try to earn the cash on your own. We’ve pulled together 15 things you can try before you consider a payday loan — real ways you canput cash in your pockettoday.
You may have to use a few of these strategies to amass the money you need, but a bit of effort might save you a lot of money if it means avoiding that payday loan.
1. Sell Your Clothes
Heather Comparetto / The Penny Hoarder
When I was capital-B Broke in college, I could always pull a couple things from my closet to sell at a local consignment shop. I’d walk away with about $20, enough to stock up on groceries for the week.
I’ve never had a packed closet by any means, so you can probably do even better than I did.
Gather your gently used clothes and head to a nearbyPlato’s Closet,Buffalo Exchangeor local shop. Well-known brand names usually fetch more money, if you’re willing to part with them.
2. Take Care of Pets
Heather Comparetto / The Penny Hoarder
Want to make extra money hanging out with cats and dogs?Pet-sittingcould be a great side gig.
If you just want to earn some fast cash today, offer to watch, groom, walk or feed pets for friends or family. You could be offering relief they were afraid to ask for!
You could earn around $40 taking a dog for a walk or stopping by just to keep them company, more if you pitch in for a visit to the vet or help with shopping.
Need more? Offer to watch pets overnight while friends, family or colleagues take a trip out of town.
3. Do a Few Odd Jobs for Family or Friends
George Doyle / Getty Images
Your family or friends want to help out, right? So find something you can do for them in the next hour, for a fair wage.
For example, offer to rake the yard or clean their windows for $20.
4. Pick Up a Craigslist Gig
Don’t forget about short-term gigs on Craigslist! If no one you know needs a hand today, take a look at the Gigs section of your localCraigslist.
Someone might need help with housekeeping, yard work, creative gigs or other odd jobs. Pay will vary, but you take whatever work you want and negotiate for a fee that suits you.
5. Offer to Babysit
Heather Comparetto / The Penny Hoarder
If your friends aren’t pet parents, maybe they’re actually parents of little people?
Offer to babysitfor the day or while they go out for the evening, and you could earn $50-$100.
Keep your eyes and ears open at work, at social gatherings and on social media. If someone mentions a search for a babysitter or just that they could use a nice night out with their spouse, jump in and offer the relief they’re looking for!
6. Sell Your Gold and Silver
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Do you have silver or gold coins and jewelry that you don’t mind parting with? You cansell them for quick cash.
Our resident expert, writer Steve Gillman, warns against going with the buyers you see advertising on TV. They’ll probably send you an envelope to mail in your precious metals, and you’ll wait a few days for an offer and even longer to get paid.
Instead, look for a local coin shop and storefront silver and gold buyers.They tend to pay better prices and you’ll get the money today.
Of course, make sure your items aren’t more valuable as-is before selling them to be melted for their metals. Stop by a local jeweler for an appraisal, or maybe even a sale!
7. Flip a Freebie
Will Rennick / Getty Images
If you’re not afraid ofdumpster divingor curb-shopping, you could nab some items for a quick sale with no overhead.
If your neighbors’ trash doesn’t yield anything valuable, try browsingCraigslist freebiesfor items you can pick up and resell today.
Keep an eye out for things that are nearby and that flip easily — items you could sell at a pawn shop or on consignment, probably, instead of waiting for a private buyer.
8. Offer a Weird Service to Friends for Donations
PeopleImages.com / Getty Images
My boyfriend once made $600 in six hours from a hotel room by posting an offer on Facebook to draw pictures for PayPal donations. Think of it like busking, but for the internet.
Instead of launching a crowdfunding campaign or simply soliciting donations, what can you offer in returnto brighten someone’s day and thank them for their generosity?
Maybe you can record a song, paint a picture, offer a quick edit or proofread of something they’ve written, review resumes, create a design, write a joke, make a silly video or complete a dare.
Get creative— the more fun you make it, the more friends will want to participate!
9. Sell Scrap Metal
Ryan McVay / Getty Images
If you don’t have gold or silver to part with, maybe you have old wire, aluminum soda cans or construction scraps taking up space in your garage?
Copper and aluminum are the most valuable metals — though, none will net you atonin one trip. You might net $5-$15, but when you’re strapped for cash, that little bit can make a big difference!
