With many people in Britain still feeling the economic pinch, it is no surprise that folks like you and I are looking for ways to cut down on our spending whilst still enjoying some luxuries in life.
Photo Credit (C Jill Reed, via Flickr).
Some of us only work on a part-time basis, and own cars. But did you know that there are some creative ways to earn some extra cash using your car, or car-related stuff? Here are some of the best ideas to make your car pay for itself (especially if the car in question is on finance)!
Let other people use your car
If you can trust other people enough to look after your pride and joy, have you considered hiring it out to them? Car clubs are becoming an increasingly popular way of making money from cars that spend a lot of their time sitting around not doing much.
For example, if you work from home a lot of the time and aren’t dependent on your car to get you out and about, you could consider hiring it out to other people that want a cost-effective way of getting from A to B without paying the significantly higher prices of car hire firms.
Your car is fully insured through the car club that you use, and they handle booking arrangements and payments; all you have to do is have your car ready for a specific date and time, and you can start to watch the money roll in!
Turn your car into a mobile advertisement
On the other hand, if you spend a lot of time driving throughout the day, such as driving between different work locations and you tend to do a lot of mileage each year, you could always turn your car into a mobile advertisement!
Black cabs as well as single and double-decker buses are perhaps the most famous examples of such forms of advertising. In a nutshell, marketing companies that specialise in branding cars and public transport vehicles will often pay tens or even hundreds of pounds each month to motorists that can prove they do a lot of driving each month, especially in built-up areas.
Any branding or advertising is put on your car using vinyl graphics, which won’t harm your car’s paintwork and can be easily removed at any time. This is good if you decide you only want to advertise a brand or product for a certain period of time before returning your car back to its normal look again!
Rent out your driveway
I live quite close to a train station, and although parking is free at the station car park, spaces tend to get snapped up by people rather quickly each morning. There isn’t anywhere else for motorists to park apart from short-term car parks, and those are no longer free to park at.
Because I live about a 5 minute walk away from the train station, and my home has a driveway, I could quite easily rent a parking space out on my driveway to rail commuters. According to Listers VW, it is an attractive option to finding street parking somewhere further afield, especially if the street you park in doesn’t look particularly safe.
