Career Archives - Making Sense Of Cents

15 Home Business Ideas & The Free Courses You Need To Get Started

Last Updated: September 13, 2020 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 5 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Are you looking for a work from home job or some home business ideas?

If so, then I have a great list of free resources, such as courses and guides, that will help you find the best option and learn how to get started. Plus, all of the courses and guides in this article are free!

If you’re looking to make extra money, or even a full-time income, working from home is a great option. There are lots of realistic home business ideas that allow you to work on a flexible schedule.

In fact, around 50% of U.S. businesses are home based, and that number is expected to grow well into the future.

But, many people don’t know what kind of options are available or how to get started with their home business ideas.

This article is a good starting point because I’m going to tell you about 15 different profitable home business ideas and link to free courses, workshops, and guides that will help you kick off each of these ideas.

There are lots of valuable paid courses out there, but if you’re not sure about an idea, you might not want to spend hundreds of dollars on a course. That’s why free courses and guides are a great way to start. [Read more…]

How To Make a Resume – Your Questions Answered

Last Updated: August 31, 2020 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 8 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Looking to learn how to make a resume? Here, you’ll see a resume example, tips for writing a cover letter, and answers on how to create a resume.

Resumes are important for many reasons.

The job you’re applying to may require one, and it’s how you stand out among other applicants.

The one position you are applying to may have hundreds or even thousands of other people applying to it, so a resume that grabs the attention of the company is extremely important.

I interviewed a resume expert, Katie Pelton, on the subject of how to make a resume. You may remember her from when I first interviewed her back in 2013 – Extra Income Series: I Run a Resume Business.

As the founder of Resumes By Katie, Katie Pelton is a career development aficionado, both for herself and others.

She loves helping people realize their accomplishments and she has helped hundreds of people across the country improve their resumes, cover letters, LinkedIn profiles, and interview skills. When she’s not enjoying the challenge of a job hunt, you can find her eating pizza with her fiance and rescue pup in Minneapolis. [Read more…]

A 31 Year Old’s Journey to $5,000,000 in Rental Property Value

Last Updated: July 19, 2020 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 5 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Today, I have a great article to share with you from Kyle Kroeger on how to invest in real estate. He has a goal of reaching $5,000,000 in rental property value, and is sharing his plan today.

The prospect of retiring early on real estate is highly intriguing to me. It should be for a number of people and I’ll highlight a bit more below.

For millennials, like me, we don’t have it easy. Despite the mainstream media’s thoughts, millennials have faced a Great Recession, massive student loans and a global pandemic already at a young age.

We’ve seen a lot but that can be used to our advantage for financial planning and life goals.

That’s okay if things are a bit harder for millennials financially. It’s a bit more fun when things are hard.

Here I’m ready to show you why real estate investing can be a great asset class.

Related content:

[Read more…]

Should I Start A Blog? Here Are The Top Reasons You Will Love Blogging

Last Updated: August 27, 2020 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 3 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Are you wondering should I start a blog? Have you been thinking about starting a blog for a while? Maybe you’re trying to find a way to make extra money?

Today, I want to share why I love blogging so much, and how much it has changed my life over the years. My story may answer your question of should I start a blog.

A lot of people wonder if I started blogging to make extra money.

The truth is that I had no idea you could make money blogging when I started Making Sense of Cents.

I was so clueless when I first started my blog. And, it seemed like a very random thing when I first heard about blogging, but I decided to go ahead and create a blog of my own.

Making Sense of Cents was started simply as a way to keep track of my own personal finance journey. Most people in my life didn’t even know I had a blog. [Read more…]

How We Reached Financial Independence Using Airbnb & Real Estate – Plus Strategies During The Pandemic

Last Updated: May 12, 2020 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 1 Comment

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Hello! Today, I have a great guest post from Boris and Susan. They purchased their first real estate property in 2017, and became Airbnb hosts. This was a 4-bedroom home that ended up generating them $120,000 in revenue in the first 12 months. They now host close to 10,000 guests per year across all of their properties and do all of this remotely. Below is their story, enjoy!

A foreword given the current state of the world

We wrote this post back in February to describe and share our experience using real estate and Airbnb over the past 3 years to build additional sources of (semi-passive) income. As everyone else, we had no idea that the world would change so dramatically in less than a month after that.

However, although it certainly did change – especially given that the travel and hospitality industry came to a grinding halt and caused a few heartburn-filled weeks – the fundamentals remained valid.

As we’ll discuss towards the end of the article, we’ve been able to make adjustments and pivot in a way that kept our properties occupied, covering costs, and still generating a profit (albeit a smaller one than usually).

The truth is that if we’re looking at a 3-9 months horizon, things will remain challenging and uncertain. However, this was never a short-term strategy for us, as we try to plan for the next 3-10 years and make decisions based on that sort of a timeline. But first, let’s start in the beginning.

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Here’s how it all got started as Airbnb hosts.

For many years, real estate was not really on my radar.

I was happily renting, enjoying the flexibility that it offered, and generally thought of real estate in the context of owning your own home – mainly that it limited your options and didn’t really bring too many positives, other than the hassle of maintenance and doing your own lawn every Saturday.

When I met my wife, Susan, on the other hand, she grew up with a completely different mindset.

When she was growing up in China, the common wisdom was that you should always strive to own your own place as soon as you can afford it.

When she moved to the U.S., she maintained the same viewpoint that owning real estate is a key to becoming financially secure. [Read more…]

How to Quit Your Job & Build An Incredible Side Income on Amazon

Last Updated: September 13, 2020 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 2 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Hello! Today, I have an amazing interview to share with you that will show you how to make extra money by learning how to sell on Amazon.

If you are looking for a new job or even just a side hustle for extra income, this may be something that you want to look into.

Today, I want to introduce you to, perhaps, a new way of thinking about how you can go about building a business on Amazon.

It’s called ‘The Marketplace Model.’

I learned all about this from Stephen Somers; a friend of mine from Ireland who has built numerous multi-million dollar businesses on Amazon using this model – not to mention the 5,000+ people in his community he’s helped.

So, what is the Marketplace Model?

You find products on Amazon that are already selling
You then create your own, unique, branded version
Then you find a supplier and test a small trial order
You then sell those products on Amazon.com
Finally, expand out into Amazon’s global marketplaces – which is really simple and straightforward to do!

[Read more…]

Learning How To Work, Parent, And Teach From Home During A Crisis

Last Updated: May 3, 2020 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 2 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Hi, this is Michelle’s editor and sister-in-law, Ariel! You’ve seen me here before talking about living in a small house, going full time with my side hustle, and living a low-waste lifestyle.

As I’m sitting in my living room writing this article, my 9-year-old son is in the next room working on his laptop after a video conference call with his 3rd grade teacher. He’s already had one meltdown, and my husband had to stop working to help him out.

In another part of my house, my 11-year-old son is on a video call with his math teacher because he can’t figure out how to submit assignments on Google Classroom. And my daughter is in her room on her first of two or three Zoom meetings for the day.

My husband, a special education teacher, will spend his day creating video lessons and fielding emails from parents.

Our youngest son will need constant help refocusing on his school work. He can go anywhere from 5-10 minutes before he gets distracted and asks about snacks or video games. On a rough day, he’ll get frustrated and teary-eyed because third graders aren’t meant for this new version of school. [Read more…]

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