You could also do friends and family a favor by offering to clear outtheirscrap metal. Turn it in for them, and split the profits.
10. Sell Gift Cards
Heather Comparetto / The Penny Hoarder
We’ve talked plenty aboutselling unused gift cards online, but that won’t pay up right away. If you want to turn your gift cards into cash now, you’ll have to venture into the real world.
Ask friends, family, neighbors, co-workers or (if it’s allowed) store patrons if they’re interested in buying your gift card at a discount. They may be happy to buy, say, a $25 gift card for just $20. And you’ll have $20 more in cash!
11. Make a Bar Bet
Rayes / Getty Images
Yes, this can be legal, and it can be fair. But you might annoy or upset fellow bar patrons, so make sure you know your audience well before parading out these amusing tricks.
Make your way throughthese six foolproof bar bets— and maybe a few different locations — and you could impress your friends and leave with a pocket full of cash.
If that’s the case, and you’re desperate for cash, you might be able to collect on the debt quickly by offering a discount. For example, if someone borrowed $100, offer to call it even if they can repay $75 now.
You’ll be doing each other a favor, and if they can afford the discounted deal, the borrower will be happy to have the debt cleared.
13. Try Busking
Heather Comparetto / The Penny Hoarder
Didn’t love the idea of offering odd services online? Try the real thing — street performing!
Get out your guitar, juggling balls, paints and canvas, saxophone ordusty Halloween costume, and try busking for the day.
Find a spot in your city with decent foot traffic and not too many competing performers, and you could quickly amass a nice pile of cash. If you don’t mind being the center of attention, this can be a fun way to make extra money when you need it.
14. Borrow From Friends or Family Members
Heather Comparetto / The Penny Hoarder
If you’ve made it through the list and still need money now, think about who you can borrow money from before you resort to an expensive payday loan.
Always be upfront with friends and family, repay your loans on time and ask for money sparingly. No one wants to feel like a mooch, but the people who love you tend to want to help you when you need it, so don’t discount the option.
You can even offer to pay interest on the loan, and the rate will be far better than a payday loan business.
Whatever you agree on, make sure you put it in writing,so everyone is on the same page, and they know you’re serious about repayment.
15. Ask for a Paycheck Advance at Work
AndreyPopov / Getty Images
Finally, if you’ve exhausted all other options, tricks, tips and talents, try to get an advance on your paycheckfrom your employerbefore you agree to pay outrageous interest to a payday loan place.
Ask to borrow the money you need against small payments out of future paychecks.This reduces or eliminates your interest. And, when the lender is the same person who cuts your checks, they know they’re guaranteed repayment!
This strategy requires a degree of trust within your company. And, to be honest, it may be a long shot. But to save you from a cycle of building debt, it’s definitely worth trying.
Your Turn: What tricks have you tried to make money quickly when you’re in a bind?
Dana Sitar (@danasitar) is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She’s written for Huffington Post, Entrepreneur.com, Writer’s Digest and more, attempting humor wherever it’s allowed (and sometimes where it’s not).
A few months ago, I answered a reader mailbag question from Randu about what constitutes a reasonable food budget for a family of four. Here’s Randu’s question and my response:
What is the minimal food budget for a family of four?
– Ragu
The USDA “thrifty” family cost of food estimation for a family of four is $558 per month with young children and $639.60 if you have older children. We have a family of five (two adults, two “older” children by the USDA standards, and one “younger” child) and my monthly food cost estimate for us is about $800, though I know we could cut it further than that with ease if we needed to.
I know that with some careful home economics, a family can definitely get below that “thrifty” number from the USDA. The more you cook at home – and the more you prepare meals from scratch using low cost ingredients like dried beans and dried rice – the lower you can make that number go. If you supplement that with a well-tended garden that can provide vegetables for you and you save the excess for future months via preservation (canning, drying, etc.), you can cut it even more. These things really depend on having someone at home who will do all of that work, though.
Many two-income American families end up relying at least somewhat on convenience-based shortcuts at least some of the time – things like prepackaged foods, takeout foods, delivery, and dining out – so that increases the cost simply out of necessity. Thus, I think the numbers from the USDA are reasonable in a two-income household that pays attention to the dollars and cents.
