Make Extra Money

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Boost Your Bottom Line

While learning to earn more can go hand in hand with getting out of debt, it works only if you use the extra money you earn to improve your financial situation, rather than just to spend more. As you’re getting out of debt, don’t count on a big raise to take care of all your money problems. Ultimately, the hard work you do to learn to live on what you earn now will pay off in more ways than one. More money just means more money problems, if you don’t know how to handle it.

Putting More Money in Your Pockets

There are lots of ways to increase your income. You can improve your salary at your current job, or in your current field. You can take on another job. If you have a family, you can put a non-working spouse or child to work. You can increase the amount of money you take home from your current job by using smart tax strategies, or you can invest your money to make more money.

Your Current Job: What’s holding you back from bringing home a bigger paycheck? Your education level? Your company’s size or structure? The field you’re in? Or could it be because you have trouble asking for what you deserve? Your job is to find out what the problem is and try to see what you can do about it.

Training and education usually offer some of the best payoffs. The numbers show that the more education you have, the more money you’re likely to make and the less likely you are to be unemployed. Lots of companies offer educational opportunities and will pay for you to improve your on-the-job skills. Consider local community college courses if your firm won’t pay for additional training. You can often find inexpensive, practical courses aimed at business professionals. In addition to improving your worth to your company, you can also boost your self-esteem by “mastering a new area or skill!

Moonlighting: Don’t berate yourself for not working two or three jobs to make ends meet. If you already moonlight, don’t feel guilty because you hate it or are burnt out and want to quit. Moonlighting is often counterproductive, because you feel so bad or tired after working two jobs that you end up spending all the money you make on things to make you feel better.

There is one case where moonlighting can make a lot of sense: if you use it as an opportunity to pursue something you really enjoy doing (or think you might enjoy doing). If you love to paint and you moonlight teaching art classes, you will be doing something you like, and it can be emotionally and psychologically, as well as financially, rewarding.

A few months of flipping hamburgers after work, on the other hand, will probably leave you exhausted and frustrated. Worse yet, you may be so resentful at having to work hard with little to show for it, that you’ll probably start overspending again to make yourself feel better.

If you decide to take on a second job, don’t look at it as a punishment for not having enough money. Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do. But if at all possible, try to choose something that will let you learn a new skill, profit from a hobby, or explore a potential new career. If you’ve always dreamed of owning a restaurant, for example, you could moonlight as a waiter. Don’t just wait on tables, though. Treat it as a research project and ask a lot of questions. You may even find you hate that business—but isn’t it better to find out, rather than torturing yourself with “if only” questions?


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