How to Supplement Your Current Income After Retirement

I retired in 1997 from working as a full time Criminal Psychologist. Since I was retired, I did not want to stay home and be the perfect housewife and I still had the drive to make money working, but not from my retired career choice. I sat down with a pen and paper and wrote down all the items that I knew about and was adept at doing. Through a hit and miss system, I tried several ways that I could keep myself busy and supplement my retirement income at the same time.
Here is an idea that you may want to implement to help you acquire some extra income. This idea will not make you an instant millionaire-but it may help someone to supplement their current income.

I love to help people, so I came up with this idea to buy and sell items for friends and people that I knew. I started with my immediate family, friends and neighbors. Each item that they wanted to sell had to cost $10.00 or less. I charged a commission fee of $5.00 if I sold the item for the person who listed it with me. In short, I became my friends. relatives and neighbors "broker" for durable goods that they wished to sell.

My theory was that if I could hook up the seller or a buyer with listed products -that all parties involved in the sale or purchase of products would make some money. I began with about $50.00 worth of products that I had collected myself and wanted to sell-soon my friends got involved with items they wanted to sell or purchase but did not know how to accomplish this-and all of them did not want to pay full price for a NEW item.

They in turn told their friends, co-workers and neighbors and relatives about my endeavors. I had buyers and sellers send me lists of items that they wished to purchase or to sell. Soon I had an extensive list of products and buyers looking for goods and sellers looking to sell their goods.

Fortunately for all of us-there were many buyers for products for sale and a lot of sellers with a wide variety of products for sale. So hooking up the buyer and the seller was the next task. I am still doing this part time but have included items that are NEW. These new items still must remain $10.00 or less in price.

Some of the new products are items that individuals craft and product by hand. Some of the items included hand poured soy candles and votives, crocheted baby booties, machine stitched pot holders, Painted art work of local attractions from local artists, and a variety of other hand crafted items.

In this endeavor I did not carry any inventory, so my home was not invaded by loads of products. But I have recently inquired about renting a store front so that I could display some of the items that my buyers and sellers could view on a daily basis. One glitch I had in this endeavor was getting the buyer and seller together via email or by telephone and reaching a time slot where they could meet and discuss the transfer of the product that was for sale. To solve this I am opening a retail store in my neighborhood where these sellers can place their products and the buyers can view them directly.

The cost for starting this was minimal but the rewards of beginning this income supplement is terrific and still is going strong. It has expanded to a larger area than just friends, neighbors and relatives. Some of the rewards are seeing people helping people in our own neighborhoods and the great feeling it gives you to bring these people together, who were once strangers, and now have become a network of friends.

I believe that if anyone has the drive to begin a second career after retiring can make a good solid income with this venture.