This question-and-answer led to a lengthy exchange between Ragu and myself about food expenses. Ragu was surprised that we spent about $800 a month on food for our family and felt that was pretty high, although it’s honestly not out of line with the USDA “thrifty” standards, as mentioned above.
It turned out that Ragu was, unsurprisingly, one of the adults in a family of four – two adults and two children. His goal, as he described it, was to achieve a family food budget of $360 per month. That number comes from spending an average of $1 per meal per person on food for his household.
This seemed like an interesting target to me, so I sat down with our actual food expenses and did some math. It turns out that if I were to simply cut out about six family meals per month – three or four of them involving eating out and two or three involving “gourmet” meals we prepare at home – we actually come really close to that $1 per meal per person threshold in our home. (Remember, we have five family members, so eating out at a decent restaurant pretty quickly pushes our bill toward the $100 range.) In fact, many weeks go by in our home where we hit that $1 per meal per person threshold. If we did that all the time, we would spend less than $450 per month to feed our family.
That’s a significant drop from the food spending of the average American family, which is somewhere around $700 a month. Since the average American family consists of roughly 2.5 people, that equates to the average American spending just shy of $3 per meal.
Think about that. The average American person – man, woman, or child – spends just below $3 per meal on food, assuming three meals per day for food consumption. If the average family can lower that cost to $1 per meal, that’s literally hundreds of dollars a month in savings. In fact, even if the average family only uses some of the strategies needed to make that happen, it’s still hundreds of dollars a month in savings.
So, what kinds of strategies are needed to reduce a family’s food cost to $1 per meal? Although we don’t subscribe to that strict cost limit for food, many of the strategies we use can really help ratchet down that cost per meal to a pretty low level, and those strategies could easily be used to hit that “$1 per meal” level. Here are some of the strategies we use for keeping our cost per meal very low.
Strategy #1 – Plan Ahead
The single most effective strategy there is for cutting your food spending is to make a meal plan, build your grocery list from that meal plan, and stick to that plan. If you do that, food cost management becomes far easier.
Here’s the basic structure that we use.
Once a week, usually on Sunday, one of us downloads the latest flyer from our grocery store. We look through it and find some items that are on sale and then use them as the basis for a few meals during the week. We make a list of the days of the coming week and the meals we intend to have, then we make a grocery list from that list of meals. Naturally, the on-sale items make it right onto the grocery list.
We then take this list to the store and we trust it. If it’s not on the list, we don’t buy it. Then, when we get home, everything in our grocery sacks has a purpose. It either provides a portion of a meal or of a snack that we planned ahead for.
This is our routine, week after week. It doesn’t really take any extra time because the time spent making the meal plan and grocery list is gained back by spending a lot less time at the grocery store. It’s also very helpful to have meals sketched out for the entire week, so I don’t really have to think about what meal we’re having for dinner on Wednesday night.
Strategy #2 – Base More Meals Around Sale-Priced Produce (and Meats)
While planning ahead saves money by keeping us from wasting money on extra food purchases and unplanned food purchases, the fact that we’re basing the meal plan around sale-priced produce and meats is an equally big money saver.
The simple act of starting the week’s meal plan by looking at the grocery store flyer for on-sale ingredients ends up with each and every meal centering around at least one – but often several – very low cost staples. That means that when you’re actually in the store with your grocery list, the items going into your cart are mostly on-sale items.
Sometimes, it almost feels like magic. As I go from item to item down my grocery list and pick them up off the shelf, it feels like they’re all on sale. That means when I finally get to the checkout, the total bill is sometimes shockingly low, which is exactly what you want to see when you get to the checkout, isn’t it?
Of course, planning meals this way means you need to be a little flexible. You can’t demand particular brands – you have to be flexible with the brands that you buy. You can’t insist on certain ingredients in your soup – you have to be flexible with what goes into your soups and stews and casseroles.
Let the grocery store flyer take the lead and find ways to integrate those ingredients into basic recipes that you know that you like and you’ll end up with some very low cost and very interesting meal variants.
Strategy #3 – Base Meals Around Low-Cost Staples and Store Brands
Another valuable strategy for low cost grocery shopping is to base your meals around inexpensive staple foods and store brands so that even when you’re paying full price in the store, the cost is still cheap.
