Make Money For Christmas

The holidays are a time when we all wish we had more money to spend. There are a lot of ways to make money at Christmas and jobs that are great for working moms and stay at home moms to earn more money for their family.

Before I ran my blog, I was a high school teacher. I loved being a teacher but I was burnt out and barely saw my family. When I was home, I was spending my weekends grading papers and lesson planning. I told myself that this wasn’t the life I wanted and that I would do what I could to make money as a stay at home mom.

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There are a lot of different ways that you can make and save money to create an income as a mom. Some moms might want some money so that they can contribute financially to the family, some want to be able to pay for Christmas gifts in cash or save for a holiday or college savings, and some need to make money to put food on the table and pay bills.

When I started working from home full time, I did it through network marketing as a Beachbody coach. I was able to grow a successful 6-figure business and, during that first full-time year, replace my teaching salary.

After working my Beachbody business for 6 years, I felt a calling to spread my reach and do more to impact women for God. That’s when I started A Purpose Driven Mom. I knew that if I was going to spend the majority of my time on APDM, my Beachbody income would go down, and I was okay with that. That also meant that I had to find other ways to supplement the income without adding too many more hours to my plate.

You can find ways to make extra income but know, the amount you make will depend on how many hours you want and can put into your day working. There are ways to supplement your income if you work outside your home and ways to work from home while making money for your family.

Pick your goal and know, that with hard work, you can 100% have a cash Christmas (or holiday or savings account or anything!)

Become a Couponing Mom

Okay, okay… if you’ve been hanging out here at A Purpose Driven Mom for a bit, you probably knew that I was going to start with talking quickly about how to SAVE money first.

Yes, you can totally cash flow your life without coupons but, before you go crazy taking on extra hours, I really want to suggest you start by looking at your current budget. Are there areas where you can save money? Are there places you are overspending? Do you have an income problem or a spending problem?

If you don’t have a budget or know where to start, you need to head over now and grab my budgeting course “Busy on a Budget” This course will walk you through all of these questions and help you set up a budget that allows you to start paying off debt NOW!

Once you look deeply at your budgets, you’ll be able to see where you can make some cuts in order to save for Christmas and beyond. Start with printing out last month’s bank and credit statements and use highlighters to color-code your spending (for example, make purple eating out and green kid’s stuff). This will give you a bigger picture where you can cut things out.

Instead of spending $10 a week on Starbucks, take that money you’d spend and put it in an envelope for holiday spending. If you were putting your Starbucks on your credit card… STOP. There is no point in finding ways to make extra money if you’re just going to use credit cards. You’re just taking that money from yourself right away. I know how hard the credit card mindset can be, and believe me, I constantly work on my money mindset, but you CAN make these changes if you’re serious!

The #1 place where people are spending too much money is on food! If you can stop eating out for the next month, you might have enough money to make a decent dent on your holiday budget. We rarely eat out (which includes convenience stores, drive-thrus, or sit down restaurants) but when we do, we make sure it’s in our budget and we always get a Groupon or a coupon!

Holiday Jobs for Moms

The most basic place to start making some extra money is finding a part-time job. As a mom that can be really hard since our hours are tighter and we would need to pay for childcare, which often offsets the cost of actually going to work.

My recommendation is to look for some seasonal or part-time jobs that you can do in the short term to make money for the holidays. So many retail jobs are hiring since they are so much busier. Check and see if any of the holiday jobs have later hours that you can work.

Many of the stores in the local mall have shifts that are either overnight or late at night. While I wouldn’t suggest working overnight if you didn’t have to (because our sleep and self-care matter too!), try talking to them and seeing if they have a shift that you could go to when your husband gets home from work.

The CVS near me is 24 hours and has an available shift from 6p-11p that I could work. While that’s not ideal and limits my sleep (though not by much since I get to bed at 11 pm most nights) it allows me to get in some extra hours without having to miss too much time with my kids.

There is also a consignment sale in the area that is also always looking for extra help. I typically volunteer (because that adds to the percent that I make when I consign) but I asked them if I could take extra hours for the credit to shop and they said yes! If I take 3 shifts, it’ll be enough credit to buy all the kids (mine and all in the family) their Christmas gifts AND get all the kids winter clothes!

Could you find the place where other moms work and do some swapping for babysitting services? If you have other moms that work alternate shifts at your job, maybe you could watch their kids while they work and they could watch yours during your shift.

Remember, if you’re able to make some sacrifices during this holiday season in order to cash flow your Christmas, you’ll thank yourself in the future for not having those credit card bills! And if it doesn’t fit in your cash budget… you don’t NEED TO BUY IT!

Best Jobs for Working Moms

If you are a working mom or can’t find a part-time job that fits the hours you need, there are a lot of jobs that you could do on your own schedule.

One of the best jobs for working moms is to take in some hours as a virtual assistant. A virtual assistant helps a business on their own hours to do a lot of the tasks that they’d like to get off their plate (this could be anything from social media management to answering emails).

Bloggers are always looking for extra help at a reasonable cost and I know other mommy bloggers love to get to help out their fellow moms! You could charge upwards from $15-20 an hour and work when your kids are napping!

The best way to find places that need VA help is to be proactive! Do you have a blogger you love? Send them an email and see if they need any help. Tell them you have a holiday or introductory rates and would love to take some work of their plate. Make sure you pick things that you are already skilled in or actually enjoy doing so they don’t take you a ton of time and you can be super effective.

You can also call the local business or reach out to ones you see on Facebook. If you’re in any Facebook groups like I am, I am sure you see people advertising their business all the time. It never hurts to reach out and see if they need any help!

Most will pay you directly via PayPal each week and you can decide if you work per hour, per tasks, or one flat rate!

Stay at Home Mom Jobs

My other recommendation for quick holiday money and how to earn more money as a mom is to get busy in referral marketing.

Referral (or affiliate) marketing is a great way to suggest things that you love to people and make extra money. If someone asked you if a restaurant or movie was good, you’d give your opinion right? How about if they asked for your favorite pair of yoga pants or a great book to read? That’s the same concept behind referral marketing.

Almost all online businesses will offer a referral program to suggest their products to your friends, family or audience (You can sign up for mine here and get a 40% commission if anyone buys any of my products through your link). They do this because it helps them expand their audience and allows you to make extra money too!

There are some really great ones out there for moms and my favorite is the Ultimate Bundles (you can sign up to be an affiliate here). They come up with crazy amazing digital bundles that moms love and save them money! When I sell a bundle to a friend, I make between $10-$25 and they get a great deal!

There are a lot of ways to find programs but the easiest is to either google the name of the program + affiliate program or just scroll to the bottom of their homepage and see if they have the words ‘referral’ or ‘affiliate’ there.

My biggest suggestion though is to only suggest products you actually love and use. I never will suggest anything to you (in my emails, social media, or on a blog post) that I wouldn’t use and don’t already love. People can tell if you’re just trying to sell them things, so think about it as a suggestion. If you’re best friend said “what is your favorite cookbook?”, which book would you send them too? That’s the one you should suggest to others because you know it will help them a ton!

If you’re looking for other ways to conquer your debt, gain control of your finances, and stop stressing over money, make sure you join the kick your debt to the curb in 5 days challenge!!