There are many reasons why you might want to make some side money. Getting out of debt was the reason we did. In this episode, we share with you some very unique and creative ways to make some extra cash today. We start off the episode with how the Bible teaches us to view money to get our minds and hearts in the right place. And then we share quite a few ideas for making money. Some will take more skill than others and some will take more time than others but our desire is that you would look into each of them and with discernment and research see if any could work for you in your marriage.
Before we get into the list we wanted to talk first about what the Bible says about money so that we do not cultivate the wrong idea or perspective. Jennifer and I would never want to encourage an unbiblical mindset so it is important to make sure that we evaluate our hearts and desires against the word of God. So what does the Bible say about money.
On one hand, the Bible warns us about the dangers of putting money in the wrong place in our hearts
- Matthew 6:24 “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.
- 1 Timothy 6:10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.
- Not that money itself is evil but the love of it
- Proverbs 18:11 A rich man’s wealth is his strong city, and like a high wall in his imagination.
- Money is not and cannot give us the security and safety that only a life in Christ can offer.
- Proverbs 23:4 Do not toil to acquire wealth; be discerning enough to desist.
- Toil means: “work extremely hard or incessantly.” Not that we shouldn’t be hard workers but for what and what cost?
- Ecclesiastes 5:10 He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income; this also is vanity.
On the other hand, the Bible talks about the blessing and power of money.
- 2 Corinthians 9 talks about giving to supply the needs of the saints and how God will provide so that they can continue to give. Go read it 🙂
- Proverbs 3:9 Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce;
- Proverbs 13:22 A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children, but the sinner’s wealth is laid up for the righteous.
So we must have a sober and level mind about money. It doesn’t control us, we don’t strive to become rich. But we recognize what it is for and who it belongs to.
“We are stewards, not owners of our money.” – Aaron Smith
In our newest book, “Marriage After God,” we really lay the foundation for a couple working through finances together. Things like being unified, keeping your heart and hand open for the Lord to direct, getting out of and staying out of debt, sticking to a budget. We hope to hear some great testimonials once readers start putting some of the practical tips into place!
Now that we have a strong biblical understanding of money, there are many reasons why a couple might be trying to earn extra money:
- Support missionaries
- Buy supplies for your kids
- Put money into savings for emergencies
- Our favorite, get out of debt.
- Or maybe you are trying to figure out how to be more self-sufficient and not live from paycheck to paycheck.
- Travel
- Fill in the blank ___________________
So here is a shortlist of some creative ways to make extra cash today!
- https://www.lyft.com/driverEssential oils
We have friends that do this and make a great living off of it but it does take time and investment to do it. - babysitting
Make some extra cash by babysitting for friends and neighbors.
Another side note. You can do a babysitting swap with your close friends. YOur watch their kids so they can go on a date, they watch yours on another night so that you and your spouse can go on a date. This doesn’t make you money but it does save you money. - Use a skill you have to help friends and family on the weekends.
See if you can do some odd jobs for cash, painting, pulling weeds, moving stuff, organizing stuff. Make sure to make it clear that you are looking to get paid. - make something and sell it at local flea markets or farmers markets. Candles, quilts, baked goods.
We have a friend who loved coffee so much that he bought a small home roster and started roasting beans and taking them to local farmers markets and selling them. He almost started a full business out of it.
Another set of our friends have a side candle making business. Farmhouse candles. And they started selling them on Etsy and at local fairs and shows. Now they’re in our local wholefoods store. Crazy! - Sell Crafts on Etsy
We know people who are very talented at making cute headbands and bows and they could sell them on Etsy and begin to make money off their craft. - fivver
Fivver is an online platform where you can sell very small tasks for $5. Voice overs, writing, and editing, short videos, pretty much anything you can imagine. - Get Paid to take online surveys
Vindale.com
Surveyjunkie.com
Vipvoice.com - Uber or Lyft
Get paid to drive!
https://www.uber.com/us/en/drive/driving-jobs/
https://www.lyft.com/driver - Get Paid To Transcribe Videos
This is for those who can type accurate and fast. You can earn up to $0.36-$0.75 per minute.https://www.rev.com/freelancers - Write an Ebook and Sell it On Amazon KDP
This is how Jennifer and I started. We self Published our devotionals and prayer books. - Get paid to test websites before they launch $10 per test
userfeel.com
https://www.trymyui.com/worker/signup - Get Paid to walk dogs sit for pets
Earn up to 1000/month - Grocery Shop For People
https://shoppers.instacart.com/
Prayer
Dear Lord,
Thank You for providing scripture about money, about how we should view it and how we should steward it. We pray we never have a love of money. We pray we would be wise in how we make our money, how we spend it and save it. We pray our finances would honor You. Help us to be united in marriage when it comes to money. Help us to communicate respectfully about money. In times that we are striving to make extra cash, we pray that You would guide us and show us what we should do. If any of our strivings are in vain, please convict our hearts and redirect us. May the pursuit of money never be at the cost of our relationship with You, Lord, or with our families. Thank You for your provision, thank You for the opportunities we have to grow and thank You for the moments we get to share Your Gospel with others. We pray we would be a light in this world.
In Jesus’ name, amen!
READ TRANSCRIPT
[Aaron] Hey, we’re Aaron and Jennifer Smith with “Marriage After God.”
[Jennifer] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.
[Aaron] And today we’re gonna share some ways to make some extra cash to help you get out of debt. Welcome to the “Marriage After God” podcast where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after.
[Jennifer] I’m Jennifer, also known as Unveiled Wife.
[Aaron] And I’m Aaron, also known as Husband Revolution.
[Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade.
[Aaron] And so far we have four young children.
[Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media.
[Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage and encouraging them to walk in faith every day.
