Is it really possible to make an extra thousand dollars in today’s economy? I personally believe it is easier today than it ever has been. The problem is most people aren’t willing to do what it takes to get the money.
I can remember in the early 2000’s when I was in my early twenties. I bought my first house. At this time, I wasn’t financially literate. In addition to the house payment, I also had a car payment, student loan payment, normal expenses, and whatever other dumb stuff I would blow my money on.
I was making $12 dollars an hour. Because I worked second shift, I made an extra .50 cents and hour called shift differential. Which brought me to $12.50 an hour.
At the time, I was working as a maintenance technician for a distribution center. The facility I worked in was a 24 hour operation Sunday night through Friday night. Since our job was to keep the facility running, we spent most of our time responding to calls to fix things during production times. Which didn’t leave us much time to do all of the preventative maintenance things we also had to do, as well as other facility projects.
Because of this we pretty much had an open check book from the company to work every Saturday morning and earn overtime. What I liked about Saturday work is I earned time and a half on my hourly rate. So instead of making $12.50 and hour, I made $18.75 an hour.
Most Saturdays we would work about 5-6 hours. A solid average would be 5 hours. So 5 X $18.75 = $93.75 extra a week on my paycheck. If I did that every weekend. a month. It would be almost an extra $400 a month.
I know to the younger folks an extra $400 dollars doesn’t seem like much does it? In most cases I doubt $12.50 seems that much. But that was the reality then. But if you take the extra $400 a month x 12 months = $4,800. That’s real dollars.
And because I worked second shift and also owned a pick up truck, I also would take on different jobs during the morning for people hauling things or transporting things with my truck.
Anyway, I share all of this to tell you that an extra thousand dollars today is way easier to make and it will have profound impact on your ability to pay off debt, or help you invest if that is what you are looking to do, or just creating cushion between how much money you have coming in each month versus what you are spending.
An extra thousand dollars a month turns into $12,000 a year, an extra thousand dollars every two weeks turns into $24,000 dollars a year. These are real dollars, and I hate to break it to you but you live in a country where this is possible, no where else is this so readily available to almost anyone willing to do it. You have to be willing to sacrifice your leisure time to do it.
Remember this. Nobody gets ahead in life by showing up to work each day doing what you have to do. Meaning what you are already being paid to do. You get ahead by doing the things no one else is willing to do. The extra jobs, the shitty jobs, the weekend jobs. This is either at your current place of employment or in some kind of other business outside of your full time job.
I did a quick search of ways to make an extra thousand dollars on the internet, and it gave me several things that I will share here. But I want to start my list off by sharing the things that anyone can do immediately.
Ask your neighbor if they have anything you can do around their house for them. It could be cut grass, paint, clean the garage, power wash the house, etc. I don’t know. Outside of painting none of these things require much skill other than hard work.
It’s grass cutting season. Buy a lawnmower and ask people if you can cut their grass for free. After you have cut their grass, tell them that they can hire you for a fee of X each week. As a property owner,I am paying someone $40 per yard. It doesn’t take long to get to $1000 if you get aggressive.
Use your back. Yep. If you are capable. Help people move stuff. People are always moving things.
Ask someone you know who owns a business if they have anything they need help with in their company.
Here is quick list. Keep in mind, I want you to do something that fits your personality and hopefully your skill set.
Make cold calls for real estate agents or any other kind of sales people.
Deliver pizza.
Drive for a rideshare app
Deliver foods for one of the delivery apps, such as uber eats.
Secret Shopping
Write Blogs
Clean windows
Do landscaping.
Find a PT job almost anywhere nowadays.
Deliver groceries.
Babysit
Dogwalking
Dog sitting
Clean houses
Work overtime at your job
Take on an extra project that you get paid for on your job.
Look there a million other ways to earn an extra thousand dollars a month. And most likely you already know what those things are. If not, get online and find them.
That’s not the important part of this equation though. The important part of the equation is you forcing yourself to change your own conditions. Meaning you find the desire to want to make the extra thousand dollars a month. You determining that this is necessary to get wherever you want to go in your life. You sucking it up and doing it.
Nobody, I mean nobody, got ahead in life and in their career doing the bare minimum. Period. If you believe this, you probably haven’t read this far.
So for the ones who I have. What are you going to do to change your financial conditions? What are you going to do instead of waiting until you’re old to finally invest, you instead are going to start now? It’s up to you. Nobody is coming to save you.
To your success and your future.
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