Wife to government employee earns $5K in side hustles during shutdown

Natalie Folino is making ends meet for her family. 

The stay-at-home mom of three from Dayton, Ohio, is harnessing the power of social media and side hustles to get her family through the federal government shutdown. 

“Currently, my husband is an essential employee for the Department of Defense, which means that he is still going to work every day,” Folino told Fox News Digital in an interview. “He’s commuting 40 minutes every way, but we are just not receiving a paycheck, which is a little problematic for a family like mine, who is a single-income family.”

Folino was already growing her social media brand before the shutdown, but now her side hustles are taking on a whole new significance. Due to the shutdown, her family has been without her husband’s income for 29 days and counting.

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To help keep her family afloat this month, Folino has taken on numerous side hustles and is documenting them on social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, where she has amassed nearly 200,000 followers combined and more than 2 million likes on TikTok alone.

Her goal for October is to earn $5,000 — an ambitious target. (Spoiler alert: she did it!)

“I have to earn $160 every single day. No days off, we have just a couple of days to go,” Folino told Fox News Digital.

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Folino isn’t new to earning extra cash on the side. She began documenting her side hustles about two and a half years ago to help pay for her children’s increasingly expensive soccer activities. Over time, her experience juggling odd jobs has primed her with skills for financial emergencies like the one her family is facing this month.

“Overall, we are dipping into our savings,” Folino said. “I know that we are in a more blessed position than lots of people, so nothing for our family has actually changed other than the fact we’re kind of moving my earnings around a little bit.”

Folino has showcased a variety of side hustles, including laundry services, dog walking, social media monetization, coaching calls and even affiliate shopping links. In her videos, she notes charging $70 for two bags of laundry and $25 for dog walking.

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In her videos, Folino said her earnings have ranged from as high as $431 on some days to as little as $22 on others. She noted that she could have earned even more this month, but because she lives in a large Air Force community, some of her clients have also been affected by government furloughs and layoffs, further exacerbating the strain on the local economy.

While families with government employees can’t control the federal shutdown, Folino said people can control how they respond to challenges.

“There may be circumstances that are entirely out of your control. But there are a couple of things that I think that you can control,” she said.

Natalie Folino, a mother of three daughters ages 12, 10, and 9, completes a laundry service side gig at her home in Dayton, Ohio.  (Natalie Folino / Instagram)

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“I think that you could control your attitude and your outlook and I really think that you can control your work ethic. I am definitely a pull yourself up by your bootstraps-type mentality and I think that if you set a goal, and you’re willing to just really work and put yourself out there, there’s really no limit to it.”

In a video posted on Thursday, Folino shared an update with her followers on her efforts to earn $5,000 in the month of October, saying not only did she hit her goal, but she surpassed it by $224.

A visibly emotional Folino thanked her followers for their support and revealed that she will donate her earnings from the last two days of October to those in need in her community.

“Anything is possible,” she said.