[Jennifer] We believe that Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one, full of life.
Love.
And power.
[Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God.
[Jennifer] Together.
[Aaron] Thank you for joining us in this journey as we chase boldly after God’s will for our life together.
[Jennifer] This is “Marriage After God.” So hey everyone, we are excited to be back with you. If you’ve been with us through this summer season you know that we were sharing some past episodes of “Marriage After God” and I just wanted to jump in and share that that was Aaron’s way of giving me a little bit of free time, free space, to just be with the kids and have a slow summer, and I really appreciated that. I think having started the podcast and doing all the episodes we had and then leading up to the book launch, we had been busy for a year and 1/2.
[Aaron] It’s what it feels like, yeah.
[Jennifer] Writing the book, editing the book, doing the podcast episodes and–
[Aaron] Marketing the book, doing those those interviews on podcasts.
[Jennifer] I mean, it was great, and I was super thankful that we got to work together through that season. And by the time that we launched the book I needed a little bit of room to breathe.
[Aaron] Well, and that’s something that we’ve been trying to work on, it’s knowing our boundaries, knowing our limits, that we need a break.
[Jennifer] Because we’re human and sometimes we get tired. And so Jen was a little bit tired and Aaron gave me that little bit of a break. And we talked a lot about the podcast and what we desired for it and for you guys, and so we’ve been talking a lot about future episodes and we’re really excited about that. And it was actually really helpful that we took the break too because this last week even I had a really bad cold and I was congested, and you might even hear it a little bit in my voice now still.
[Aaron] Yeah, but you know that break was good. You feel rested and we’re gonna try and get into another flow and routine of getting fresh content on the podcast. I let them know last week, an intro for the last episode, that we’re gonna be doing some more kind of Bible study style podcasts and sprinkling there are some fun episodes, and this one is a fun episode.
[Jennifer] Yeah, a resourceful episode.
[Aaron] Yeah, it’s a resourceful one. It gives ideas, things that we can help other couples out there. Because we know that a lot of people wanna get out of debt or have extra cash for supporting a child or putting money in savings, there’s tons of reasons why a married couple might one extra cash. So we thought it’d be cool to hold some ideas together. But before we get into the topic, I just wanted to remind everyone, because we’ve been giving away this free e-book, and it’s “52 Date Night Conversations for Your Marriage.” And so what you do is you download this free e-book and you take one of the topics and you go on a date, and your date is surrounded around that topic. And so you dive into the topic, you ask the question, you figure out where each other are with the answer to that question. And it actually makes your date nights much deeper. The greatest date nights Jennifer and I go on are ones where we’re talking about the deep things of our life. Our children, the future, what God’s doing in our lives, our relationships with other friends.
[Jennifer] And sometimes those conversations happen sporadically on a date night, but most often it happens because one or both of us were prompted to ask a specific question or to explore a certain part of our life together. So I think intentionality is really important to the married life and we wanna equip you guys. So if these prompts, these questions, these date night conversation starters help you, we know that’s a win. So we hope that you would be interested in getting those.
[Aaron] Yeah, so all you got to do is go to DateNightConversations.com and fill out the form and you’ll get them for free. And so we actually last week I asked people to post pictures of their favorite conversation starter in the e-book or let us know how those conversations are going by posting it in Instagram and tagging #DateNightConversations and then also tagging @MarriageAfterGod so that we can see those, and we repost them often. So if you wanna get that free e-book, it’s “52 Date Night Conversations for a Marriage After God” and it’s at DateNightConversations.com. Completely free, you should go get a copy of that today. So this leads us into our topic, which is gonna be ideas for making some extra cash.
[Jennifer] Yeah, and this is going to be kind of a two-part episode, not in two different episodes, but in the sense that the beginning part we’re gonna talk about just biblically what does scripture say about money, and then we’re gonna do a fun part about how to make some extra cash, and we’ve come up with some really great ideas for you guys. And I just wanted to make a note that if you’re a couple who doesn’t need to make some extra cash or you’re just not in that space, you’re dealing with or wrestling with other issues, so we wanna encourage you to stay with us and keep listening because something might bring to your mind a person in your life who could really use some of these ideas. And so we wanted to encourage you that if this episode encourages you or makes you think of that friend or that other married couple in your life, to share it with them.
[Aaron] Absolutely. Yeah, because not everyone’s in the same place and we totally get that and we can’t make it every episode fit every person, but we know that there’s, I mean, we were in the same situation years ago. We know lots of people that are always just trying to get out of debt, pay off that credit card, pay off that car loan, pay down their mortgage, pay for school books, there’s lots of things.
[Jennifer] Finance is one of those topics that every marriage does consider. They do talk about it.
[Aaron] And also sometimes it’s like, how do we even get ahead in this? And that’s a question that people are asking. So we just wanted to make sure that in the beginning of this episode we’ll just talk about what the Bible says about money so we can have a correct way of thinking, and then we’ll get into the fun ideas that you can take and maybe even implement some of them to make some extra cash.
[Jennifer] Yeah, so if you wanna follow along in your Bible, you can whip that out. But if you’re driving and listening, I’m gonna recommend that you don’t do that and just listen, ’cause Aaron’s gonna share the scripture and read it for ya.
