Have you ever needed to come up with some ways to make some fast cash, especially to pay off your debt. Today is another budget strategy session with Kim who needs to pay off about $5,000 before the end of the year, which at the time of this recording is about three and a half months. Now she is, or has been a teacher for like 25 years or something like that. We didn't specifically mention that in the recording. We talked about it before we started to record, but she does have a teaching background and we came up with some ways that she could make some extra money online, fairly fast, and some ways in person, if she really wanted to. But with her schedule, she needed the flexibility of some online, extra work. So she has already, we just finished recording and she has already taken action and started to look and create the profiles and do the things that we talk about in this episode. So you ready to make some extra money fast, you know, for Christmas to pay off some bills for the holidays, birthdays, whatever have you, before the end of the year, keep listening to this episode. And if you'd like to have your own budget strategy session, go to budgets, made easy.com/strategy. Welcome to the money mindset podcast, where you'll find a judgment free zone to help you free yourself from overthinking and the fear of doing things the wrong way. It's time to shed yourself of the mom, guilt, procrastination, and perfectionism. So you can start doing the things that you really want to do with your money instead of just working to pay bills. I'm Ashley, Patrick ex detective turned debt free CEO of my very own business and stay at home. Mom of three, not too long ago. My dreams of staying at home with my kids seemed I possible. I thought I'd have to stay miserable in a high stress and demanding job just so I could retire someday. After gaining the confidence of my own ability to manage my family's finances and a simple step by step plan to make it happen. I was able to pay off $45,000 in just 17 months, which then allowed me to finally quit my job, stay at home with my kids and build a debt free business. Now, my mission is to help moms like you conquer debt and free themselves from the mental load of handling their family's finances. If you're ready to shed the guilt and shame surrounding your past money, mistakes, and tackle your debt, this is the place for you. Let's get started. Hi Kim, thank you so much for coming on and doing a budget strategy session with us. And we were kind of chatting before. So I know we have some good things to dive into that the other listeners can really relate to. So I was like, hold on, hold on. Let's record. But before we jump on or jump into it, can you just give us a little bit of background, you know, just whatever you're comfortable sharing so we can kind of get an idea of your situation? Well, I was married for 25 years and well together for 25 years. And so we always had the joint accounts. And so that's how we paid our bills mostly from his paycheck, not mine. And then when we got the divorce, then it was okay. I have to do this all by myself. And my mother was never good with money and yeah, it was a mess and well, I'm no better. So I just don't know how to pay all my bills with my paycheck, cuz my alimony runs out at the end of the, the year. Okay. So that's $2,000 a month that I will lose, so okay. I have to figure out how to, how to figure this all out and pay it as much as I can before the end of December. Okay. And do you ha and you don't have to give me a, an amount, just share what you're comfortable with. So are we talking, you need to pay off some debt before the end of the year? Yes. Yes. Okay. And we were talking before you mentioned that you had a condo that was paid off. Yes. So do you have, but you also mentioned the apartment rent and Yeah. Well the apartment I, when I, the end of the school year, last year I left there and came to South Carolina because then I didn't have to pay rent mortgage. Gotcha. Okay. I just wanted to clarify that. So you moved to where the paid off condo was? Yes. Yes. Okay. I felt like I was missing part of that story. I was like, wait a sec. I missed part of it. Okay. So I just, so you don't have, do you have living expenses as in like the property taxes? Do you have to pay that and manage that? Yes. What about like HOA for condo and stuff. Okay. And the electric and the internet cuz and well everything's falling apart cause it's 22 years old and we haven't put any money into it. Gotcha. Since you know, we bought it, so. Okay. Yeah. And how close are you to retirement? Like, is that on your horizon? Are you thinking about that as well? Because I know you talked about before we started recording about leaving a teaching job. So like are you going to be getting any kind of retirement income? Anytime soon? I have no idea, honestly. Okay. Because they don't answer phones and they, I don't have access to that to my email from that school because I don't work there anymore. So it's very hard getting and they don't answer the phone. So I, I just, yeah, I'm in limbo. Okay. Okay. And are you, if you need to, are you able to go back teaching cuz you're in a different state now, right. So are you able to teach in the state that you're currently in or would you have to like do certificate? Okay. So you're good with that if you needed to. Yes. I know you're taking a break. We all need, we all need a break sometimes, but you know, if when your alimony runs out and you need to pay some things off it, you may need to go back to teaching, you know, once you've taken a break or maybe there's some other options for you with making money online or some other types of services that you could