It’s strange the feeling; a house once full with the squeal of infants, the chatter of teenagers and the long conversation of adults now lies still and quiet…just you and a whole lot of space. Retirement is only as good as what you are living on after you get retired and I am not talking about the pension.
If you as a retiree often sits and wonders what to do to your drying pockets, if you are forced to live under extremely thin budgets, yet you are racking up living expenses paying light bills, phone bills, water and heat bills. Then you should rather be thinking to yourself, “What do I do with this big ole house”
Don’t think to yourself, ‘I am all worked out’, there is an increasing number of older people who are raising money and starting businesses daily and who have thriving businesses in their retirement years. So it isn’t a time to lounge about, what would you consider worth the while to raise some money for?
Here are a few money raising ideas you probably didn’t know about, but you should consider:
1. Rent Out A Spare Room
There will always be someone in need of a spare room if you look out for them, perhaps a student in the country for their studies, or a visiting professor. You could rent out a guest room, for short periods or even long periods of time and collect a steady rent.
If you do not have the strength to go advertising your room, then you can sign up as a host on Airbnb. How Airbnb works is that it allows the hosts to upload the images of their homes which they wanna rent and simply wait for the users to make bookings.
Airbnb has become a true internet phenomenon with over two million homes from almost 200 countries worldwide currently listed on the website. More than 80 thousand of those accommodations are located in the United Kingdom and the chance is that the number is gonna go up even further. You should consider the strength around your area and consider advertising with them as well. Airbnb allows you to vet guests and reject them on as little as a hunch.
2. Try Registering Your House With A Location Agency
Location Agencies are often setting up homeowners with people who think their houses fit the bill for their photo shoots, movies, documentaries etc. you may have to put your house and guest rooms in a certain way, give it a certain feel before you go this route.
Different kinds of houses have different appeals, so it really doesn’t matter the state of the house, a small cluttered house may still fit the bill for a certain feel in a movie and a large vintage house will serve its purposes as well.
These agencies make it easy to match you with people looking to part with some good money to use your house.
3. Get A Mortgage On The House
This may become necessary if you are one of those people who refuse the tag of ‘old’. You are still raring to go and need a sizeable loan to implement that business idea in your mind, well… you can take out a mortgage on your house.
If you are up to the age of 62, then there are huge advantages in reverse mortgages for older citizens, these are in subtle terms, a loan with no monthly payments. It can give you enough time to build your business and get it standing and profitable with little hassle.
The interest gets added to the loan amount gradually, but then in most countries, the general loan amount payable cannot exceed the fair market value of the home itself.
4. Move…Sell Your house or Rent it Out
If you really need to raise that extra quid and the little rentals are not quite doing it then maybe you need to consider going leaner. Most of the times, the house will have sentimental value and you will have a sentimental attachment to your house, especially if you raised kids there.
Renting out the house and moving to a smaller apartment to save cost and raise money at the same time, maybe a smart solution to retain ownership of the house, make some money from it and save some costs at the same time.
The idea is to save money and not waste it, so moving too far away may not be ideal, perhaps just a block away… you need to budget your moving expenses so that it doesn’t turn out a major investment in itself. If there is not much attachment, then sell it.So what is that dream? You can make the extra cash you need.