Staying home now...what ways can I save money over working?

[tortoise]

My favorite thing is highly trained dogs.

Ummmm.... hello? Teach yourself how to be a dog trainer. It will take time, even if you already can respectably train a dog. Petsitting is sooooo low. I can't describe it any other way. You will never earn what it is worth.

However... board and train, now that's some serious money! You house a dog and training it 1 or 2 hours per day - depends on the contract with the owner. You'll bring in at LEAST $1,000 per months, per dog. In part of your fees, you'll break down for a boarding cost, so you can establish a REASONABLE (for you) price for petsitting.

This is the only way I survived when I was newly divorced with a mortgage to pay. I'd love to do it again except we have nosy neighbors and would have to deal with city dog limits, ick. :/ Be careful - there are some behavior problems that no one can pay enough money to make it worth it. Go for happy puppy training, not the 4 year old dog that pees on everything. Sure you can fix it, but it's not worth it.

Also be careful to not overwhelm yourself. I have a friend that has been a professional dog trainer for ... a decade? She is trying to pay her son's hefty private school tuition and she overwhelmed herself with like 5? board and train dogs at once. (Don't do that.) Don't take on a dog unless you are completely confident you know at least TWO ways to solve the problem, and find some dog trainers to bounce problems off of so you never get stuck.

Dang, I want to move so I can do this again. It was fun. I would set aside an area of the house for just dog training (my fiance freaks out about little stuff...) Like a walk-in basement would be sweet to start to build an apartment for dog training. Then when you're done, you have an apartment to rent.

 

[ohiofarmgirl]

supper is so easy, just pick something and go in and cook it,

dont you just LOVE this?!? free food! right there in your yard! whoooot! it totally changes the way you look at groceries, doesnt it?

we had to change from "what do you want" to "what do we have" and then go walk around until we had an armload of stuff....and then base our meals from that.

hey SD - thinking about T's ideas.. you have a huge base of customers just north of you with more money than brains and all have a trophy dog they dont spend any time with... soo... you could start a doggie "vacation in the country on a farm" - how hilarious would that be!?!? not just any old boarding, but on a FARM!

hee hee hee

ps tell that big ol bear dog that kai says 'hi' - she's busy wrestling with two "polar bears" right now. Lucky and Ti think she's all kinds of fun and are happy to roll around in the snow with her.

 

[savingdogs]

It has occurred to me that what we do for dogs for free we could be doing for owners. I do know people who have been doing dog training and see the pitfalls (mostly the people) and it does sound like more than I can handle at this stage of my disability. A good deal of dog training is training that owner and remember I have really poor communication skills since I can't hear what they say. And remember I have the little spoiled dog here that dispels any illusion that the dogs around here are well trained. I'd have to train Hubby better first or hide her. Also, I need to work at my own pace because I could get sick a whole week and not keep up with training deadlines, etc. That would be a career I would-have-wanted had I not gone deaf and was confident driving around, etc. Sigh. And while I'm usually okay, it is a disadvantage that I do not hear growling.

I have thought about dog sitting however, especially hand-picked particular dogs, such as ones that belong to friends and are known to me or are former fosters. One of the ones I dog sit does get remedial training and the family knows it and brings him for refreshers while they go away. It is informal however. If I am not well, my sons pick up the slack as they are EXCELLENT with dogs for their ages (18 and 14), better than most people and certainly more experienced than the folks that bring me the little dog to retrain and board. He got a toenail trim last visit with the 14-year-old as the holder. The one that is here now just comes because his owner knows he has fun and isn't cooped up at a boarding kennel and knows we genuinely love him.

Our forte is turning an outside dog into an indoor dog, housetraining and socializing a dog with other animals such as dogs and cats, livestock, etc. and getting them used to family life and finding out what home would suit them best. When the economy was better, we thought about pulling particular dogs from the shelter, training them and selling them. But times are pretty hard right now for those types of endeavors, people would more likely train their own dogs. And dog training books are so common, there isn't much more to be written on the topic. Perhaps you can tell by my rambling that I've tried to find my niche in this area and haven't really found a fit.

But obviously these ideas intrigue me.

