Fifteen Ways to Make £300 Monthly (& Keep the Fridge Stocked)

Editor’s note: This is the first of three articles on different ways to make money. Here, I list fifteen ways to earn enough to fill your fridge with food for a month. We’ve assumed the average family can do this on about £300/$500 per month. Look at the list, and feel free to add to it in the comments. Please share it with your friends if you think they could benefit from it.

I know. Some may think that this is being too generous, but I think it is right, especially after the cost of living crisis,

One could fill their fridge with monthly food for less than £300/$500. A friend of mine does; she feeds her family of three on about £20/$33 per week, which is less than £100/$167 per month.

This takes ingenuity, organisation, and time, which I don’t have; I suspect you may not have all of these. We spend about £300/$500 per month on food: we are two adults and a teenage boy. We often have our grown-up sons around, and we also like to cook for family and friends when I’m not travelling.

Let’s agree to be generous without being wasteful and assume that an average family needs £300/$500 to fill their fridge with food for a month.

Now, to the important part. Here are fifteen ways to make money to fill your fridge with food for a month.

1. Walk dogs for your neighbours. You can charge £10-£15 per dog per walk, but let’s say you charge £10.  If you walk three dogs once a day, five days a week in a month, you will earn exactly £600. And you will be fit and healthy.
2. Dog-sit for busy professionals. Dog-sitting costs £10-£15 per hour. If you dog-sit one dog for 10 hours a week (at £10 per hour) you will make £100 a week or £400 per month.
3. Do gardening. Gardening is paid at about £15 per hour. Assuming that you do it for four hours twice a week, you can make £480 monthly. If you are really smart, you’ll take the garden waste with you, compost it and sell it to people who love their gardens. Remember that a business that creates value from waste is hard to fail?
4. Mend computers. Everyone uses computers; most people don’t understand how they work. If you are good with hardware and/or software, you can spread the word and start a little business on the side. This one is hard to cost, but you could easily make £300 per month if you are good.
5. Deal in electric kettles and toasters. We live in times when most small electronics are not worth mending. The skill of doing it is going as well. Start collecting broken electric kettles and toasters, mend them and sell them at a garage sale (tabletop sale). It’s hard to cost, but it can fill the fridge and then some.
6. Become a general handy person. Most people don’t have the skills or the time to do minor work on their houses, cars and fences. You could earn enough to stock up the fridge by mastering some skill and spreading the word.
7. Clean houses. This is a trade with a very high turnover, and if you are good at cleaning, it’s worth a go. Cleaning private houses can earn you £12 – £15 per hour. Cleaning four hours per day, two days per week, can earn you between £384 and £480 per month.
8. Do small household chores for older people. This is not like looking after old people, but there comes a point where they need help with shopping, ironing, cleaning, etc. You can probably reach some kind of regular arrangement where you can do certain chores for £20 per week. You can do more than one household.
9. Make cakes. This is a rare and valued skill. If you are good at that you can make cakes for occasions or even sell them to the local coffee bars; something that can fill more than your fridge.
10. Teach a musical instrument. You can earn about £30 per hour teaching music privately. If you teach only three hour per week this will bring you £360 per month.
11. Teach a school subject. Most middle-class children in the UK are tutored. This means there is quite a bit of work for tutors in the main subjects – maths, English and sciences. This is about £20 per hour (depending on qualifications, experience and success). Four hours per week can bring you £320.
12. Write a column for the local newspaper. This can pay well but needs experience, contacts and a bit of luck. It also needs you to be the kind of person that will pick up the phone and make some phone calls.
13. Edit overseas students’ essay. This can be very lucrative if you are a good editor. Editing a 2,000 word essay can earn you up to £80. This means that editing four essays per month will earn you £320.
14. Write for blogs and websites. There is a growing demand for copy writers, I believe, because of the move of commerce to the Internet. Even a starting writer can earn between £20 and £30 for a 600-700 words post (article).
15. Become a mystery shopper. This has always been shrouded with mystery for me (pun intended, of course) but I know people who made very decent side income doing it. You only have to enjoy shopping and have a bit of time.

Have you tried any of these ideas to make money? Do you know of other ideas to make £300/$500 per month? Please share these in the comments.

photo credit: bbum via photopin cc