probably make more money than teaching. So we could kinda talk about that a little bit. Now we're not gonna like deep dive into your numbers with these, with these budget strategy sessions. I can't even say it like every time I have to sit there and pause and say it, but we're kind of doing like an overview, like your biggest struggle. And so I feel like right now, would you agree because I, I technically haven't asked you yet, but with us chatting, I feel like maybe your biggest struggle is going to be and currently is, but it's gonna get worse is the lack of income. Like you need to make some more income to be able to kind of implement the plan. That would be kind of more high level overview of your financial situation and then the managing of the day to day. Does that sound pretty accurate? Yes. Okay. Yeah, but I, I have, as I did, like the basic, the, the big ones, the, you know, rooms to go Firestone and like credit two credit cards, which aren't a lot, but it's enough that, so I need to get rid of $5,000 before the end of the year. Okay. And that would help me a whole lot. It's not gonna use everything, but that's a big chunk that I need to get paid off before the end of the year. Okay. So $5,000 in cuz right now we're currently recording in mid-September. So let's say three in let's just say three months. All right. Let's do the math on that. How much is that per month? Cause you've got the holidays coming up to, do you have a plan for the holidays or are, are you able to cut back on spending? Like, are you, do you have kids, grandkids, anything like that, that you need to spend money on? I have three Boys, three boys daughter-in-law and three grandchildren. Okay. So, So would they be open like our course between my husband's family and our family? Like, we all do different things, but one of the things with the, with my husband's side of the family and like the adult children, they do like one female gift, one male gift. So everybody's not buying something for everybody now, would your children just to, especially for like just this year, if you're comfortable, you know, at least explaining to them that, you know, you've got these financial goals that you have to get done by the end of the year, like just buying for the grandkids instead of like everybody, is that something that you'd be open to or you think they'd be open to? Well, the 20 and 21 year old? Probably not, but the oldest one, him and his wife would, well, he would understand, I don't know completely, but the grandchildren, the, my grandchildren have another set of grandparents, so we kind of try not to overload the kids. Gotcha. Yeah. So totally Understand that With the grandkids. Okay. Good. My two younger ones. Okay, gotcha. Gotcha. Are they in college? Do they like yes, really neat. I get it. I get it. Okay. So let's kind of strategize and brainstorm some ways that you could make an extra $5,000 in the next three months. Now, if we do that, are you able, if you know, and if you haven't like worked all the numbers, that's fine. But if you were able to pay that off, will you be able to at least maintain your regular bills with the income that you're making now, once those debt are gone or are you gonna be in the hole once the alimony is gone? No, I should. Well, I don't know, Honestly. That's okay. That's okay. We can talk about that later. I wanna say yes, but my, the, the brain's like you sure about that, Right. That's okay. That's okay. We can dive into the numbers later. Like, and I know you're in the coaching group, the money, success coaching. And we actually have a couple meeting. We have a meeting after this and we have a couple other meetings this week, so we can discuss that at a different time, but let's brainstorm for this session. So my idea is to make some extra money. So you are a special education teacher, correct? So is there, are you open to maybe tutoring for the, for, you know, until the end of the year to make some extra money, that would be a little bit more flexible schedule? Cause it would, you know, be after school or subbing or I feel like you could probably make more money tutoring than subbing. So maybe tutoring might be a better way to go, but is that something that you're open to? It's a possibility, but because my job is, you know, during the day and then the next day it's at night and then is during the day. So, and I don't know my schedule until every Saturday. Okay. Which Is really hard Now, is there a way to block off some time and say I'm not available during these times and have them work around that? I have to talk to them tomorrow about that. Okay. Because the lady I had to talk to wasn't there today and yesterday was way too busy to talk to her, so. Gotcha. Yes. Gotcha. Okay. So the math works out to a little over $1,600 a month, whoops. Wrong button. So that's roughly, you know, 400 a week. So, you know, if you were to charge for tutoring services now I haven't actually looked at it for a while, so I'm not sure like what the going rate is in your area. What would be a good guess for charging? Like let's say per hour for just tutoring? Well, the pay, my pay for doing what I do now is 12, $12 and 50 cents an hour, which that's nothing when you take out the taxes and the insurance and everything else. So I don't think tutoring is much more than that, so, Oh gosh. I would pay more than that. I, I would pay at least 25 or $50 an hour for tutoring. Yes. I think you could charge a lot more than that for tutoring. Cause, keep in mind, like the kids are only gonna be with you for, you know, an hour or less. So if they did like one session a week with you, you know, that could be, if you did a full hour, of course, a full hour, depending on the