[Aaron] Yeah, and then you can listen to it again later with your Bible, but that’s a good point. If you’re driving, don’t grab your Bible. Okay, so, the Bible talks about money in several different ways. On one hand, the Bible warns us about the dangers of having money in the wrong place. What I mean by that is what position does money have in my life. And so here’s a verse, this is in Matthew 6:24. It says, “No one can serve two masters, “for either he will hate the one and love the other “or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. “You cannot serve God and money.” And so if money is in a place of that’s my security, that’s my strong tower, that’s the thing that is protecting me, I’m gonna pursue it because it is my life, then you’re devoting yourself to the wrong thing. So you wanna make sure that money’s not in that place. No matter what ideas we give you, no matter where we’re at in our life, money is not our strong tower, money is not our security. It’s a tool to be used, it’s a resource to be invested, it’s something to be managed, and we need to recognize that. ‘Cause that’s what Jesus is telling us in Matthew 6, is that no one can serve two masters, and so either we’re serving God or we’re serving money, and you can’t do both.
[Jennifer] Yeah and the problem when it comes to marriage, and I’m just thinking back to our own personal experience and journey, is that if you are devoted to money and you’re striving for just the money, it can become a divisive thing within your marriage.
[Aaron] And usually does.
[Jennifer] Yeah, and I know that I struggled with a pursuit of money even in my minimum-wage job, working 40 hours a week, being frustrated over the fact that we were putting it towards what I thought was your debt instead of seeing it as our debt and striving for the money that I earned just to be able to use it my way was really divisive.
[Aaron] Yeah, and that’s a good point because it could sound like, well, we don’t have a lot of money so that’s not a problem. But you could not have a lot of money, you could be poor and destitute and not have money and still have money in the wrong place, because you could see money as your savior. Like, if I just had more, I would.
[Jennifer] It’s so consuming.
[Aaron] Yeah, so no matter where you’re at, the wealthy, the poor, as Paul says, “I’ve learned to be content in all things, “in wealth and in poverty,” and that’s where our hearts should be.
[Jennifer] ‘Cause if you’re serving God and if your heart is devoted to God, you’re gonna do the things that God tells you to do. So one of those is being unified in marriage, being one in marriage, so we’re gonna be on the same page when it comes to money and not divided. So I hope that that’ll encourage someone.
[Aaron] Yeah, another verse is 1 Timothy 6:10, and this is what happens when you put money in the wrong place in your heart. It says, “For the love of money “is a root of all kinds of evil. “It is through the craving that some have wandered away “from the faith and pierced themselves with mini pangs.” Now real quick I wanna note that a lot of people misquote this verse and they say, “Money is the root of all kinds of evil,” and they forget the first part that says, “For the love of money.” Because money is an inanimate object.
[Jennifer] It’s something that’s used.
[Aaron] Money can’t be the root of anything unless it’s used wrong. So what the Bible says is, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.” When you love money and have it in the wrong place, man, that leads to so much destruction. You start thinking differently, you start making decisions with your relationships differently, you pursue things differently, and God wants us to avoid that. And that’s why Paul was telling Timothy about this idea, “For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.”
[Jennifer] So here’s the question for our listeners today to just kind of mull over and wrestle with is, what are your motives for using money? There could be a lot of answers to that.
[Aaron] Yeah, like, what is money in your life? Proverbs 18:11, “A rich man’s wealth is his strong city, “and like a high wall in his imagination.” So it starts out sounding like, oh yeah, his wealth is his strong city. It ends with in his imagination. And that’s what I wanted to get at before is it doesn’t matter how much money you have, if you think that it is your security rather than Christ, rather than God who says you’re under his wings, that he’s your shelter, he’s your high tower, you’re deceived. And that’s what the Bible tells about wealth, it’s that is it’s deceptive, right? And so I just, again, I wanna put money in the right place, it is not our strong tower, so when we give you these ideas we’re not trying to help encourage you and say, hey, this is how you’re gonna have more security in your life. That’s not what we’re doing. These ideas are just if we have the right mind about money and we’re trying to be good stewards of our time and resources and God’s leading us to get out of debt, he’s leading us to pay these things down or support something, these ideas could be useful for that. Would you like to read the next verse?
[Jennifer] Yeah, it’s Proverbs 23:4. It says, “Do not toil to acquire wealth, “be discerning enough to desist.”
[Aaron] Yeah, and I put this definition. Toil means work extremely hard or incessantly. Not that we shouldn’t be hard workers, but at what cost. Are we working so hard we’re sacrificing everything in our life just to be wealthy? Like our integrity, our name, our relationships, our family, our faith, all these things, are we putting those on the line to chase after wealth?
[Jennifer] I think our encouragement in today’s episode would be don’t pursue money for wealth, pursue God and work on building a strong financial foundation for your family so that you can continue to do all the great and wonderful things God has planned for your life.
[Aaron] Yeah, Ecclesiastes 5:10. “He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, “nor who loves wealth with his income. “This is also vanity.” So Ecclesiastes is just saying that if you love your money, you’re not gonna be satisfied with money. And I’ve experienced that. I’ve felt there’s been times that I’ve had excess of money and then it’s not enough. It’s so weird how the things of this world, grasping onto things that aren’t Christ, are so vain. They just slip through your fingers so quickly. And that’s what we’re trying to encourage you with is money itself can satisfy nothing. Maybe for a short time, maybe it can buy something that’s gonna make you happy for a moment, but everything you could potentially buy is gonna fade away. None of it can actually bring any happiness, any actual security. And so that’s the first side of this, it’s the dangers of money. But on the other hand, the Bible talks about the blessings and power of money. So you have both, this dichotomy of money’s dangerous, and if we just sit on that side we can end up with this poverty mentality of, no, having money is bad, sinful, having money is not righteous, having money is not what Christians do. But that’s not fully right.
[Jennifer] Again, you said money is dangerous. It’s not that money is dangerous, it’s that the motives, how you use it, the position of it in your heart.
