A lot of people are finding freelancing lucrative. I prefer freelancing because I never liked office politics. Going to office involves a lot of expenditure. Transportation costs, cost of eating out, and money spent on clothes etc. is an overhead that I can prevent when working from home. Also, I don’t have strict timings of reporting in office and I can work even while on a holiday. Recently when I was called for an interview for a full time on-site employment I was surprised to see that they were offering me much less pay than what I was getting by freelancing.

Freelancing is not your only option for a part-time income. There are many other options too. If you like visiting offices, you can always take up employment with more than one employer. You don’t have to fear being shown the pink slip once again. Even if one employer wants to slash employment due to bad economic conditions, you can always bank upon another employer. Also by working at two or more places, you are recreating yourself with different types of work and different working conditions. You get to make friends with more people than you could have when regularly employed full time with one employer. Nowadays people are working with more than one employer to make their necessities meet.

According to Careerbuilder.com report, more than 10 percent of the population today has taken up work with more than one employer in 2008 and this year twice the number have decided to follow suit. Employers are hiring people as consultants and contractors for their projects at lower pays. Employees on the other hand, are gladly accepting these jobs without much hesistation. They are taking up more jobs to meet their expenditures, if the pay given by a single employer is not enough. This will not only give them the much-needed extra buck, but also provide them job security too. If one job goes, the other is always there to bank upon.

Freelancing being a lucrative option now, the competition for freelancing has increased rapidly. Employers started hiring for short term projects and that too at lesser pays. Employees don’t have much choice but to take up these temporary and less paying assignments.

This is the time you can seriously contemplate a career change. If you are already unemployed you’ve got nothing to lose in case you don’t click because you don’t have a good career in hand which you can fear losing. Also, working in two different profiles will give you exposure to different jobs which you can then choose from as a permanent career in the future when the economy improves.

Don’t Hope For Big Discounts

Last year you might have got about 80 % off on most articles during the holiday season. But now you’ll not. This year you can expect to get a discount of only 40-60 % and then again you’ll find this discount only in fewer stores than you did last year.

Wait Till Black Friday, Not After That

You can expect to get good bargains if you shop at the most appropriate time. The amount of inventory that they’ve ordered is much less than last year, by about 10 %. Now you’ll not be getting any discounts because retailers are waiting till Black Friday to see how much  of their inventory they sell and then fix the prices with some discounts but don’t expect them to be as much as last year. Go shopping after Black Friday and you can hope to see some of your favorite goodies more affordable. But don’t wait for a long time because you might risk arriving at a retailer only to see your favorite item sold out because inventories are less and in the holiday season you can expect the stocks to get exhausted soon. But, on the contrary some retailers feel that consumer confidence having plummeted down; people will more focused on saving money or spending it on more important things like saving their properties from foreclosures etc.

What You Should Buy

This holiday you can very well shop for electronic goods, women’s clothing and home decoration items because you can expect to get discounts on them from now to the end of the holiday season. However, you should wait a bit for purchasing electronic goods because the retailers will be slashing the prices only at the end of the holiday season. The reason the retailers of electronic items are going for a slash is because they are facing stiff competition from online sellers like Amazon, Retailers like Best Buy and manufacturers like Apple and Dell.

Don’t Bother About Dollar Value

The dollar value is expected to remain fairly constant in these coming months till the end of the holiday season. Even if it changed the pricing will not change accordingly because most of the retailers might have bought their inventories much before the starting of the holiday season.

On the whole it’s better for you to wait for at least a couple of months now, so that you see discounts and new stocks coming in. Read more on  tips to save for a holiday.