kid and the age, you know, you might even want 30 minute blocks. So even $25 for 30 minutes. Yeah. That's $50 an hour. So let's see. So how many kids is that, that you would need to do? Okay. So what did I say? $50. So let's see. So it'd only be six around 16 kids a week if I'm doing that math. Right. Does that sound, does that sound right? You might have to double check my math. You know, you don't have to be good at math. Right? We have calculators. So around 15 a week. So if you did, I'm trying to think. So if you did three hours, two days a week, that would be, so what is that six? So that would be 12 students, 12 kids. Does that sound about, right? Of course. You've gotta like put your name out there, join some like mommy groups, some local groups, put your information out there. And I would, you know, charge at least $25 for a 30 minute session at least. And you can look in some of those Facebook groups, cuz I know at the beginning of our school year in a bunch of those groups, I saw posts for like people that were offering tutoring. And I just don't remember what the cost was. So you might look and search the group and see if other people have offered their services or if there's any local tutoring services that you can maybe look at their websites and see what they're charging cuz, and just kind of get an idea, a baseline idea, are they charging for 30 minutes? Is it an hour? You know, that type of thing, but there's other things that you could do online. That would be a more flexible schedule that I think that you could do as well with your experience. And have you heard of Upwork freelancer? Cuz I know I've discussed it before in the coaching group, but you know, at different times. So I don't know if you've heard it before, but there's lots of ways to make money online and that would work really well with your schedule. Like there's virtual assistance and like I have three, so it's something that, you know, I pay people to do their job whenever they can do their job. Like so people stay up late, they do it in the morning and with your other schedule that would work really well. And you wouldn't have to like, you know, worry about the kids showing up or being sick, getting you sick, you know, all that kind of stuff too. And most of those for us base assistant start usually at a minimum 20 bucks an hour up to 30 or more depending on your expertise and on Upwork and freelancer and fiber and there's writing ones. I can't remember the website off the top of my head, but if you Google, you know how to make money online or how to make money as a Lance writer, cuz I'm sure you could do that. The only thing I will tell you about freelance writing, cuz being a teacher, I could see where this might be a little bit of a struggle for you is you're not writing like you're writing a research paper. Most of, for most places. Now there may be some publications websites where they do want you to write like that. But like if you're writing for a blogger or just a regular online business, you're writing how you talk. And so it doesn't need to be like perfect grammar and like it's, it's formatted a little differently, but it's really easy to learn. Like I've taught myself all this over the last couple years and I've taught other people to do it for me. So it's, you know, it's pretty easy to learn it. So I don't want that to like scare you off, you know, like if that's something, so there are Facebook groups for virtual assistance and freelance writers where there's a lot of great information in there on how to get started. And there's also, that's how I found jobs and that's how I have found assistance as well. So I've done it both ways in these Facebook groups where I've learned things and then I've also found people to hire. So there's Facebook groups and then there's websites where you can put up a profile. And I think that based on your schedule that you have now would probably be the easiest way. And I will tell you that as you go, especially if you wanted to do like the freelance writing, they charge most places, charge or people charge per word. And so if you can type pretty fast and as you get, you know, more experience and get faster at it, you could make a lot of money like, and you could make 200 to $400 for one post. So you could make your monthly amount in just was that three, four posts. And that would not take you much time. So it might take you a little bit of time to get started, but you know, 30 days from now you'll have the ball rolling. So by the end of the year, you know, you can get that paid off a lot faster. So that's what I would suggest to you. And if you need help with that, just let me know. We're posting the money, success coaching group and we will, I can send you some links and stuff too, cuz I didn't have it. I wasn't prepared. Didn't already have 'em up and I can never remember all of them cuz there's so many out there, but Upwork is probably the most popular one and I've used that one as well to find people to hire. And I'm trying to think of what else. So those are kind of the big ones. You can also find jobs online as like a proofreader. So I have a link. I could send that to you as well. If proofreading is your thing, if you like grammar and that type of stuff to proofread things, that's not my thing for sure. Either. Okay. Math is mine not. Oh, okay. Yeah. So you know, and there's also, oh you know another one, if you could find a way to block your schedule out school is a good one. I've used. I used that when I homeschooled. So that's where teachers teach online, but they have typically a regular schedule, but I have signed my kids up for a lot of one day sessions where it's just like an hour block and it's just like