[Aaron] And if you land on just the one side of looking at the scriptures and the ideas in the Bible about the warnings of money and wealth, then you’ll miss out on the power and the blessing of money when it’s used rightly, when it’s used correctly. 2 Corinthians 9 talks about giving to supply the needs of the saints. Paul has this story and he’s calling to the Corinthians and he’s saying, “You gave to supply the needs “of these other saints.” And he’s talking about how what supplied their needs is now supplying the other saints’ needs. And it’s a such a beautiful picture of the church supporting the church. And he talks about this idea of fairness, he talks about this idea of not that you would be put out that you gave but that they would be blessed, and by their overflow you would be blessed. And he has this this back and forth of because you gave, they have, and when they have, they’ll be able to give. And then he even says that “God’s gonna supply more seed for the sowing.” And he’s not saying if you give, you’re gonna have more wealth, that we don’t wanna play that game. But he says if you give, he’s gonna make sure that you’re capable to continue giving, which is a pretty amazing thought. And that’s a beautiful thing. He shows that money and resources and finances are a means that God is using in the church to support the church and the work that God’s doing through the church, which is an amazing thing. So if we’re to just sit on the one side, like I said, and money’s bad, then what about all the people that God’s given money and they’re using that money to support people that are doing these things over here in the mission field or planting churches or orphanages or family birthing centers, all these things that are so good and they’re Christ-centered, that takes money. That takes money to do and to build and to sustain. And so money itself can be bad, but when it’s in the right place, in the right hands, used righteously, it’s a powerful tool. But that’s all it is, it’s a tool.
[Jennifer] And going back to that first verse you shared, if we’re serving God, we’re gonna do what he says, right?
Mm-hmm.
[Jennifer] Proverbs 3:9 says, “Honor the Lord with your wealth “and with the first fruits of your produce.” So if you have money in the right position in your heart, you’re going to be obedient in that way, you’re gonna honor the Lord with your wealth.
[Aaron] Yeah, you’re gonna say, wow, okay, I have this money. God, what do you want done with it? How can I use it to bless you Lord? And that might be getting out of debt right now. That might be helping out your neighbor. That might be sending a huge chunk to a missionary, or supporting a church or your pastor. And these things come out of, not out of guilt, not out of obligation, but out of a love for God and a trust in him, and believing that he gave you what you have to be used for him, which we talk about often. What does Proverbs 13:22 say?
[Jennifer] “A good man leaves an inheritance “to his children’s children, “but the sinner’s wealth is laid up for the righteous.”
[Aaron] See, what’s awesome about these proverbs is they sound very black and white. And this idea, it says, “A good man leaves an inheritance.” That doesn’t mean that if you can’t leave an inheritance that you’re not a good man. The idea is that as I’m building and growing and being a steward over the things I have, as it acquires and grows, my thoughts are not just for myself and my immediate gratifications and things that I want today, but it’s for, man, how can I hand something down to my son? And then how can my son hand something down to his son? And we can look at this in two ways. In the physical, in the material. Money, homes, cars, business sense, wisdom. And then we can look at in the spiritual sense as well, and I think we can we should look at it both ways. I’m handing down an inheritance of righteousness, I’m handing down an inheritance of godly wisdom and knowledge of the Word of God, an experience in the body of Christ, in the Holy Spirit and how he’s working.
What community looks like.
What community looks like. So we’re handing down not just a monetary inheritance. Every father and every mother should desire and pursue handing down a spiritual inheritance to their children. But on the other hand, we’re such good stewards on the material side that we could potentially hand something of material to our kids as well.
[Jennifer] But it’s gonna require intentionality, thoughtfulness, selflessness, not selfishness. Because if we’re selfish in the way that we’re spending or keeping our money, that’s not gonna produce what you’re saying about leaving an inheritance for generations to come. So that requires intentional thought and strategy and good decision-making.
[Aaron] And again, most importantly, is that spiritual inheritance of showing your kids what a righteous life looks like, showing your kids who Christ is, what the Word of God says, not just in word but in example. And then showing our kids what it means to be good stewards, that we teach them how to manage money well and how to be good business people and how to understand equity and investing and all these kinds of things, on whatever level that may be. That may be putting money in the bank, that may be putting some aside for giving. These are all parts of that. And so this kind of gives a full orb, this is definitely not extensive but it just gives this picture of the dangers of money and having it in the wrong place and having the wrong heart and mentality about it, but then the benefit and power and blessing of using money and wealth well for God, recognizing that we’re not owners of our money but that we’re stewards of it, and I say this all the time. We’re not owners of our things, we’re stewards of them. The moment we think that we’re owners of them, then we’re gonna misuse them, and those things, those material possessions, are gonna be in the wrong place in our hearts.
[Jennifer] That’s so good. I do wanna point out that in “Marriage After God” we really laid the foundation for a couple working through finances together. Things like being unified, keeping your heart and hands open for the Lord to direct you through your finances, getting and staying out of debt, sticking to a budget. And we give some really great testimonials from our own life but also some practical tips on how to implement some of these things. And so I just wanted to encourage people if they haven’t read it yet or maybe if they have the book and you’re working through finances, go back to that chapter and read it. And I hope that it’s encouraging to you, because we do dive into a lot of the practical in “Marriage After God.”
[Aaron] We share our own story of getting out of debt and the turmoil that that caused, and how God used that story to transform the way we see money. And we’ve actually had people tell us that that’s their favorite chapter.
[Jennifer] Yeah, my dad actually.
[Aaron] Oh your dad told us that, yeah. ‘Cause it’s super practical. And actually another friend of ours mentioned it too. So if you haven’t got a copy of that, it’s MarriageAfterGod.com. You can pick up a copy of our book. A little mid-episode plug. So let’s just give some ideas of why they might wanna make some extra cash. I’m sure they’re listening right now and they’re like, “I know exactly what I need this extra cash for.”
