Title. I’m broke, live at home, and can’t work (disabled). I figured asking this here would help other broke people. I’m in the US.
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If your disability is such that you’re able to work so long as you can work from home, there are entry-level roles for several industries that can be done remotely. I have no idea of your background, but call centers and places that sell insurance over the phone are pretty much always hiring (the work’s no fun, imo, but it’s work).
If you’re completely unable to work and are on disability, I’m unsure what the rules are around making money while receiving benefits. I’d recommend looking into that if you haven’t already so you don’t accidentally cross a line somewhere and end up losing benefits.
If you’re truly looking to just make some spare cash (and it won’t cause any issues like I mentioned before), you’ve got a few options depending on your skills and what you consider “decent pocket change.” Off the top of my head:
- Online tutoring: Can be good money depending on the company and whether you’re able to build up a solid customer base, but highly variable.
- Survey sites: You’re never going to get rich and you’ll give a lot of data away, but I’ve known people who do this for Christmas money or to help with groceries or something. Some sites/apps are more reputable than others.
- Transcription services: Also never going to make you rich, but it’s an option. Don’t be fooled by the places advertising $15/hour - that’s per audio hour, and a single hour of audio takes multiple hours to transcribe.
- Hobbies: This is completely dependent on you and what you’re good at, but if you’re an artist maybe you could earn enough of a social media following to start taking commissions. If you’re crafty, maybe an Etsy store.
Thank you, this is a very thoughtful response. I’m currently (still…) fighting for benefits despite more than qualifying for them, so currently there’s nothing stopping me like that unless I wave being able to generate income around like a flag.
I’ve thought about working a call center, I just don’t think I could bring myself to sell things to folks that they don’t need. I refuse to do anything unethical and IMHO that falls squarely under that (I’m starting to think I need to compromise and just apply to a bunch of them…).
I’ve done remote call center work in the past and have friends who’ve worked for a few others, and they were all technical support rather than sales work. Granted, some may want you to try to upsell services as you’re troubleshooting, but it’s not a true sales role.
As for the insurance places - yeah, those are basically all sales from what I understand. I’ve never worked for one myself, though, so I can’t confirm what the experience is like.
If neither of those options appeal and you don’t like the variability of the others I listed, I’d recommend searching for “remote entry-level work” and seeing the types of things that pop up. I personally prefer sites like Hiring Cafe over places like LinkedIn or Indeed for searching because there aren’t as may scams, but make sure to check the company out thoroughly before you apply regardless of the platform you’re using.
There are soo much ‘AI rating’ shite jobs going on currently. Disclaimer: I believe AI is bad, so if you are forced to do it you are obliged to do your work as badly as you can. I see these jobs on what used to be a freelance translators’ platform, but I suspect you will find them on other platforms as well.
Other, useful online work is of course nicer, so if you have time maybe polish or pick up a skill - language, art, graphics, programming - or even something manual you can sell online. You can also start with something that pays the bills and later branch out into nicer stuff. All this is very slow and takes time, but it’s possible to get there.
If you have any skills or talents or abilities, you can market them on Fiverr.
