Are you an employee? You are trading your time for money. We all need to start somewhere right?

You should not stay at that level and expect to become wealthy or financially independent. If you are working right now but  could barely have enough left after you pay all your bills, what would that be when you don’t have a job any longer? You are working today to provide for your current needs and your needs during your retirement. With that in mind, you need to find ways to generate more income for your financial security during retirement. Taking another job is one way but you have limited time to trade for money. The successful way is to be able to earn money even during your sleep.

Create multiple sources of incomes. You don’t quit your day job. It provides for your current needs and a capital for your other sources of income. I would discuss two ways of generating more income.

Go in the business for yourself: What do you like to do and enjoy? Ask yourself how could you turn your passions and hobbies into money making? Just ask yourself that question and write down almost daily what you enjoy doing. Your brain would start working on that project and give you ideas on how to turn them into businesses.  Then start with one business at a time. Some businesses might generate you more income than others. Some might die overtime. Once you start, the ideas would just flows to you. Also listen to your friends and coworkers. They would reveal you what you are good at. For instance, I like to cook and create my own recipes. When I bring lunch to work, my coworkers would tell me that I will be good at catering for families.  One day I gave a spice blend I made myself to my boss at the time and she said to me after using it that I could easily sell it online.  Do you need to be more convinced? I make my own corn tortilla chips and season it. I have to say they are more oily than the grocery store ones but at least I know what oil I fry mine in. My husband took it to work for lunch one day and shared it with his coworkers. They complimented it a lot a suggested that I sell it because they never ate any tortilla chips so well spiced. Bottom line we all have blind spots. Therefore, when you are out of ideas, just listen to people around you. They would tell you what you are good at. Write it down as well. If you are wandering  whether or not I have my own spice business or tortillas chips business or catering business already? The answer is no I don’t. But I write down what I like to do including cooking and what people around me says about me. I created three businesses beside my day job so far and I would like to work on them to make them profitable before I launch another venture.

Do no seek a loan for your new business or rent an office outside of your home.  Just start small relying on your own monthly saving after all your bills are paid. That way if the business is not successful, you won’t have a debt keeping you awake at night. My husband and I made that mistake seven years ago when I lost my jobs and someone contacted us to teach us how to make money through affiliate marketing. They advised my husband to pay them with a credit card as that was a good way of using credit cards. It is making money using other people’s money. They charged us $12,000 for the course and later another $900 to just advises us to apply for a new credit card at 0% and transfer the $12,000 on it while we are launching the business. The last charges of $ 900 upsetted me as we all know that credit card  companies send junks in the mail with 0% promotion. Even with 0% promotion, new cards give you a credit line of $1,000 with was far less than what the debt was. Half way through the course, to avoid having to charge more to our credit cards, and after realizing that affiliate marketing business don’t generate money the way it was portrait to us, I advised my husband to cut cord with them in order to limit our loss and work hard to pay the debt. My husband still has the debt on his card among other credit cards debts and we are paying them still today. He has less than $2,000 credit card debts left to pay. We did file bankruptcy. We  made a mistake and wanted to clean it up and learn from it.

It is also important to point out you do not go in a business that would require you to learn new skills. You can trade your already acquired skills for money. For instance, one of my businesses is a consulting business that offers tax preparation services. I have worked for a tax company during tax season in the past and I love to prepare tax returns. After leaving the company, I thought I could prepare tax returns for money.

Forget about 8 hours a day of work. After your full time job, work four more hours on your side business. Do not outsource tasks at the beginning. It would require more capital. Do it all yourself. Once the business is successful, hire or outsource some of the duties and focus your time on what makes you money. For example, you don’t make money by doing clerical tasks in your business. You can hire somebody for it if you would be able to pay them less than what your time is worth or outsource that. Use your time wisely. Stop chatting in the break room at work and spend that time brainstorming for your business. While cooking dinner, work on your business. After kids are in bed spend some time on it. In bed think about it. Before you know it you would  have spent about four hours a day at it. For instance, I started writing this article at one point during the day, I continued  a little while fixing dinner. At 1 am I woke up to get an order of my homemade products ready for shipping and finished my article little before 4 am. During that same time frame, I accomplished a clerical task by taking inventory after I got the order ready since we are getting close the end of the year and brainstormed on few more line of products to add to my online store.

Set multiple sources of income and you would be multiplying you time to make money.

Invest in stocks. Make sure you are contributing to your employer 401K plan up to the amount they match. Then, open your own brokerage account and invest in Roth IRA. Don’t invest in Roth IRA at your local bank. Bank interest is less than 1%. Don’t leave a lot of money in your saving account. Invest it in your brokerage account until you needed and sell some stocks that increase in value to cash your money. Do not withdraw from your Roth IRA as you are saving it for retirement spending.

I particularly like Roth IRA over traditional IRA for that reason that you contribute with after tax money and when you retire all your money in the Roth IRA including your contribution and earnings are yours. You don’t pay tax on it. You get to withdraw from it when you want not when IRS tells you like with your IRA. Also, you don’t include your withdrawal from your Roth IRA on your tax return to calculate your taxable income. Only your 401K and social security would be  which decrease your taxable income thus your tax during retirement.

There are many brokerage firms on the market. I like T Rowe Price and Charles Schwab. I would recommend them. I have accounts with them and at TD Ameritrade. Charles Schwab and TD Ameritrade would allow you to invest in mutual funds, ETFs(Exchange Traded Funds), and individual stocks. T Rowe Price is more for mutual funds. Buying individual stocks at T Rowe Price would  cost you a lot compared to other two listed above. I would talk about how to invest on in another article. Invest in companies by buying their stocks and you would be trading your money for money.

To conclude, don’t be sad we are not making enough today. Live below your means and save some of your income to start your own venture and trade stocks.

If I forget a point, please feel free to ask your questions in the comment section and I would do my best to answer them or anyone can contribute to the best of their acknowledge. Thank you for subscribing.