There are a lot of foods in the grocery store that are always pretty inexpensive. Dried beans. Dried rice. Canned vegetables. Peanut butter. Eggs. Pasta. Chicken. Those things can always be found at a very reasonable price per pound.
That means it’s worth your while to really know how to prepare these things efficiently and use them in your kitchen. Knowing how to prepare dry beans without skipping a beat is a great skill to have. Knowing how to use a box of pasta, a can of diced tomatoes, and whatever herbs you have on hand to make a decent meal is a great skill to have.
How do you get there? You get there by buying these staple items and actually using them. If you’re intimidated by preparing a pasta meal, wait until boxes of pasta are on sale, buy some boxes, and give it a shot. Pair it with an inexpensive canned pasta sauce. If you do it two or three times, it’s going to seem super easy. Then, move on to making your own pasta sauce from diced tomatoes and/or tomato sauce with a few spices in it, which makes the sauce really cheap.
If you’re intimidated by cooking dried beans, just buy a pound and follow the directions on a lazy afternoon. See how they turn out when you follow the steps, then save the cooked beans to use in recipes over the next few days. We often have a tub of recently cooked beans in the fridge to use as ingredients for upcoming meals.
If you learn to base your meals around these inexpensive things – beans, rice, eggs, chicken, pasta, canned and flash-frozen veggies, and so on – and then accompany them with whatever meats and produce is on sale, your meals are going to be very cheap indeed.
Strategy #4 – Take Advantage of Less Busy Times
Many people fall into a routine of spending a lot on food because of their very busy lives. They buy a lot of convenience food and takeout because they don’t have a lot of time in the evening to prep a meal.
A much better strategy is to do most of the prep work for a home-cooked meal well in advance, or to even complete a home-cooked meal and stow it in the freezer for use in the future or in the refrigerator for use later in the week.
For example, we’ll often spend Sunday afternoon making most of the meals for the week and sometimes making double or triple batches and saving the extras. We’ll make a huge batch of chili in a giant pot, put a quarter of it in a container to use on Tuesday night, then make three more containers of chili to put in the freezer. That chili’s based on dried beans (which are super cheap) along with onions, green pepper, chili powder, and a few other ingredients (some of which were on sale that week). Because we’re making four batches at once, we can really nail the on-sale ingredients if there are a lot of chili ingredients on sale.
You can do the same thing with pretty much any soup, stew, or casserole. We make lasagnas, pans of enchiladas, and all kinds of other things in advance like this, putting complete meals in the fridge and more copies of that same meal in the freezer.
You can also take partial steps for meal preparation. Are you going to need some chopped onions on Tuesday? Chop them on Saturday afternoon, put them in a container in the fridge, and pull them out on Tuesday when you need them. It’s easy!
During the week, supper prep is really easy. Go home, turn on the oven (or the burner), take off your shoes, put the food in the oven (or on the burner), and relax for a while. Supper’s done very quickly thereafter, and it’s a dirt cheap supper.
Strategy #5 – Use a Slow Cooker
Another strategy for making cooking at home much more convenient is to use a slow cooker. Basically, you just toss the ingredients for the meal in the slow cooker before you leave in the morning, set it to cook slowly all day long with the push of just a few buttons, and you come home to a meal that’s ready to eat.
You can cook pretty much any soup in the slow cooker very easily by just dumping in ingredients and liquid. You can also cook almost any casserole as well – we often make lasagna in the slow cooker. You can make a great filling for tacos in the slow cooker. You can cook a mean pot roast and vegetables in the slow cooker.
All of these things are so easy to make in the slow cooker. Just look up a slow cooker recipe for any of these items on Google and pick the variation that sounds good to you, then toss those ingredients in there in the morning before you leave for work. Turn the slow cooker on low, leave, then come home at dinnertime to find a completed meal ready for you to eat.
If you combine that with the other strategies here – shopping effectively for ingredients and doing some prep work in advance – you can make these home-cooked meals super cheap.
Strategy #6 – Extract Maximum Value from Leftovers
Whenever anything is left over from a meal, we save it and eat it in the future.
First of all, my wife and I usually prepare meals in plastic containers for the two of us to eat for lunch the next day. This makes it easy to just pop those containers in the microwave for an easy, quick lunch. Sometimes, we’ll pre-season it with some additional salt and pepper and maybe even a little cheese or spices to jazz it up a bit.
