Car rentals are expensive, y'all! Even if you search for deals on Priceline or Hotwire, you will still end up paying through the nose. Enter: Turo.

Turo is basically Airbnb or Homeaway, but for cars. When we first read about it, we were shocked that a) we had never heard of it before, and b) why wasn't it HUGE already?! It is a geniusly simple idea: let reliable, verified people rent their car out whenever they don't need it. We, as teachers, don't NEED two cars during the summer. (Hallelujah...), so we decided to rent out one of our cars for the whole time! It's super simple to get started, so we'll just lay out the steps:

Sign up! Whether you sign up as a renter or as a provider, use this link to get a free $25 credit to your driver account! https://turo.com/c/nathanj12
Send in all the required documents (License, insurance, registration, etc...). Part of the beauty of Turo is that it is super secure. That means you need to prove that you are a real person with a real car!
Snag a couple photos of your car. The nicer the better, but after you get started, Turo will offer to provide you with a professional car photographer for FREE.
Set your availability. You can set as much or as little as you want. We suggest being as open as possible when you start so that you can get your first few rides in asap.
Set your pricing. They have two options: Automatic, and manual. We have had MUCH better luck with manual pricing. When we set it to automatic, it pushed our price super high and we stopped getting bookings. Once we figured this out, we manually set it back low again and within a week our whole month was booked. We're happy getting a few less dollars per ride if it means we're 100% booked, so we recommend manual pricing. Also when first starting you'll want to start even lower then normal since you won't have any trips or ratings on your car yet.
Select your Turo insurance. They offer 3 options as of writing this. Each one will cost a certain percent of your trips total earnings. We chose the middle one that lets us keep 75% of earnings while still covering all damages in full. We don't recommend the bottom one unless your insurance provider has a special clause allowing coverage for commercial rental (which is highly unlikely).
Click through all the other small settings to get an idea of what all is included in your rental ( Airport pickup? Total Mile allowance? Pets?)
Rent out your car! You can choose to offer airport pick up, or only have people come to you. We have done both, depending on how busy we are.

And viola, Your all set and ready to get renting!

Remember to keep your car clean and in good condition for your renters! Not only do they review you, but you also review them!

If you're anything like us, you want to see actual numbers before you decide to give some random stranger the keys to your car and all your information. Also, this is for our 2014 Nissan Versa. Here's our numbers:

This is our July Turo calendar. We priced pretty low because we wanted every possible day booked (We are still trying to figure out our pricing strategy, but this gives you an idea). As stated above, we were set up for automatic pricing which had us at $42 per day and we went almost a month without a booking. When I realized what happened, I switched it to manual and dropped it down to ~$30 per day and within a week we had basically our entire July schedule filled. Now let's do a bit of math:

$29 per day multiplied by 27 days (the number of days we are booked this month) = $783
$783 x .75 (the cost of our Turo insurance) = 587
Now eventually we will have to pay taxes on this... plus some of these are air-port pickups, which we charge an extra $30 for. So lets say after adding airports and negating taxes we're left with roughly $500...

YEP. WE JUST EARNED $500 BY NOT USING OUR CAR.

We're super blessed that I (Nate) got a job this coming year working at the same school as my better half. because of this, we will just carpool to work and continue renting out our one car (Which by the way is paying the car payment for BOTH cars and then giving us gas money for the month). We HIGHLY recommend trying this out if you have an extra car that you don't always need. Or ask yourself: Is the minor inconvenience of carpooling for a bit worth earning some extra cash? In the future we may even look into purchasing a big van or something for the families visiting Disney to rent...the opportunities are endless! For now we are happy and blessed, and we hope this helps someone else get a bit more financially free! Again, if you do sign up, use this link as it will get you a $25 bonus credit on your driver account: https://turo.com/c/nathanj12

If you want to hear more about this, or you have any questions, leave a comment below!