“You’ve been putting in your 40 hours per week at the job for the past couple of years. The work is stable, and pay is enough to cover all your bills – Where do you go from here”
Do you remember the first time you’re offered a position, how excited you were for the opportunity? You must have thought the income it will bring in; will solve all your problems and you’ll not have to worry about money anymore. I’m talking about the entry level and the people who are in the middle of their career. Landing the first job or getting an offer in a new firm with better pay is always exciting. It solves most of the problems and improves one’s quality of life. But did y’all know it is momentary. I was part of a research group at my previous workplace where they tried to determine the average number of years after which an employee loses interest at his work. All the employees were provided with set of questionnaires. The result was based on the responses provided by employees. The magic number is 5 years. For some, it might come sooner while others later but the average number of years after which a person starts losing interest at his/her workplace is 5 year. There are a lot of factors that goes into it but in general, once you have worked at a place for over 5 years, you’ll start thinking about the limitations that the current job has. Be it management, work schedule, commute, compensation, or you simply lost interest. Another big reason for the lost interest is because you’ve been seeing the same paycheck every day- most of which is wiped out because of hefty taxes and it is just not growing as much. If this is what you’re feeling right now, then you’re not alone. And if you would want to learn about making your money grow, please continue reading.
No, I’m not going to start with spend less and save more strategy because it simply does not work. There is only so much you can save after spending the money on bill and bill which are unavoidable. The strategies I am going to share you are not rocket science, and you all are probably aware about most of these. The biggest and the only thing that is lacking is taking action on these strategies. It is not easy to start on these ideas, but that also does not mean they do not work. Like the saying “you’ve to really believe you’ll reach financial freedom” to actually achieve it. Let’s go over my top three strategies that I believe will help you grow money.
1. Ask for a raise
Yes, I took it from the book “Financial Freedom: A proven path to all the money you’ll ever need” by author Grant Sabatier. The first place to look for additional income is at the job that you have already been working for so long. The benefit to this is you already know how to perform the job and you do not necessarily learn anything new. Based on how much you worth, you should re-evaluate yourself and ask for a raise. If you never ask, you will never get one. Plus, it does not hurt to ask. The worst they will say is no. A lot of people undervalue themselves and their service. You should get over the fear of asking question. This is the simplest way of boasting your earning potential.
2. Learn new skill set to develop multiple streams of income
An average person should have at least 5 sources of income in order to reach financial freedom. An average person is the one who does not have millions of dollars. While working towards achieving financial freedom, you’ll setup multiple streams of income that require minimum to no input from you. These income streams will work together to add money to your account every day. In order to create these passive sources of income, you either need to develop new skill sets. If you are able to develop/learn new skill sets within the area of your interest, you’ll able to leverage these skills to create multiple sources of income. I explained where you can find 10 free resources to learn new skills in the article “10 Free Resources to Kickstart your Career that you don’t want to miss out on”
3. Investing earned money
Investing on tax deferred accounts like IRA and 401(k) are good options if you’re building wealth for future and do not plan to touch these money any time soon. This is the reason why I personally do not like investing most of my money into retirement accounts. However, I’m not completely against it and everyone should have some money saved into these accounts for future security. For the beginners who are completely new to investing, the best investing product is mutual funds and index funds. You do not have to think about which stocks you would want to bet your money on, and you do not have to listen to the news because we don’t have time for this. You would want to select few good mutual funds that has great track record and adding fraction of your income every month to purchase these funds. You are looking for that annual compounding growth which is the basis of building wealth.