a one thing topic. I don't know how competitive, how competitive it is to like get your classes full and that type of thing. But that might be something that you look into as well. If you're able to block off some time and say, I need this time to, to do it, but you might wanna look into it and just kind of figure out which route works best for you to kind of get some of this stuff paid off temporarily so that you're not stressing, you know, at the end of the year. So if you have the mindset that it's just temporary for that angle, so you can be less stressed whenever, you know, you, you're not getting some as much money coming in each month, then that might help you get through it. And just it's three months, it's three months, Three months. Oh yes. Yeah. So how do you feel about that? What are you thinking with the online jobs? No, I can I've I learned to type in high school and I worked for my ex-husband's job. So the computer was all I did for quite a few years. Awesome. Many, many years. So I figured that might be, I think that maybe that might be the one I look into the most, but also look at some of the others too. Yeah, Absolutely. So what is one thing, one small thing that you could do in the next 24 hours? Maybe I'm just gonna throw some ideas out there and then you tell me what you think you can do in the next 24 hours. Okay. Maybe look at Upwork and start a profile. Like I not even finish it, you know, if that feels overwhelming, but maybe just look at it and kind of figure out how to like start setting it up or join two Facebook groups, one for just general virtual assistant and one for freelance writing, which do either of those feel like something that you could do in the next 24 hours? Yeah, I could, I, I have no kids at home, so cause they're off at school. Maybe You could do 'em all, but what's one thing. What's the one thing you wanna do in the next 24 hours. I'm gonna look at the, by the Facebook groups and the Upwork and see, cause I've never done that before. So just to find out what it's about and how to, how to go about doing it. Yeah. So that'll be what I do after I'm done. Awesome. And if you need help with it, let me know or post in the group, cuz I know other people have used Upwork before or, or been a virtual assistant so that we can help kind of guide you in the right direction. So I haven't put up a, a profile on Upwork as a freelancer or contractor, but I have for, to hire somebody and I don't remember like it was really easy. Like it didn't take me very long, so I don't know if the process might be more difficult or anything, but I re it wasn't hard for my part for creating a profile on there, but you could definitely at least maybe create an account and just kind of look for things. So you can search like spreadsheet. Like if you're good with spreadsheets, you could do like email customer service. Like there's tons of things that you can do virtually just whenever you have time. Like, I feel like with your schedule, that would probably be the best fit. It just might take you some time to get some of those jobs and get the ball rolling on it. Right. Okay. All right. For more hours at my job. So, and they have given me more. So I'm hoping that that continues. Yeah, Definitely. Yeah, for sure. And do you have any questions for me before we wrap up? Yeah. I just, I'm just hoping and praying that I can do this and that I stick with it and I can get these five things paid off before Christmas, before the end of the, the year and have to remember that I can't spend as much on gifts as I have for many, well for 32 years. Yeah. That's how old my oldest one is. So I have to be more frugal and, and as I don't, because I have so many food allergies, I don't do a lot of grocery shopping because it's just me and yeah, I protein shakes and I do salads and I make my own, you know, snacks and desserts. So, so I don't spend a whole lot on food for the most part and I've cut out almost all of my eating out. So that's a plus. Yeah, that's really good. So yeah, let's, if you're not already, you know, make sure you go into the dashboard for the money, success coaching, there is a module in there on making extra money and then making a debt plan. So we can kind of talk about that during the accountability session. If you're able to join me after this, I can do that after we're done recording. And we can kinda map that out a little bit more for you as well and kind of create, come up with a, maybe a bit more specific plan for the paying off debt side of it. Cuz I know they go together obviously, but we only have so much time on the podcast. I Know, You know, and so I know that you needed to kind of increase your income to get that paid off. So that's what I wanted to focus on for this, but you still have access to me outside of the podcast so we can discuss that more here in a little bit as well. Okay. Do you have anything else before we wrap up? No, I think this too much and then I'll just stress and not get it done. So oh Good. Right there I feeling. Yes, absolutely. Well, I appreciate your time and I hope you got some good ideas to, and some thank you very much bit of motivation to, to get going on that, that piece of it anyway. And so thank you so much for being here with us today. Oh thank you. And I'll see you in a little while. All right. Thanks Byebye. If you've tried some other ways to make up money online that let me know, tag me on Instagram, send me a message. And if you know somebody that needs to hear this information, please share it with them. That's why we're putting it out there. And of course, if you wanna do your own budget strategy session, go to budgets, made easy.com/strategy. And I'll talk to you guys soon and.