[Jennifer] I think for a lot of people these days just maintaining lifestyle, especially under that weight of debt, so getting out of debt, making those payments, getting those bills–
[Aaron] Without having an empty refrigerator.
[Jennifer] Yeah, yeah, seriously. Just life maintenance. Some people just need extra cash to get by.
[Aaron] Yeah, some people might have this vision of building a home in another country, or supporting a missionary, and they’re giving maybe, but they wanna raise a larger chunk, maybe, to do something that they need a more immediate need for. So supporting missionaries–
[Jennifer] Okay, ’cause you said build a house in another country and I’m thinking–
[Aaron] Yeah, not a second home.
[Jennifer] Not a second home. We’re not talking about vacationing.
[Aaron] Well, maybe that’s what they’re trying to raise money for. But maybe it’s for a missionary, building a house in Mexico–
[Jennifer] You were talking about missionaries. So really we’ll just say support missionaries.
[Aaron] Yeah, buying supplies for your kids. I know we’re homeschooling and we need supplies for our kids.
[Jennifer] Every September.
[Aaron] We know lots of people are homeschooling, and that could be it. Just getting them new clothes, getting them stuff for school. Putting money into savings for emergencies. Again, remember, money’s not our security, but it is wise to have some money set aside, recognizing that it would be useful when we needed.
[Jennifer] Yeah, just to add to this list, some people just wanna be a little bit more self-sufficient in that they’re not relying on that paycheck to paycheck but that they are budgeting in a way and maintaining their finances in a way that they’re–
They have margin.
[Jennifer] They have margin, that’s a good word, margin.
[Aaron] Which, again, is wise. Creating margins so that you’re not, something happens, you’re sick, or you lose your job, God forbid. Those kinds of things, having that margin, having some money in savings, those are wise things.
[Jennifer] Another one, when you have a lot of margin, being able to travel and go on family trips together or whatever that looks like, I know every family does that a little bit differently. But having extra cash for that.
[Aaron] Or being prepared to help with some sort of dire need in the church. Someone comes down with cancer, someone loses a home, something happens. We just heard about a friend of ours who knew someone who their house just totally burned to the ground. Those kinds of things happen.
[Jennifer] Or friends who are adopting.
[Aaron] Adoption, yeah, that’s a good one.
[Jennifer] You can support adoption.
[Aaron] And then our favorite one, to finish this list down.
[Jennifer] I think I already mentioned it.
[Aaron] Oh did you, getting out of debt?
Yeah.
Oh, getting out of debt. Okay.
[Jennifer] We’ll just say it again ’cause it’s really Aaron’s favorite.
[Aaron] Well, what’s amazing about getting out of debt is that it gives you margin for every other category because you’re not bound by that monthly payment anymore. That monthly payment goes into savings, it goes into giving, it goes into your car if you needed it, whatever, it goes into all those things.
[Jennifer] Yeah, so do you want to share a little bit of our journey getting…
[Aaron] Getting out of debt?
[Jennifer] Well, just our finances.
[Aaron] We were in the mission field. I had my school loans, it was about $20,000 of debt, which nowadays I think that isn’t even a lot. Hey friends, I just wanted to take a short 30-second break to let you know about an amazing resource for your marriage. Jennifer and I receive emails often from husbands and wives who desire to grow and mature in their marriage and are seeking guidance on various issues and questions they have. And though we cannot dedicate the time and attention that these couples deserve, we know someone who can. Our friend and mentor Matt Jacobson, who’s been pastoring our home church for over 16 years and has been doing marriage and parenting coaching for even longer than that, is now offering direct one-on-one marriage coaching to you in your marriage. Matt has been married for over 27 years and has eight amazing children. He’s a biblical marriage coach, guiding couples to restoration and transformation through an enlightened understanding of each other and obedience to the Word of God. Jennifer and I can personally attest to his wisdom and guidance. He has been a godsend to us in our marriage. Here’s the catch. Matt works with only a small number of couples each year and right now is accepting new couples. So if you’re interested in exploring coaching for your marriage, please visit MarriageAfterGod.com/coaching and fill out the form to get more information today. We pray this as a blessing and an answer to prayer to those who need it. Again, that’s MarriageAfterGod.com/coaching.
[Jennifer] It felt like a lot.
[Aaron] Yeah, it felt like a lot to us. But we felt God saying, “Hey, you wanna serve me? “Go get out of debt and then you’ll serve me more freely.”
[Jennifer] We thought we could do a lot more.
[Aaron] Yeah, but regardless, God has this desire for us to be out of debt. I mean, he has desire for his children to be debt-free. The Bible tells us to be in debt to no one, but to only leave the outstanding debt of love to one another. So we’re always in debt of love, but not to other people–
[Jennifer] I feel like striving to get out of debt too and having that motivation to hit that goal or accomplishment was a huge learning curve for us, and we learned so much physically, spiritually, and we just experienced a lot of growth and maturity in that season.
[Aaron] Went a lot of time to ourselves, which is a good thing. So our journey, we wanted to get out of debt, we wanted to stop living paycheck to paycheck. We were both working full-time jobs. Jennifer, you were a preschool teacher. Were you a preschool teacher, what was it called?
[Jennifer] Teacher’s assistant.
[Aaron] Teacher’s assistant. And I was working at a graphic design company doing websites and graphic design. And so we had these full-time jobs.
[Jennifer] We didn’t have kids yet.
[Aaron] Now yeah, I wanted to make sure I said this, because people are gonna be thinking, “Well, how do we do this with all my kids?” We didn’t have any kids yet, so some of this stuff was a little easier back then, but it felt super hard back then anyway, so regardless. And what we did is we just started selling things, we started taking side jobs, we started doing photography on the weekends, taking pictures of friends weddings and babies–
[Jennifer] Family shoots, everything we could.
