How to Fully Fund an IRA from Your Couch
Have you been considering starting an IRA? Or making sure yours is fully funded? Having a traditional or Roth IRA is a great way to make sure you have extra money in retirement, and I believe that you can earn enough money each month to fund your IRA from the comfort of your couch.
In the US, the IRA contribution limit is $6000 a year for 2022 ($7000 if you’re over 50). This breaks down to about $500 a month ($583 if you’re over 50). I think it’s very possible to earn this much money from your couch with a little planning and work every day. Here’s how to do it:
Work on Mechanical Turk ($200–500+ a month). Yes, there are a ton of stories about how you can’t earn much money on mturk, but that’s not true at all. Build up a reputation, set your minimum task price highly enough (I recommend anywhere between 10 and 50 cents), abandon tasks that are tedious, and you can easily make $200–500 a month on Mechanical Turk if you’re on your computer for a few hours a day. You won’t have to turk for all these hours, but you will need to be checking back periodically for tasks.
Answer surveys on Prolific Academic ($50–200+ a month). This is a site that’s very similar to Mechanical Turk, but the surveys tend to pay better and be more reliable. I don’t put it ahead of Mechanical Turk though, because the number of surveys tends to be quite low. All that being said, I think you can make anywhere from $50–200 a month on Prolific if you are on your computer for at least a few hours a day. You can even set up an extension to be alerted of new Prolific surveys, which I recommend for maximizing your earning potential.
Take part in focus groups and paid interviews ($100–500+ a month). As I’ve mentioned before, focus groups and paid interviews are huge for making money — and you can do them all from the comfort of your couch. (I just made $125 this week for taste testing oat milk — and the oat milk was free too!) Of course, you actually have to find these opportunities, and they may not be available every month… but grab them if you can find them. I find most of my focus groups and paid interviews via screener surveys on Swagbucks and MyPoints.
Take paid surveys ($25–50 a month per site). Finally, I recommend signing up for any survey sites that pay you in cash like Swagbucks and MyPoints. Will you make enough to fund your IRA from Swagbucks and MyPoints alone? Almost certainly not. But they are great for fill-in when Mechanical Turk and Prolific don’t have any tasks you want to do, especially on weekends and holidays. You can expect to make around 25–50 a month from each Swagbucks and MyPoints, and that may be just what you need to get over the line with your IRA. There are a ton of ways to earn money on Swagbucks and MyPoints, but taking surveys is what will give you the biggest bang for your buck!
As you can see, with enough time, there are many combinations of couch potato tasks that you can use to fund an IRA. And it’s never too late to get started on retirement… something is better than nothing. If you haven’t started an IRA yet or are having trouble funding yours, I hope this post gave you a few ideas.
