Official Poll: What income-generating activities at home do you do?

[Support]

As a self-sufficient person, we'd love to make money in as many ways as possible. What's a better way to do it than to do have income-generating activities in the comforts of our own homes.

Please take a minute to complete this poll and tell us what income-generating activities at home do you do. After voting, you can reply to this thread and expand on your reason.

If your answer isn't listed, you can vote for "Others" and reply to this thread with your answers.

 

[Tuco]

I sell collectables on Ebay.

 

[baymule]

Ummm.....right now, I SPEND money!

 

[Smart Red]

I collect the rents here at home. I also store the paint and cleaning supplies for new tenant readiness (always my job). Manage getting son and DH to do repair work as promised in a timely manner.

I'm ready to sell out and just enjoy working on my own home anytime soon. It seems we have spent every weekend and summer doing something on the 8 units we slave for/own for the past 30 years. One of the 'privileges' of being a landlord; no vacations ever!

 

[baymule]

@Smart Red you could sell the homes and owner finance, then you would still have income from the house payments, but none of the paint/repair/upkeep headaches.

 

[Smart Red]

@baymule, we have sold three houses on Land Contract to the great tenants that were living in them. One Quick Claim Deeded the property back to us when he got in legal trouble and left us with repair headaches far above what we'd have had without selling it. One skipped nearly a year of payments before getting a traditional loan to pay us off and the third has borrowed on the property four times to the point that she has paid for the house twice and still owes half of what the original price was.

Hopefully she will get her act together again and get caught up with her missing payments. She really was a nifty tenant and buyer for quite a few years before getting into trouble...legal, matrimonial, and financial. We are working with her to keep her house, but if we took it back we would have to pay over 8 thousand in liens she now has garnered against the property and she would have 5 children without a place she could afford to rent or buy. She has a great deal on monthly payments for so large a house.

Nope, I don't think I want to burden my children with these problems.

 

[baymule]

Ok, reverse what I said, just sell them to cash/finance buyer!

 

[Joel_BC]

We used to sell free-range eggs and organic garlic. Found that the time involved to produce these for market was a very inefficient way for us to earn cash income, so we took various off-homestead jobs - me, carpentry, assistant mason, retail clerk... my wife, art-gallery director, art-school instructor. Then we phased into a home-based $$ mode where I focused on selling magazine articles, and later managed a regional business association, and my wife made a success out of her glass/metal-sculpture work.

At home, we focused on growing for our own food.

The local marketplace for organic produce, however, did develop further since the days when we tried it, and now some households are able to make a living from market gardens, organic meat or laying chickens, etc. I'm happy for them.