[Aaron] I was doing some interesting thing with web development ’cause I was doing it at work. I started selling web design themes on a site, which came out of nowhere, I just started doing it ’cause we were doing it for our photography, and I was like, “Oh I’ll sell these themes.” And that helped, we made like $6,000 selling themes, website themes. I used a skill I had.
[Jennifer] There’ll be a handful of people that know exactly what you’re talking about and a lot of people–
They’re not gonna know. It’s like website designs.
[Jennifer] People could purchase this theme and then just make it their own website.
[Aaron] Yeah. So we took things, resources that we had at our hands, relationship skills we had, and we just started using those in creative ways to get out of debt. And we did that, we just did it weekend after weekend after night after night, and just kept doing it until we chipped all of our debt away. And it took us, what? A year and 1/2, two years?
[Jennifer] Yeah, and I don’t want people to hear our story and go, “But you did it before kids “so that’s why you were able to do it.” You guys are able do it. It might take a little longer or you might have to get a little more creative, but we wanna encourage you that even with a large family, it can be done. And we wanna encourage you to strive for a debt-free lifestyle.
[Aaron] Yeah, and like Jennifer said, it might look different, maybe a little slower. But the point is, like we talk about in the book, it’s having the debt-free mentality, that you’re taking the step. Instead of a step backwards, you’re taking a step forward. And it’s just one step at a time. So let’s just get into some of these things. There’s gonna be a lot of them, and some of them might not be for you, but there might be one idea here that you’re like, “Oh my goodness, that is exactly what I’m gonna try doing.”
[Jennifer] It’s kind of dependent on what you need the side cash for.
[Aaron] That and what you are capable of. Some people might not fall into some of these categories.
[Jennifer] True.
[Aaron] So why don’t you talk about the first one? Just ’cause I know that this is getting really big–
[Jennifer] I’ll talk about the first two.
[Aaron] The first two, perfect.
[Jennifer] So the first one that I wanna mention is essential oils. I’m not gonna mention names of companies because you guys know what they are, but I have friends that do this. I use essential oils. If you’re interested in building a business like this, you can make a great living off of it.
Overtime.
Overtime. You can use it for side cash and at minimal investment. So if this is something that you’re interested in and you’re like, “I don’t even know where to start,” message me on Instagram.
[Aaron] That’s a good idea.
[Jennifer] ‘Cause I can hook you up with the friends that I know that do it.
[Aaron] Yeah, and we have people on all sides of the fence. We’re not gonna talk about names.
[Jennifer] No, but essential oils are used in living a healthy lifestyle. And if that’s something that you’ve already been thinking of and want more information, just reach out to me via Instagram.
[Aaron] And we have husbands doing this and wives doing this, on both sides. So that was just a fun one, we wanted to throw that in there just ’cause we know several people that are now making a pretty decent living doing it. And so I feel like it was top of the list for me.
[Jennifer] Yeah, the second one I wanna mention is babysitting. It’s probably one that makes your face twitch a little bit, you’re like, “I don’t know about that.”
[Aaron] Really what we’re saying is we’re looking–
[Jennifer] No. No but babysitting can be pretty lucrative and doesn’t require too much, especially even if you do have a family and you have your kids at home, you can always invite those parents to drop the kids off at your house, or however you wanna work it out. But I babysat for a long time throughout my 20s and that was a great way to make extra cash.
[Aaron] Yeah, again, this will probably go for families that have maybe less kids or no kids. Unless you’re just totally cool with it. You have a bunch of kids and you’re fine with having double the amount of kids. Babysitting can be awesome. And just a side note, if you don’t wanna use babysitting to make money, this is a great way to go on a date. It’s called babysitting swapping. So you babysit with your friends, for your friends’ kids, and then they babysit on another night for your kids.
[Jennifer] That’s more like how to save money, but that still goes into it. ‘Cause then you can use that money from babysitting to go–
Or the date.
To the date.
[Aaron] Yeah, okay, so here’s another idea. So we did essential oils, babysitting. Okay, here’s another one. I brought this up during my little list of how we got out of debt. Use a skill you have to help friends and family on the weekends. So maybe you’re strong and you’ve got energy, go help someone move, go help someone fix some tile, mow loans–
[Jennifer] This is what’s considered odd jobs.
[Aaron] Yeah, odd jobs. There’s people that need something that they don’t have the time to do or the energy or the ability to do, and you’ve got the tools or you’ve got the skill or the strength to do it. And this is also an awesome thing for blessing your community, and a mutual blessing. They’re gonna pay you and you’re gonna bless them and then you just spend time with someone from your fellowship, from your church. So using a skill that you have or resources you have to help friends and family on the weekends.
[Jennifer] Yeah, but when you use the word help, sometimes it can feel like more of a ministry work. So you would wanna make sure that it’s clear that you’re looking to get paid, that you’re trying to make some extra cash.
[Aaron] Yeah, set a reasonable rate or hourly.
[Jennifer] So just making sure that you’ve clearly communicated that you’re looking to get paid and that it would be a win-win for both parties.
[Aaron] Yeah, so pick a reasonable wage, an hourly or a per-project type thing, and start crushing away. We had friends that did this, who came over and did odd jobs, and that’s how they raised money to go on a mission trip, actually. It was awesome. Here’s another one: make something and sell it at a local flea market, or farmers’ markets. Candles, quilts, baked goods. You probably have a family chili recipe that is just epic. Make it and go sell it. It’s usually, what, they’re 15 bucks, 25 bucks for a booth at a flea market or a farmers’ market?
[Jennifer] It could be more expensive. We’ve never actually looked into this.