Second, we’ll take the other leftovers and store them separately in other containers in the fridge.
Then, twice a week – usually on Thursdays and Sundays – we go through the fridge, pull out any and all leftover containers, and have a leftover buffet. We put everything out on the table and let people choose what they want to make a dinner plate and/or bowl. We take turns reheating those plates and/or bowls and eating together. (This is also very convenient if we’re eating separately.)
That usually takes care of almost all the remaining leftovers. It also makes for a very, very inexpensive Thursday and Sunday dinner for our families. More than that, it means that we throw away very little food.
Strategy #7 – Extract Value from Scraps, Too
But what about the scraps of food that are edible or semi-edible but you don’t really want to eat? The bits at the ends of carrots? The remnants of a bag of microwaved steamed vegetables? The bones from a chicken or a steak or a roast?
You might be tempted to throw those things away, but don’t do it! There’s a great deal of value still there, and that value is in making stock.
Stock is essentially a tasty liquid component of future soups, stews, and casseroles. You can make stock by taking a bunch of leftover items – a bunch of vegetables to make vegetable stock, leftover bones and perhaps a few vegetables to make a meat-specific stock – and cooking them slowly all day in a slow cooker. At the end of the day, you just strain the liquid and save that liquid in the freezer until the next time you make soup or a casserole.
Take a chicken carcass or some turkey bones, add a few bits of onion and a handful of peppercorns, put them in the slow cooker, add enough water to cover everything, cover it, and turn it on low to cook all day long. At the end of the day, strain it and save the liquid – chicken stock! Replace the chicken or turkey bones with some steak bones or a roast bone and you have beef stock! Use just a bunch of leftover vegetables with some seasonings and you have vegetable stock!
It’s easy, it makes something useful from true scraps, and it makes homemade soups and casseroles way better, turning them from something mediocre into something amazing. Plus, it’s very low effort as you can just let it cook slowly all day in a slow cooker.
Strategy #8 – Keep Breakfasts and Lunches Well Below $1 per Meal
Often, we spend more than $1 per person for our family dinners. In order to try to keep the average meal cost low, we strive to spend less than $1 per person for breakfasts and lunches.
In order to do that, our family breakfasts and lunches are very, very focused on highly inexpensive staple foods.
Breakfasts often revolve around a bowl of oatmeal or a hardboiled or poached egg or two or some toast or an English muffin with peanut butter, with any of those things paired with a piece of fruit. The cost for any of those breakfasts is below $0.50.
For lunch, I’m often happy with any of the breakfast options, but we’ll also often have very simple grilled sandwiches with a low-cost or sale-priced wheat bread and something like sliced cucumbers on the side. We often eat extra leftovers for lunch as well, and we usually count a meal of leftovers as costing nothing (attributing the full cost to the original meal).
If you keep the first two meals of the day around $0.50 a pop, you can spend $2 a pop on ingredients for the evening meal and still keep the daily average at $1 a meal. Since you can actually make a pretty good breakfast for $0.50 (and a passable lunch, too), it ends up working out quite well.
Final Thoughts
The thing you’ll really notice about all of these strategies is that they’re all tightly interrelated and they all center on cooking meals at home.
Cooking at home is something that’s often challenging for modern families. Families today are often very constrained when it comes to time, plus there are tons of options out there for convenient food on the go, so many families get into the routine of paying a big premium for their meals – and the truth is that even the cheapest fast food is a pretty significant premium.
If you want to move in the direction of $1 per meal for your family, you need to move the center of your food preparation to the home and away from takeout and other restaurant foods. That’s really the biggest step.
The strategies above mostly serve to make cooking at home simpler and to keep the ingredient cost low, but, honestly, it’s the “simpler” that’s truly important. If you can simply make the shift to having most meals prepared at home, you’re well on your way to $1 meals for your family, and that will make a huge difference in your family food costs. (That’s $360 a month for food for a family of four, after all.)
When she lived in St. Petersburg, Florida, she thrived in the corporate world at Florida Progress Corporation. Her husband, Bill, was a surgeon. When heretiredin 2006, the couple and their teenage daughter relocated to Watkinsville, Georgia.
