If you’re here for a post on bread­mak­ing you’re in the wrong place. Robyn might do that later. The only thing I use a bread­maker for is roast­ing cof­fee… which tan­gen­tially leads into the point of this post.

Today is Robyn’s last day of teach­ing. Next month I’m giv­ing up my job. We’re going to be poor uni stu­dents again which means step­ping out of DINK time (dou­ble income no kids) into the great unknown of gov­ern­ment sup­ported poverty. We’re try­ing to come up with ways to earn money on the side. I am seri­ously inves­ti­gat­ing the pos­si­bil­ity of upgrad­ing my roast­ing capac­ity and flog­ging of roasted cof­fee to friends in Bris­bane — if you’re inter­ested in cheap, but qual­ity, cof­fee beans — let me know.

Any­way, I’ve just read a cou­ple of sto­ries that had great ways to save (or make) money that I thought I’d share with you.

Fre­quent Flier pro­grams are pretty much a license to print money for some US res­i­dents. They’ve cot­toned on to this great scheme in cour­tesy of the Fed­eral Mint. Now, this won’t work in Aus­tralia — I bought a $1 coin at our Mint for $2 when I was a young lad… I’m not sure what they cost now…

Here’s the scheme that has been cooked up in the states…

At least sev­eral hun­dred mile-junkies dis­cov­ered that a free ship­ping offer on pres­i­den­tial and Native Amer­i­can $1 coins, sold at face value by the U.S. Mint, amounted to print­ing free frequent-flier miles. Mileage lovers ordered more than $1 mil­lion in coins until the Mint started iden­ti­fy­ing them and cut­ting them off.

Coin buy­ers charged the pur­chases, sold in boxes of 250 coins, to a credit card that offers frequent-flier mile awards, then took the ship­ments straight to the bank. They then used the coins they deposited to pay their credit-card bills. Their only cost: the car trip to make the deposit.

Bril­liant.

Boing­Bo­ing reports on a guy who makes $45,000 a year cash­ing in dis­carded bet­ting slips that are actu­ally winners.

Mr. Leonardo, who is mar­ried with two teenagers, is hardly liv­ing on the fringes. He said that stoop­ing brings him $100 to $300 a day, and more than $45,000 a year. Last month, he cashed in a win­ning ticket from bets made on races at Santa Anita Park in Arca­dia, Calif., for $8,040. His largest purse came in 2006, when he received $9,500 from a Pick 4 wager (choos­ing the win­ners of four con­sec­u­tive races) at Retama Park Race Track in Selma, Tex.

Got any cool money mak­ing schemes for Bible Col­lege stu­dents? Share them in the comments…

Author: Nathan Campbell

Nathan runs St Eutychus. He is currently a student at the Queensland Theological College. In a previous professional life he worked in public relations for an economic development and tourism marketing organisation. He is married to Robyn. He likes coffee and the internet.

Read Nathan's 3799 articles.