Need to make extra money in retirement? Anybody who’s in retirement knows you can never have enough extra jingle in your pocket during your golden years!
Here’s how to make extra money in retirement
It’s always nice to have a little more money in your monthly budget, right? And that’s never more true than when you’re retired and living on a fixed income.
Of course, the older you get, the more likely you are to want to focus on making money from things that are a little less active than delivering pizzas or ferrying around Uber riders.
This article focuses on things that aren’t necessarily vigorous, but still give you the opportunity to bring more money into your life.
Table of contents
- Join a focus group
- Become a paid food tester
- Open a new bank account for the sign-up bonus
- Try your hand at consulting
- Do small jobs at home for Amazon’s MTurk
- Sell unwanted stuff online
- Rent out a spare room on Airbnb
1. Join a focus group
Potential earnings: Varies, but generally starting around $100
Marketers want the opinions of regular people just like you to help shape their campaigns as they launch new products and services. And best of all, you can get paid to say what you think!
FocusGroup.com is just one clearinghouse for focus group opportunities across the country. It offers chances for you to have your voice heard as a consumer and get paid in the process.
Here are a few opportunities we found on the site for the month of September 2019:
| Location | Topic | Age group | Time required | Compensation |
| Atlanta | Social issues | 21-65 | 3 hours | $125 |
| Chicago | Streaming TV | 21-64 | 2 hours | $150 |
| Kansas City | Food products | 25-65 | 1.5 hours | $100 |
| Los Angeles | Shopping habits | 25-64 | 1.5 hours | $200 |
| Phoenix | Customer satisfaction | 22-65 | 3.5 hours | $150 |
2. Become a paid food tester
Potential earnings: Up to $50
You’ve probably heard of being a mystery shopper where you go secretly check out a business, right? Well, it turns out you can do the same thing with a specific focus on restaurants!
One of the biggest outfits in this field is Market Force. The company hires people to eat out and make sure food is being prepared and served properly. You’ll get paid for all of the following:
- Your time and feedback
- Full reimbursement for the cost of the meal
- Related travel expenses
One member of Team Clark recently became a paid food taster with Market Force. You can read all about his experience here.
3. Open a bank account for the sign-up bonus
Potential earnings: Varies
Did you know you can get several hundred bucks just for opening a new bank account?
Banks often give away sign-up bonuses that can be up to $500 at times to attract new customers. All you have to do is open up a checking or savings account with a traditional bank like Chase, Citi, HSBC, SunTrust and Wells Fargo.
Each offer has its own stipulations. You may need to deposit several thousand dollars into the new account, do a certain number of transactions a month or maintain a monthly minimum balance to get the money.
But when you consider the low interest rates most of these bank pay normally, this could be a real boost to your bottom line!
Just be sure to keep a copy of the promotional offer to make sure the bank plays by its own rules.
4. Try your hand at consulting
Potential earnings: Starts at $39,000, according to Glassdoor
Sure, you got tired of the daily grind at the office and decided to hang it up. Or maybe you were forced into an early retirement. Either way, you still have decades of experience and a lifetime of on-the-job learning under your belt. What better way to put that to use than consulting?
Work at Home Vintage Experts (WAHVE) offers unique opportunities for people who are 50 and older to work remotely for a variety of companies looking for experienced consultants. Most of the opportunities are clustered in the three following fields:
- Accounting
- Human resources
- Insurance
Best of all, there are no startup costs for you working with WAVHE. You just have to pass their extensive initial intake phone interview and subsequent phone interviews with potential clients to find the right fit.
5. Do small jobs at home for Amazon’s MTurk
Potential earnings: Up to $7.30/hour
If you’re more of a homebody and prefer to stay in, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) gives the opportunity to earn a little spare cash right from your couch. The site specializes in short surveys and other small “Human Intelligence Tasks” (HITs) like transcriptions, photo identification, verifying Google search descriptions and more.
Each HIT may only pay from a few cents on up, but the thing is these tasks only take a couple of seconds to complete anyway. So it all adds up.
One of our team members spent 30 minutes a day for 30 days and earned $110! That’s an average hourly rate of $7.30. Read about his experience here.
6. Sell unwanted stuff online
Potential earnings: Varies
If you’ve been in your house for a long time, chances are you’ve accumulated a lot of stuff along the way. Now that you’ve got a little more time on your hands in retirement, you can clean out the clutter and get paid for it at the same time.
Craigslist and eBay may be where your mind immediately goes when you think about selling unwanted stuff online. But the truth is, the market has differentiated so much based on what it is you have to sell.
Electronics
Clothing
General sales
7. Rent out a spare room on Airbnb
Potential earnings: Varies
A lot of people who are of retirement age also happen to be empty-nesters. The kids are either away at school or have long since moved out for good. That means you likely have a spare room or two in your home.
Airbnb offers an online marketplace where you can monetize that spare room by renting it out to short-term guests who need a place to stay when they’re in town.
The going rate for properties varies widely. In some highly sought-after areas, you can make up to $100 a night or more by doing this. However, if you live in an HOA community, the covenants may restrict you from renting a room in your home. This is something you’ll want to clarify before you advertise your property for rent on Airbnb.
Need more info? Read our piece on “How to make money with Airbnb.”
BONUS: Find missing money in your name!
The best kind of money is found money! MissingMoney.com and Unclaimed.org are two sites where you can do a quick check in your name or a spouse’s name for money that may be due to you that you’ve lost track of over the years.
This money can come in the form of unclaimed money from bank accounts, insurance policies and safe deposit boxes, among other overlooked sources.
Best of all, if you find some money in your name on either site, there’s no fee to claim it. You’ll be walked through the process of claiming the missing money with each state’s unclaimed funds department.
Final thought
Being in retirement doesn’t have to mean living on a fixed income. It can be easy to make extra money in retirement because you probably have more time on your hands than ever before in which to do it!
Meanwhile, if you’re a senior citizen you might be interested in our newly updated list of senior restaurant discounts. You could score between 10% and 20% off everyday at our list of participating restaurants.
More money-making articles on Clark.com
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