Your income is crucial. First of all, in a tough economy, you must do whatever is necessary in order to keep your income. This typically means keeping your job. If you lose your main income source, everything stops and you shift into survival mode. We have bigger goals here than survival, so keep your income.
Now, with our main income secure, we want to boost our overall income and also diversify it. Diversification will serve two purposes: adding additional income and giving us another source of income which provides security in the case of potentially losing the main income source.
Create A Second Income Stream
During your off-time, we will want to start allocating our energy and time towards productive means. Television is not a productive mean. Start by examining what skills you possess that you could potentially start to earn some extra dollars on the side. Some ideas to help you get started are:
- Lawn or care
- Handy work or home repair
- Auto detailing
- Web design
- Graphic design
- Home video editing and compilation
- Cake baking
- Freelance writing
- Blogging
If you struggle to find something that you can do to earn some extra money, you might need to teach yourself a new skill. With the unlimited resource of the internet, this is very easy. Just make sure it’s something that people need and are typically willing to pay someone to do.
Growing Another Income Stream
Building another income stream is very similar to building a business. It takes time to develop contacts, customers, a reputation. You may need to demonstrate your skills for a reduced rate in order to build references. Hopefully, word of mouth will eventually take over and allow you to get a fairly steady inflow of projects.
If you’re going the blogging route, the situation is similar. It takes time. It takes time for people to find your site, to trust you, to like you.
The key in all of this is to be dedicated and to be persistent. It is actually very easy to create a second income stream, but most don’t do it because it requires a serious dedication and it requires more time than people are usually willing to give. I guarantee that if you set your mind to it and keep going, you will eventually beging bringing in extra income.
Income Diversification & Replacement
The goal here is to diversify your income which is an extra layer of security should hard times occur. Long term, the goal is to move more towards income replacement. If you’re building something that can be turned into more of a passive income stream down the road, even better.
A passive income stream or an independent income stream from an employer is a key component of financial freedom. Imagine bringing in income from a side business or a website at the same time you’re bringing in income from investments (more on that later). This is financial freedom.
Jump To Another Step In This Guide:
- Step 1 – Assess Your Situation & Set Some Goals
- Step 2 – Get Out Of Debt
- Step 3 – Smart Money Management
- Step 4 – Boost and Diversify Your Income
- Step 5 – Reduce Housing Expenses
- Step 6 – Make Your Money Work For You
- Step 7 – Protect Against Inflation
- Step 8 – Invest In Cash Flowing Assets
- Step 9 – Pursue Complete Independence
- Step 10 – Make Incremental Improvements
