what can i do?

[twisha]

im a housewife with 4 kids 2 of whom i home educate. were on benefits and i'd like to do a job/work thats freelance/self employed, but i need one that brings in the money EVERY WEEK, any ideas on what i can do???
i have no qualifications and im 47 yrs old
is there something i can do or is it too late and am i destined to live in poverty?
any help would be great, thanks

If you educate a couple of your children at home - could you give private lessons to other kids?

there isnt that much call here to do that, and we dont use the key stage stuff like they do in schools which i think is what people would want for "extra lessons" but thanks for the reply

Do you have childcare when the kids are asleep or at any time for them when you could do other things?

Ironically cleaning can earn you as much per hour as a lot of professional type jobs - round here the going rate is £20 an hour.

Something that you can charge against your personal qualities that doesn't rely on qualifications eg your trustworthiness or reliability. Or maybe you are a 'life and soul of the party'-type person or good at getting up very early in the morning ... anyway a good starting point might be to have a think about what your key qualities are. Then you can go down the road of thinking 'I need money every week' or 'I can only work on Tuesday nights' etc. The 'qualities' approach may give you some options you can then weed down given your constraints.

You can either sell your services/time, can't you, or some kind of product.

Services/time plus reliability and trustworthiness might point you in the direction of something you can do in other people's houses.

Products - to start with you'd need something where the barriers to entry are very low and don't require a lot of capital investment (to put it poshly). For example, are you good at making cakes, could you sell them at a local market? Near where I live there's a posh Farmers Market - several of the stalls selling tasty looking cakes, salads, sauces etc look as if they're one-woman bands. But it doesn't have to be a Farmers Market - it could be a normal market and you could experimentally try renting the side of a stall from an existing trader, for example. You'd need to do some sums about how much ingredients cost, how much time it took you to make cakes, rent of stall etc to calculate potential profit, obviously.

Anyway, I appreciate all these things are hard work etc - but hopefully there are some ideas here somewhere.

thanks for your reply,i tried the cake one but selling to a cafe and i had potential orders for when i got started,but the enviromental health said i had to have a seperate kitchen and the cafe wouldnt rent me a space in the evening.
i like the ideas of something along the lines of writing a column in a paper or mag,
on what i dont know,yet!or maybe taking digital photos and selling them,but i dont know how to start.
with the home edding makes it a bit difficult
during the day to "go" somewhere thats why i thought something i could do from home.

The thread called 'Submitting Articles For Publication' in this topic has some good advice on how to get published!

Why don't you start by writing an article for your local paper/family magazine on home educating? It is quite a "hot" topic these days.

Could you help teach adult learners one to one. Ask your local council if they are running any courses? They often train you in exchange for you working free for a few months, but once you have experience you can earn good money.

lovelylullaby, do you know anything else about the adult one-to-one training courses? Sorry for sort of hijacking, but that just caught my eye as I've had some experience in adult learning, and that kind of thing sounds right up my street. Do you know any councils which operate these type of courses or what they are called?
Thanks.

I know they do them in scotland. Try here for a little more

(right at the bottom of the page) www.eastrenfrewshire.gov.uk/education-and-learning/language-cultural-support.htm

Or maybe The Big Plus will have some info; www.thebigplus.com

thanks for the tip! I've been looking at the websites for the local authorities where I live (I'm on the cusp of 3 London boroughs). I will investigate further...

Hope you find something Crusha