When you’re starting out on the road to financial freedom, your ability to earn more money can make a significant impact on your success.
We often get stuck in a rut thinking that our income is fixed and all we can do about it is maximise the savings from what we’re currently earning.
There are so many ways to increase your income, but it’s very easy to lack confidence and feel that you’re going to be financially stuck forever.
Here are 5 quick ways that you could think about increasing your income and fast-tracking your path to financial freedom.
1. Change jobs
While the obvious move is to find a role that pays you more, this isn’t always the necessary step.
I took more than a 50 per cent pay cut two years into my full-time working career when I changed companies and career paths. A year later I was earning almost double what I had been before that.
Now, this may have been seen as somewhat lucky, but I took an opportunity that looked good and it paid off. The best way to do this, especially early in your career, is look at those side-step opportunities.
Start with your current role and organisation. If this works, fantastic, but if you need to move roles, don’t hesitate. Loyalty is a two-way street.
2. Request a pay rise
As with so many things in life, if you don’t ask, you don’t get.
I’m often speaking with my clients about what they’re currently being paid and I see many people that feel like they should be paid more. As a result, I’ve accumulated plenty of tips for requesting a pay rise.
For example, always know what your job is worth in the market. Keep an eye on job sites for roles that are very similar that may be paying significantly more than yours, so you can use these in negotiation.
Focus on your strengths and what you bring to the role rather than why you need the money. Saying that you need to earn more money is unlikely to entice the extra cash from your boss. Never ever make it about financial difficulty or an issue that you’re facing. Help them in their decision by shining light on all the positives and the value that you will continue to add the business.
If you only have an annual performance review, don’t wait for that to come around. Plant the seed now and go hard. My suggestion is to aim for a 20 per cent raise, or base it on the best examples you’ve found in the market. Have a number in mind and if it falls short, skip back to the point above and change jobs.
3. Have a side hustle
Your side hustle could be a huge number of things and they’re very different for everyone.
This could be a creative outlet selling on Etsy, a blog or an industry related site like my mate who runs ETF Watch. It could be all sorts of things that make you part of the gig economy that is booming at the moment.
Any way to add some extra money to your weekly pay can make a huge difference. You never know, it might become your full-time gig one day!
Insufficient Funds by James Millard.
4. Get an extra job
If you’re not the self-employed or entrepreneurial type, the good news is you don’t have to start a side hustle. You could simply go and get an extra job.
This way, you’re trading your time for money, so you’ve got to be aware that where a side-hustle business has the potential to produce revenue far beyond your hourly rate, a job will not do this.
However, a business will take blood, sweat and tears and it may not ever get off the ground, so an extra job is one very low-risk way to earn more money. You could be stacking shelves at the local supermarket, delivering pizzas, or babysitting.
Any of these ideas, where you trade your time for money, are perfect if you’ve got spare time outside of your normal job to save some extra cash and boost your earnings.
5. Use your assets
This seems fairly obvious, but we often don’t realise the value of what we already have. And turning some of that into cash is so much easier with the technology we now have available.
One way to boost your earnings is renting your place on Airbnb. If you’re going away for a while, or even just for a long weekend, it’s super easy to use and can pay for part of your trip. Rent a spare room out permanently.
If you’ve got a spare car or your car isn’t used every day of the week, you could rent it out. Let’s say you’ve got a car that you only use on weekends and you commute to work by public transport, then every day of the week your car could be sitting on an app or a website like Car Next Door, where people will pay you to rent your car.
If you do drive to work, then why not rent your car park to someone in the building or close by? There are apps for this too now, it’s all made so easy for you to use these assets to earn more money.
Make the most of the extra income
So these are our five quick ways for you to earn more money.
One really important lesson from this is: when your earnings increase, make sure that you are still making the most of that income and you don’t suffer from lifestyle creep, or lifestyle inflation.
Sure, definitely reward yourself for the extra effort and for your new-found cash, but also make sure that you have a robust savings plan in place to take care of the extra income. There’s no point earning more if you’re just going to waste it.
You might be better off keeping the extra time available for other important areas of your life like family or surfing.
And the biggest lesson from all of this: it’s far harder to reverse it once you become used to a certain level of lifestyle. Use the extra cash for spending on items that are really important to you, but make sure that you’re saving in proportion with that, and then you win!