[Aaron] I actually have not, but even then they make it a price that’s gonna be, that you should be able to sell something and make your money back and make some on top of that. Sell the recipe, sell some jarred salsa. There’s something that you can make that you probably already have a recipe for, it’s just a family gold recipe and everyone’s gonna love it. Maybe it’s smoking beef jerky, maybe it’s fish, whatever it is.
Making jewelry.
Making jewelry. And just get a little booth and go start selling and see what happens. We had a friend that roasted his own coffee and he started going to flea markets and giving samples out of his different roasts. His light roasts, his medium roasts, his dark roasts. And he almost started a whole coffee company just by doing that.
[Jennifer] We have another friend who started a candle-making business and now they’re at are our local Whole Foods, which is crazy.
It is crazy, yeah.
It’s awesome. We love it when people use what they’ve been given in creative ways like this. So hopefully this is spurring some ideas for you guys.
[Aaron] Yeah, and then just to take it one step further. If you’re creating candles, crafts, something that you can sell, not something that’s perishable like food, but go and create an Etsy account, which I believe is free, and you can just start selling your stuff on Etsy. Put special keywords in there and titles and people are gonna search for your stuff. And you can potentially start selling your little bows that you make, or little girls dresses, or candles, or whatever it is you can sell those on Etsy. It’s kinda like just going from the flea market in person and going online.
[Jennifer] Which everyone shops online these days.
[Aaron] So this is a weird one. You may or may not have heard of Fiverr, F-I-V-V-E-R dot com. And it’s just an online platform, you can create a free account, and what you do is you offer up tasks. Maybe you’re gonna transcribe a video or you’re gonna write up a thing or you’re gonna film a little voiceover or something like that, and you charge like $5 is usually the going price for most things. And it’s like a 30-second thing, a five-minute project. And you can just go on there and sell a skill you have. Maybe you’re good at drawing and you’re like, “I can draw up pictures pretty quick.” And you just sell a task of like, “For $5 I’ll draw you a little tiny postcard, “or for 10 an add-on, I’ll do a full-size 8 1/2 by 11.” So Fiverr’s just a cool thing and there’s literally an infinite number of skills you can sell on Fiverr, you should just go check it out. It’s pretty insane, actually, the kinds of things that people sell.
[Jennifer] Okay, so another one is online surveys. There’s companies out there that will pay you for your response on a survey. So do you wanna list any of those?
[Aaron] Yeah, so one’s called Vindale.com. I was just doing research on these and just trying to find ways to let you guys know of how to make money, and a lot of the surveys, they don’t take very long, but I think you can make up to $10 a survey. And all you’re doing is going on there and it’s consumer questions about things you purchase and where you shop. So Vindale.com, V-I-N-D-A-L-E dot com. Another one is SurveyJunkie.com. And then the last one is VipVoice.com. I’m sure there’s others out there but these are the three that I found that seemed the most largest, but you can go check ’em out. So yes, surveys, I don’t know if that’s for anyone or for everyone, but just go check it out. In my research it seemed like an easy way someone could make some extra cash. Okay, here’s a really cool one. This is gonna be for people that can type really, really good.
[Jennifer] Not me.
[Aaron] It is not me either. But I’m sure there’s people listening who are like, “Oh my gosh, I type really fast!” It’s called Rev.com, R-E-V dot com, /freelancers. And what Rev is, it’s a company where you can upload videos and what they’ll do is they’ll submit that video to someone and someone will transcribe the entire video in real time. So someone will listen to the video and type out everything that’s said. And you can make 36 to 75 cents per minute, which is insane. So if you’re a really fast typer, you can go become a freelancer with Rev.com. I think they have you take a test to join, but if you can type accurately and fastly, you can start making money probably today. I don’t know how fast they get you into the system. But what they do is they just send you a video, you watch it, you transcribe the video. We use it often for our YouTube videos. It’s a pretty awesome service. So it’s Rev.com/freelancers.
[Jennifer] So another one that we have on the list for you is, this is probably gonna be for those of you who have an online presence or platform or social media that people are following you for a specific reason, writing an e-book and selling it on Amazon KDP. And the reason I say platform is because you need somewhere to put it, somewhere to kind of sell it, to get people interested, to tell about it. Anyone could do it but–
[Aaron] ‘Cause once you do it, it’s free to do, you go to K-D-P, KDP.amazon.com, create a free account, and you can actually publish a print book. It’s actually how Jennifer and I started becoming authors. We self-published through Amazon almost all of our books, minus two of our books.
[Jennifer] We wanna encourage you as authors to put the time into it. Don’t rush through this kind of project. You wanna make sure that the inside is edited and that it’s well written, that it is designed well. Not for the sake of, you know, because you have to, but you should desire to put good work out there that’s really gonna be a blessing for those who are gonna pay for something like that. I just wanted make sure that that was–
[Aaron] And even if you don’t do a print book, you can do an e-book very easily, a lot of people to e-books, the same exact way. It’s KDP.com, or KDP.amazon.com. But I had to put that one in there because that was how Jennifer and I started selling our books, it was through Amazon. And we still do, actually. We have 10 self-published books through Amazon. Here’s another one, it’s kinda like the survey one, you can get paid to test websites before they launch. So people will design a website, a big company or a small company, and they wanna know how it’s gonna be used. And they pay up to ten dollars per test. And so what you’ll do is you’ll get an email and it’ll say, “Here’s a website,” and it’ll tell you what to do. And they want you to go actually use it, and then they record what you do so they can see how it’s used, and then you get to write feedback on it. And there’s a of couple sites you can do it on. One’s called Userfeel.com, Y-S, or W. It’s spelled U-S-E-R-F-E-E-L dot com. And then the other one is TryMyUI.com. You just sign up, you become a tester, and you can start testing websites for people.
