As I mentioned last week, I was scheduled to sub five days this week. I brought my lunch to school every day and didn't succumb to any take out. On Friday one of the teachers gave me some chicken salad & bread from a local deli, which fed me and my daughter for breakfast Saturday morning.
I came home Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and my daughter had dinner already warmed up, which was so great after working all day. On Thursday we went to Chattanooga to pet sit for a friend, making $40 in the process.
Friday was payday already and since I worked 1.5 days prior to the tenth of the month, I received a paycheck as well. That doesn't happen every year, but it's great when it does. My renter's insurance will come out of the 25th of the month, so now I won't have to pull money from my savings to cover the amount.
On Friday night we decided to have a pizza delivered since we were in the city, which is something we don't have where we live since it is rural. Having a pizza delivered is a real treat to us.
And guess what?
Pizza Hut sent us a text on Saturday that they were sorry our pizza took too long to be delivered and offered us a free one topping pizza as compensation. I didn't even think it took that long to be delivered, but what a sweet offer.
Monday we will be going to a free event for the eclipse and schools are closed here, so this will be a four day work week and I am already scheduled to work two of those days.
You may have read in the comments from my last blog post that the principal gave me two free pairs of eclipse glasses for Monday, one for me and one for my daughter.
We picked up red grapes at Aldi this week since they were on sale for 79¢ a pound.
Several free magazines arrived in the mail this week. Women's Health, Weight Watchers, Money, Time, Good Housekeeping, Family Circle, Parents and This Old House. I mostly use Recycle Bank credits to earn free magazines. Some of them even have free coupons in them, which is another plus.
On Sunday we went to the mall as we both had a coupon for $10 off $10 at Yankee Candle and wanted to use it since it expired that day. We both bought a car air freshener and a candle melt and paid 52¢ each. We also picked up our free pizza at Pizza Hut and had that for dinner.
I picked up one of my prescriptions at CVS on Sunday and we were given two free bottles of water.
We watched a couple of episodes of Parenthood on the Internet for free while we were in Chattanooga. It is one of my favorite tv shows and I love so much of the music they chose for it.
That's it for our frugal week here. How was your week?
Creating side jobs is one way of making extra money, which you can then either save to create an emergency fund or use to pay off debt or apply towards any of your financial goals.
Pet sitting is one side job that will help you to make extra money. My daughter and I recently were able to make some extra money while pet sitting for someone.
This job allowed us to be able to stay in Chattanooga, if we wanted to, or we could have brought the dogs to our home, but we decided to stay in Chattanooga.
Our client was upfront about her dogs being used to a lot of extra loving care, and it is important to have a love of animals if you want to make extra money pet sitting. My daughter and I were made for this role as we both love animals. Our client's dogs received a lot of love and care while we were there.
Animals are like humans in the fact that they need love and attention, so if you find animals to be irritating or if you are turned off by their needs then pet sitting may not be the side job for you.
Our client was nervous about putting her dogs in a kennel as she has experienced this before and had her dogs returned to her hungry and needing attention. Having someone sit in her home with them provided them with plenty of love and attention and even saved her hundreds of dollars.
Our client noticed right away that her dogs were sitting next to me being loved on while she was showing my daughter the ropes and I know this made her feel immediately relaxed about leaving them in our care.
Our job included feeding the dogs, making sure their water bowls were filled and cleaned, walking them multiple times per day, picking up dog poop, giving treats as needed, and picking up after them. These dogs were well disciplined and had a good routine, which we stuck to and as a result were rewarded with good behavior.
Our client had traveled to New York, so we sent photos of the dogs to her every other day, which she loved. We also cleaned up her house before we left for the week. We also dropped her off and picked her up from the airport saving her the cost of an Uber driver for that service.
In the end we made $200 for pet sitting for the week, which worked out to $25 per day and we had a staycation ourselves as we stayed in Chattanooga for the week and enjoyed free WiFi all day long (we are on a limited data plan at home) and were able to enjoy several different things in the city.
If you love animals and would like to make some extra money on the side pet sitting might just be for you. The main requirements are a love of animals, being reliable and caring for them in a safe and loving environment.
