Work from home, any of these actually work?

[Gundo]

Im not curious about the make "$5000/week doing work from my house" kinda jobs, but my friends wife is on Mat leave and she said she was looking into doing something from home to make a little more money and if anyone anywhere knows anything about something like this its the good folks here at CalgaryPuck.

Anybody ever have or know of anything someone can do from home to make a couple hundred dollars a month on the side, doesn't much matter what it is if it pays a little bit.

[Peanut]

Like, under the table? Because if she starts making money "legally" it can impact her mat leave EI (assuming she is receiving that).

[ken0042]

A friend of mine took a "work from home" job- she was doing call-back surveys from a dealership's service department. She liked it as she was a stay at home mom- and it allowed her some flexibilty. If the kids were fussy one day she didn't have to work that day, and could do more the next.

[Draug]

Originally Posted by ken0042

A friend of mine took a "work from home" job- she was doing call-back surveys from a dealership's service department. She liked it as she was a stay at home mom- and it allowed her some flexibilty. If the kids were fussy one day she didn't have to work that day, and could do more the next.

What kind of pay?

[ken0042]

It was right around minimum wage. At the time it was a good situation for everybody. This was around the turn of the century in Grande Prairie- so the dealership was able to hire somebody "mature" for minimum wage (at the time you couldn't hire a 15 year old kid for less than 1.5 time MW), and she was able to take on a job that allowed her to work around taking care of the 3 kids. (Without involving daycare.)

I bring up the circumstances because the more I think about it- that may have been more of a factor at the time.

[RedHot25]

Originally Posted by Peanut

Like, under the table? Because if she starts making money "legally" it can impact her mat leave EI (assuming she is receiving that).

Yeah, this is important. She is only allowed so much earnings before mat leave $$ is clawed back or even....

[Gundo]

I believe shes looking for legal not under the table work, from what i understand her mat. leave it paid by her employer and she is allowed to make money over and above.

[RedHot25]

Originally Posted by Gundo

I believe shes looking for legal not under the table work, from what i understand her mat. leave it paid by her employer and she is allowed to make money over and above.

All of it? I would assume she is just getting topped up from the EI amount to close to what she normally makes at work. In that instance, EI will tell you how much extra you can earn before you have to pay some of it back/get your maternity $$ clawed back. Be very careful...

[Flamesguy_SJ]

*insert missdpuck joke everyone is thinking of*

[burn_this_city]

Whatever happened to missdpuck?

[Rathji]

You can make some money on top of EI paid mat leave without it reducing your payments. It isn't a lot though. I think $100 a week or somewhere there abouts.

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by Rathji

You can make some money on top of EI paid mat leave without it reducing your payments. It isn't a lot though. I think $100 a week or somewhere there abouts.

If you're maxed out I believe you can earn about $150 per week.

[Peanut]

Originally Posted by Gundo

I believe shes looking for legal not under the table work, from what i understand her mat. leave it paid by her employer and she is allowed to make money over and above.

Most employers (non-government/non-union employers, that is) provide a specified period of mat leave top-up... like 6 - 8 weeks is common. Even no top up at all is also pretty common. The rest of the "mat leave" income is federal government EI, which in Alberta maxes out at about $1700/month.

Originally Posted by flameswin

If you're maxed out I believe you can earn about $150 per week.

Good to know... thanks!!

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Edit to add: One kind of short-term I had was for her to try selling some stuff on ebay? Even just miscellaneous stuff around the house that is in storage or they don't use often. Might bring in a bit of money and gets the clutter cleared out!

[GGG]

By and sell things on Kijiji, pick a product and look at prices. Buy low and sell high.

[CaptainCrunch]

There was a decent article in the Sun today that talks about why most peoples small home businesses fail.

Basically with these ads for making $5000.00 a month the people that respond to them and get started fail to have the sales experience or ability to make it work.

As nice as it is to work from home, you tend to have to do a ton of prospecting and networking to make it work. Because of the low dollar amounts of most products you probably have to do 10 times the prospecting that a normal account manager would do to make it successful.

There's also very little help from the supplying company, they don't care if you succeed or not as long as you pay their fees.