These 4 Flexible Side Hustles Could Pay for Your Holiday Shopping

The holidays are rapidly approaching. And if you don't have the money you need in savings to cover all of your anticipated expenses, you may be starting to panic.

The average consumer is expecting to spend $875 on the holidays this year, says the National Retail Federation. That sum accounts for expenses like gifts, food, and decorations. If you're planning to travel during the holidays, your tab might end up even higher.

But don't stress. Even if you don't have a pile of money in your savings account, if you're willing to pick up a side hustle, you may find that you're able to spend on the purchases you want to make without running the risk of debt.

Of course, fitting a side hustle into your schedule isn't easy -- not in general, and not during a period of the year when you may have more plans than usual (think holiday parties and the like). That's why you may want to focus on side hustles that aren't so invasive as far as your schedule is concerned. Here are a few gigs you may find to be very flexible.

1. Content writing

Most content writing assignments come with a deadline. But if you're good at managing your time, you may find a content writing gig to be pretty easy to manage.

Let's say you sign up for a gig that wants three blog posts a week that take 90 minutes each to write. That means you'll need to find 4.5 hours during the week to meet your deadlines. But you can generally choose when you do that writing. This means that if your optimal window is 7 a.m., before you've started your day, so be it.

2. Driving for a ride-hailing company

The beauty of driving for a ride-hailing service like Uber or Lyft is that you don't have to commit to preset hours. You can simply log into the app when you're available and shuttle people around.

Of course, the more hours you work, the more money you stand to make. And you may be more likely to find passengers if you mark yourself as available during the evening hours, especially on weekends. But technically, you can work the hours you want.

3. Delivering groceries

If you don't like the idea of shuttling people around in your car, you may not mind loading your vehicle with groceries and dropping them at people's doors. Services like Uber Eats and Instacart allow you to sign up and accept grocery deliveries as you're able to fulfill them. And if your customers tip nicely, you could end up with a nice pile of cash in your checking account for your holiday purchases.

You could also choose to deliver groceries during off-peak times so you have fewer crowds at the store. That could, for example, mean doing more grocery runs during the workday if your schedule allows for it rather than during the evening, when supermarkets tend to be busier.

4. House-sitting

House-sitting isn't 100% flexible because you need to commit to watching over someone's property during a certain period. But the actual work you're doing is usually flexible.

Often, house-sitting simply means bringing in mail and packages, doing very light cleaning (like dusting surfaces), and perhaps caring for a pet. And usually, if you're being booked as a house-sitter and not a pet-sitter, the pet care aspect is low-key -- think of tasks like feeding fish, as opposed to having to walk a giant dog five times a day. You can find house-sitting gigs through sites like MindMyHouse and HouseCarers.

Paying for the costs of the holidays can seem overwhelming. But if you're able to bring in extra cash with a side gig, that might take a lot of that stress off of your plate. And it definitely pays to focus on side hustles that won't extremely upend your routine.