Five Ways to Repay Your Student Loan
While you are in school, a student loan might not seem like such a big deal, but once you are out in the real world, struggling to keep a job, an apartment and stay reasonably well-fed, those monthly payments can become an issue real fast! Here are a few ideas to help you make the extra money needed for your monthly student loan payments.
Write articles. If you can write a half decent article, there are several places online you can sell them. Avoid websites that just pay you a percentage of revenue, instead, opt for up-front payment. Though the pay is pretty low, you can write the articles during your coffee break, since they only need to run about 400-600 words. After all those years of essays, you can probably toss out a page of type in less than an hour. If you make $5 per article and write one a day, you have an extra $150 each month.
Sell garbage. Have you ever taken a drive through the richer neighborhoods of your city on garbage day? The things they throw out are often almost new and in excellent condition. If you have a car, you can drive through these areas and pick up usable “garbage” to take back home and sell. Use online auction or free classified sites, have a garage sale, or just sell to your friends. You can afford to sell at rock bottom prices because you paid nothing up front!
Make crafts. There are plenty of websites that allow you to set up your own craft store, so if you can knit, crochet, sew or just glue stuff together, you might as well put some photos up online and see if you can sell your stuff. This probably won’t earn you a living, but it can be a great way to get an extra couple hundred bucks a month and if you enjoy what you’re doing, even better!
Teach a class. Do you have any skills that someone else might want to learn? Turn your knowledge into a class or tutoring and earn enough to pay off your student loan. Even if you don’t know much about teaching, you can learn by reading a few books on the topic. Set up a painting course, an online writing course, teach immigrants how to speak English, or, if you did well on your own standardized tests, train to teach test preparation. Check out your local community or adult education programs to find out if you can work for them teaching folks your speciality.
Clean houses. This is the ideal way to use up some free time on the weekends. Put up a few flyers offering your services as a once-a-week cleaner. You come in for a couple of hours on a Saturday and do a thorough cleaning of someone’s house and get paid for it. Check the local prices for housecleaning, it depends on the area. Some cleaners earn $10 an hour, others can earn up to $25 an hour. Figure out how much you have to do in order to make your monthly payment and keep advertising until you have enough regular customers to make your quota.
With just a little extra work each week, you will be able to stop worrying about where the money for your loan payment is going to come from and relax. The techniques above vary in their results, but you ought to be able to earn a couple hundred dollars with any one of them. Combine them and maybe you won’t even need a real job anymore!