“For the first time ever we didn’t have health insurance through our employment,” Cobb says.“I was shocked by how expensive it was.”
Driving around town one day, thestay-at-home momsays she saw signs outside the local school about school bus drivers — health insurance included. Cobb, then 53, jumped atthe part-time opportunitywith the Oconee County School District.
Terry Cobb spent four years driving school busses in Georgia. Sharon Steinmann – The Penny Hoarder
The Benefits of Becoming a School Bus Driver
Thanks to her new gig maneuvering a big yellow bus full of kids down country roads and through town, Cobb and her family finally had health insurance.
“That in of itself was worth it,” Cobb says.Cobb even hada 401(k) option.
Then there’s the extra income. The average pay as of May 2015 was $14.70 per hour, with an average yearly income of $30,580, according tothe Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Cobb says her earnings weren’t close to that.
“But when I factored it in with the health insurance being provided, I was probably making around $20K, which was worth it for me,” she says.
And as the mom of a high school freshman, the schedule was ideal. Cobb began her morning routes around 6:30 a.m. and finished by 9 a.m. Even if she had a full-time job, the schedule would have worked.
She went home for the afternoon anddid her own thing, then hopped back in for the afternoon route around 2 p.m., which ran until about 4:30 p.m.
Plus, she never worked weekends, had school holidays off and enjoyed a long summer.
“I will say, for someone who is astay-at-home parentor has a flexible work schedule, it’s a good job,” Cobb says.
Each day, Ms. Terry (as the kids called her) slid into the bus driver’s seat and delivered 20 to 30 elementary-, middle- and high-school students to and from school.
In the morning, the drive was OK because everybody was sleepy. But the afternoon was a different story. There tended to be more kids, and they were hot and sweaty and irritable, Cobb says.
“I’m good at disciplining, and they hated me,” Cobb says with a laugh. “You have a big rearview mirror, so you have to watch them like a hawk.”
She says kids wandering around the bus posed her biggest challenge. “There were no seatbelts, which is crazy,” she explains.
To handle the little ones, Cobb assigned them seats — girl, boy, girl, boy. If a child’s behavior became really bad, she’d chat with the parents or pull the principal into the matter.
The older kids… well, they were a different story.
“If you want to know who the meanest creature is on the planet, it’s middle-school girls,” Cobb says. “They peak in about seventh grade,”
When worse came to worst, Cobb never hesitated to pull the bus over, put on the parking brake, get up and announce, “We’re not going anywhere until you can learn to behave.”
Sometimes she flew into a lecture that went something like, “This is a bus, not a limo, which means everybody gets to ride it, and we all have to be civil. If you can’t do that, then you need to get your parents to rent you a limo.”
And a pro tip from the now-retired school bus driver?Arm yourself with the essentials: Lysol, paper towels and wipes.
In the summer, Cobb packed wipes in the cooler and handed them to the little ones as they got on the bus — something cool (and clean). In the winter when kids were always sick, she kept Lysol close by.
“You should be able to Lysol the kids when they get on,” she jokes.
For herself, she packed frozen kitchen towels in a cooler to wrap around her neck in the summer months. “It was an oven in there,” she says.
She loved driving the bus, though — as long as it wasn’t raining.
“The brakes weren’t the best, but it had great mirrors, you sat up high, and you could see everything,” Cobb says. “If I could drive the bus without kids, it’d be great fun.”
Cobb continued to drive her bus for four years— until her daughter graduated high school. At that point, her husband reached the age for Medicare, and her daughter was off to Auburn University, a school close enough for her to visit.
“I just knew I wasn’t going to want to stick to that strict schedule,” she says. You can’t really miss a shift as a school bus driver — the kids have to get to school.
How to Become a School Bus Driver
First off, have the right personality. You need to be able to discipline and handle a busload of antsy — and sassy — children.
You’ll also have to get your commercial driver’s license (CDL).Cobb’s school offered thetraining, so she didn’t have to pay a cent. Parallel park a school bus? Check.
Cobb also had to go through safety training, practice evacuations and learn protocols in case of an accident.
“You even had to be able to open the engine and tell somebody all the different parts… Why? I have no idea,” Cobb says. There was ongoing training each year.