 

[rhoda_bruce]

Twice, I have been out of work and used the time to work for myself. My version of homemaking is similar to the friends that have responded here.
I think most of us are into a lot of the same things....clothes lines, gardens, chickens, etc...
I would spend a few days organizing and cleaning around, while my mind went a hundred mph. I had to keep moving because it was my defense system.
Eventually the bean cooking, animal slaughtering, gardening and foraging would start paying off.
When my husband would be off to work, I would imagine myself clocking in...for myself. My additude would be,"Let me see how many things I can accomplish for myself today."
The normal chores I could get done in no time. What I was really after was finishing anything that had gone neglicted or making things more functional.
There are some really good advice....not just for you, but for the average on SS. I questioned my husband about that bit on the farmers almanac and it must have lit a fire under him because about 20 minutes later he wanted me to go to their website and copy the next 6 weeks planner. He has been reading the almanac for years. It did have some good chores to do and what day to do them. Hey......sometimes you just need a secretary to tell you what you need to be doing, right? Well I do anyway. I juggle too much.
I look back at my 'off time' as some of the most productive times in my life. I did have to pinch pennies at times, but I had this place running like a well oiled machine once I got it going. It can happen for you.

 

[savingdogs]

It needs to happen for us. My home is cluttered and disorganized and it has been years since I had time to put things in order. For instance, I found 3 bottles of vinegar when I cleaned out from under the sink, and I would have thought I had none. Sometimes when we have needed a tool, we can't find it and have bought another, that kind of thing.
Thank you again for all your great advice. I'm already starting to do many of the things you all have mentioned (we have so many dried beans now you guys would laugh).

 

[Mattemma]

I took eggs around to all my neighbors.Many now pay for eggs,but I still give freebies once in a while. I remember taking some to the elders across the street.Always waved to them,but never went over.The eggs opened up our relationship.Now we trade veggies and fruits,and they got me a plumber when my water tank blew.

I would recommend buying fruiting bushes and plants.I get a lot of mine cheap through our local soil and water county dept. spring sale.Less lawn and more edible landscaping.

Cloths line here too.Trying to talk dh into a harbor freight green house to get an early start on my seeds.Boy,the seed prices have really gone up this year in all the catalogs I have gotten.

Worm compost to eat your food scraps,and then you get good soil for your garden.

 

[tortoise]

I did the pull a dog from a shelter or CL, train it to be a therapy dog (super easy if you choose the right dog), get it certified and sell it for a few hundred dollars. Or get a free (and super cute) puppy and train it sit, stay, come, down and turn around and sell it for a few hundred dollars. It's risky because if you screw up it is hard to get rid of a dog.

This isn't saving money... but how about you train one of your dogs some of the things that hearing dogs do? It might help you be more able to accomplish projects?

It sounds like a thorough declutter and organization (declutter FIRST!) will save you money because you won't be buying repeats. Have I mentioned flylady.net yet? Excellent resource to get clutter under control without being overwhelming.

 

[freemotion]

I've gone to flylady a few times and always stopped at some point in the sign-up when she says she sends TEN emails a DAY!!!! That is more clutter in my mind, somehow. 'Splain, please? TEN emails? Really? Yikes! Just the thought of it overwhelms me.

 

[savingdogs]

I've actually been working at decluttering. Finding duplicates is awesome! We don't need oven cleaner, paper towels or pens! I'm finding them everywhere. I have absolutely no idea why I have four cans of oven cleaner, I hate that stuff.

My family is disorganized, I'm the organized one. But it takes time to get things back where they belong and I haven't had any until now.

 

[ORChick]

One of the best tips that I took from the "Tightwad Gazette" (which I recommend, if you haven't read it yet) was the idea of reducing one's usage. We get in the habit of using a certain amount of *whatever*, and don't think that less might work as well. For instance: shampoo. You pour a certain sized *glop* of shampoo in your hand, and that is what you have always done, and it has always worked. How about half that much? Would it work as well? And, if it does, how about half that? At some point it won't be enough, and then you up the amount a little. And then you can think about how often you use it; do you wash your hair every day? Could you do it less often? Some people can't; their hair gets icky. But some people can. I have long hair (in a braid or a knot mostly), and fairly coarse, and wash it every 5 days or so. I'm comfortable with that (when I lived in the city it was every 3 days). More often makes it dry and unmanageable. Just because habit says one thing, it ain't necessarily so, and is worth experimenting. *Little stuff* you say, and, yes, it is. But half as much shampoo at every wash, and washing half as often, means one bottle of shampoo instead of four. It adds up, especially if carried over to other things - like toothpaste, or hand cream, or dish soap, or just about anything you use regularly.