CREATE A COTTAGE INDUSTRY

Another good way to get out of the rat race is to think of a business you can start out of your own home. My husband and I will be doing tutoring in the fall to make a few extra dollars. We are already doing eBay and listing things on Craigslist for sale. But we need to branch out. My husband is good at math. He also likes gardening. Next summer we will be growing much more of our own food and he will be selling plants for profit. The earth is so generous that he will be making money out of nothing. I live in town, but folks out in the countryside raise chickens or rabbits and eat for free. The computer savvy can develop a cellphone app and watch the money roll in. There has to be something you could do to make extra money. I knew a hairdesser who got tired of her wages at the salon, she started cutting people's hair at home. Within a few months she gave up salon work. It was more lucrative to branch out on her own. Perhaps you do accounting work for your job. Maybe you can scare up some clients on the side. The guy who does my taxes used to work full time at the IRS. After he got his pension vested he quit and started working from home. He works really, really hard four months a year and plays with his grandkids the rest of the time. I have a former student who is teaching English in Korea. I advised her to look around for a manufacturer who is making something she can sell on eBay here in the states. She can't do it while she is working in Korea but she could have it set up and ready to go when her contract is up and she comes home. She did good in just getting the job as an ESL teacher. They pay her airfare back and forth, her rent and give her a salary. She was able to bank most of the money and pay off substansial student loans while here in the states the economy was tanking and nobody had a job. I tell her she should stay out there as long as she can and save as much money as possible to buy a place of her own here in the USA. There are solutions to most problems. It just takes thinking things through.