[Jennifer] I never heard that.
[Aaron] Yeah, I know. I was doing some research and I was like, these are some really cool ways of making some extra cash. Here’s a fun one, it’s called Rover.com, R-O-V-E-R dot com, and it’s like Uber for dog walkers. And you can actually get paid to walk people’s dogs. They say in the site you can earn up to $1,000 a month. I don’t know how much dog walking that is, but that’s pretty cool.
[Jennifer] I feel like you have to like dogs to do that. I wouldn’t be a candidate.
That wouldn’t be you. But you can sign up and I think you can do it as much or as little as you want, and I think they do it locally, so it’s gonna be based off of people around you. So I’m sure that not everyone’s gonna work in this. But I thought that was a cool one.
[Jennifer] Here’s another service-based option for you, and that’s shopping for people. Shoppers.instacart.com. You may have heard of Instacart already, you may have used it yourself, we have.
[Aaron] Yeah, I have it on my phone right now.
[Jennifer] But it’s a great way for you on the other end to earn some extra cash by shopping for people.
[Aaron] Yeah, so essentially you’ll get an order and you’ll go to the local store and you’ll pick up all the things on the list and you drop it off at an address. So I would say be careful if you’re gonna get into this. Be confident knowing where you’re going. But someone might be totally interested in this idea.
[Jennifer] Have a valid driver’s license.
[Aaron] Have a valid driver’s license. I don’t know, maybe you can do it on a GoPed or a bike, I don’t know. But just do your research. But we found out that was something you can sign up for and you can become a shopper for someone. All right, the last one, and this is kind of like the digital version of doing odd jobs for your friends, and this is doing odd jobs or chores for random people. There’s a site called TaskRabbit.com and you can become a Tasker, that’s what they call it. A job will get posted, “I need someone to mount a TV,” “I need someone to move a refrigerator or to fix a faucet.”
[Jennifer] This is just people you don’t know.
[Aaron] Yeah, and you can pick and choose which tasks you want. But again, do your research, dig into these things yourself, figure out if it’s something that will work for you. Some of these things probably not, maybe none of these will work for someone, but maybe all will work for someone. But in my research I just wanted to find some cool things, different things, unique things, that maybe you’ve never thought of to make a little bit extra cash on the side to get out of debt, to save some money, whatever it may be.
[Jennifer] Yeah, two more that I just thought of as you were talking is I have this friend that makes pies and really enjoys it and sells them, and sometimes sells them by the size.
[Aaron] Mmm, pies.
[Jennifer] So if you’re a baker and you have a community that likes to eat pies, I’d be a part of that community.
[Aaron] We’ll be your taste testers.
[Jennifer] Yeah, you could do something like that, that’s creative. And also if you have a garden and your garden overproduces, don’t waste the food, which you probably don’t. But see if anyone in your community could use a bushel or something.
[Aaron] What we’ve seen mostly in the Midwest is, what do they call it? It’s a little stand and they put the vegetables and it’s just honor base. You go and you put some money in a jar and you take a tomato or you take some carrots. And so maybe you can put that in your front yard if you if you live in an area that will let you do that. Or again, going to a local market, farmers’ market, and selling your extra produce. That was a great one. So I wanted to reiterate. Again, we wanna have the right mentality about money and wealth and what’s being used for. That we’re stewards, not owners. And I hope that some of you that are listening to this episode can glean just some ideas for yourself, that you would use wisdom in pursuing them. And I also wanna just give this insight that some of these side jobs, if we have the right mentality, could be opportunities for witnessing. You’re gonna be meeting new people, you’re gonna be connecting in communities that you haven’t connected before. And just recognizing that you’re a light and that you’re salt in that.
[Jennifer] Yeah, that’s actually really good. So even though the goal is side cash, your heart is in a position and a place where regardless of the side cash you are ministering to the people on the other end. You are a light to them, you’re an encouragement to them. No matter where you go, no matter what you’re doing, no matter what odd job it is, even if it’s a really hard one, you have a good positive attitude, you’re uplifting, you encourage people toward the heart of God.
[Aaron] So, as always, we love to end our episodes with prayer. Before I do that I just hope that this episode encouraged you and I hope it gave you some good ideas. I know that when I was doing the research there I was really surprised at how many ways you can make money online and in life, it’s pretty cool.
[Jennifer] And again, if this made you think of someone in your life who could use some extra cash, be sure to send it their way.
[Aaron] Absolutely. So Jennifer, would you praise us out?
[Jennifer] Dear Lord, thank you for providing scripture about money, about how we should view it and how we should steward it. We pray we would never have a love of money. We pray we would be wise in how we make our money, how we spend it, and how we save it. We pray our finances would honor you. Help us to be united in our marriage when it comes to money. Help us to communicate respectfully about it. In times that we are striving to make extra cash, we pray that you would guide us and show us what we should do. If any of the striving is in vain, please convict our hearts and redirect us. May the pursuit of money never be at the cost of our relationship with you, Lord, or with our families. Thank you for your provision. Thank you for the opportunities we have to grow. And thank you for the moments we get to share your gospel with others. We pray we would be a light in this world no matter what. In Jesus’ name, amen.
[Aaron] Amen. So if you loved this episode, if it was encouraging, if you liked the ideas, please leave us a star rating and review. We’d love that, we love reading those, and it also helps other people find the episode.
[Jennifer] Also, don’t forget to get your free download of the date night conversation starters. That’s at DateNightConversations.com.
[Aaron] Yeah, so we love you all. We’re praying for y’all. See you next week. Did you enjoy today’s show? If you did, it would mean the world to us if you could leave us a review on iTunes. Also, if you’re interested, you can find many more encouraging stories and resources at MarriageAfterGod.com, and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.