But in the end, Cobb says, the job was worth it. She had extra income on a flexible schedule and, most importantly — health insurance.
Your Turn: Would you ever drive a school bus?
Carson Kohler (@CarsonKohler) is a junior writer at The Penny Hoarder. After recently completing graduate school, she focuses on saving money — and surviving the move back in with her parents. At 18, she dropped out of her elementary education major, so she’s not sure she could handle being a bus driver.
French-owned RCI Bank has cut the rate on its easy-access Freedom Account to 1% before tax (0.8% after tax) down from 1.2% (0.96%).
French-owned RCI Bank has cut the rate on its easy-access Freedom Account to 1% before tax (0.8% after tax) down from 1.2% (0.96%).
The top easy-access rate now comes from Tesco Bank at 1.07% (0.86%) but this comes with a bonus payable for one year. After that the rate drops to 0.4% (0.32%).
Everyone starts out with a blank slate when it comes to their credit reports. The trick, of course, if you have never established any type of credit, is to learn how to go from “no credit” to “good credit” in the shortest amount of time possible.
How long does it take to build credit? Establishing a good credit history doesn’t happen overnight, of course. But with the right strategy, you can certainly expedite the process.
You Don’t Start from Absolute Zero
A common credit myth is that your credit scores begin at zero. However, FICO scoring models and the current VantageScore model are scaled on a range from 300 to 850. There is no such thing as a credit score of zero, despite what some financial celebrities love to suggest.
All credit scores are generated based upon the same information, and that is the data contained in your credit reports. If your credit reports are still completely empty, then no scoring model will be able to generate a credit score for you. In the credit scoring world this means that your credit does not meet the minimum scoring criteria. Until your reports meet this minimum scoring criteria, you simply will not have any credit scores at all.
Becoming eligible to earn credit scores means that you must first add items to your credit reports which are scoreable. In other words, you need to establish credit. However, establishing credit for the first time can be a bit challenging. Many lenders will not wish to do business with you because they may feel that being your credit “guinea pig” is too big of a risk.
Fortunately there are several methods available to help you establish credit from scratch even if you’re currently void of a credit report.
1. Secured Credit Cards
Perhaps the most popular way to build credit from scratch (or even to try to rebuild damaged credit) is to open a secured credit card. A secured credit card represents very little risk to the lender, because you’ll be required to place a deposit with the issuing bank equal to the amount of your credit limit. For example, if you deposit $500, you’ll be issued a card with an equal limit of $500.
Because of the much lower risk involved for the lender, secured credit cards generally have easy approval criteria. This means the bank may likely be willing to take the small risk and issue an account to you even if you have no previous credit history. Of course, it’s up to you to make sure you manage the new account properly (that means no late payments and paying off the balance monthly), otherwise the account you opened with the intention of helping your credit could have quite the opposite effect.
2. Credit Builder Loans
Another effective method for establishing credit without any previous credit history is the credit builder loan. These loans are generally issued by credit unions and can serve as an easier way to qualify for an installment line of credit. Since credit scoring models reward consumers who show a history of managing a variety of account types well, it could certainly be advantageous to open both a secured card and a credit builder loan when setting out to establish some credit for the first time.
With the credit builder option, you will be issued a loan for only a small dollar amount, perhaps $500 to $1,000, but the funds will not be released to you immediately. Instead, the funds will be held by the credit union in a savings account, and only after you have completed all of your loan + interest payments will you have access to the funds. You might think of these loans as a forced savings account. Assuming you make all of your monthly payments on time, you could have six to 12 months of solid payment history added to your credit reports by the time the loan has been satisfied in full.
3. Authorized User Accounts
Authorized user accounts represent another great way to establish credit for the very first time. With this credit building method, a family member adds you to an existing credit card account as an authorized user. As long as the account has good payment history and a low balance, the card will likely start you out with a relatively impressive score as soon as it’s added to your credit reports by the issuing bank.
After you’ve established credit and a credit score, your job is now to facilitate its growth and maintain its strength. Believe it or not, it’s actually very easy to maintain solid credit scores. All you have to do is a) never, ever miss a payment, and b) maintain low (or no) credit card balances. If you’re able to do those two things, then it will be next to impossible to have anything but a great credit score, always.
