Have you heard about the law of attraction? Keep it in mind as you read the 10 following tips. All of these will work if you have a strong desire to achieve. To put it even bluntly, none of these will work if growing wealth is not something you strongly aspire to. It comes without saying that no reward is collected without the time and hard work put into it. Or rather, intelligent work.
1. Look for a job that pays more
Let’s start with the obvious. Switch job, seek a more financially rewarding opportunity. At least if income is a priority.
We argue that the hardest part of this is to defeat your fears. For one, you have the fear of the unknown, for the other, you might fear losing your stability. In general, it puts you out of your comfort zone. People don’t like that. But guess what is the most rewarding?
One way to drastically reduce risk–as well as reduce the stress burden of looking for a new job–is to search before you leave your actual job. You can even go as far as interviewing for the new position before you leave. We strongly advise this sort of reasonable proactivity.
2. Renegotiate your salary regularly
We’re still in the obvious, but you know we have to. Option number two, seek to increase your income by negotiating your salary on a regular basis. Also worth considering asking for a promotion altogether, although these tend to be rarer. All in all, promotions are not required for a raise.
Raises can be as frequent as once a year, they don’t have to necessarily double your salary. They can only be incremental. It can be interesting to have a frequent, but smaller raise for several reasons. From an employer’s standpoint, it would incentivise seniority within the company. This would probably be done more fairly than through discontinued financial rewards. From an employee’s standpoint, it would allow you to grow your wealth on a continuous and effective basis. Most importantly, this allows you to be protected from inflation.
Businesses most often set yearly goals when it comes to increasing revenue and profits. This is why you should have no shame as you intend to grow together with the company you work at. It only seems fair that your fair share grows as well. Remember that this is the beauty of capitalism. Arguably, it is fairer to promote such a culture of negotiating salaries than to force mandatory labour compensations down the throat of business owners. One should not be surprised that this hurts the labour market, both supply and demand.
There is no shame to have to value yourself and to let it be known. Especially if you are capable of doing so in all respect and honesty for your coworkers and employers. Companies have cultures and they always highly influence how “business” is conducted internally. In sum, renegotiate on a regular basis in a way that would benefit everyone. Happiness at work is key for value creation, and to private life. No matter what they say.
Going back to tip #1-look for a job that pays more, having another employment offer can easily help you renegotiate your salary to the upside. If you prefer to stay, this is an effective strategy. It’s not blackmailing if you are valued higher on the market.
3. Generate passive income with cash-flow positive assets
Here we go. Let’s talk about growing revenue streams. Increasing your income through your main professional position is one thing. However, if you aim to become wealthy, it will not be enough. That’s a guarantee. In that case, it is a requirement to grow your streams of income. One way to do that is through investing.
Investing—which is not to be confused with trading-is something done on an (almost) entirely passive basis. That means that you can have the leisure of earning the yields while sitting on your couch. Okay, do not expect the reality to be 100% rosy from the get-go but it’s important to realise that investing is your greatest chance to a good life down the road. It’s a prerequisite, to be frank.
So how can you invest? Well, first of all, you should be quick to realise that you will need to input some of “your hard-earned money” into investments in order to get something in return. It might be dumb, but that is where most people fail to get on with it. They understand that a part of the risk is involved, and feel too insecure to expose part of their income to potentially rewarding investments.
In all fairness, although there are risks involved—and you should be careful to do your own research and invest accordingly—it seems very risky to trust a single source of income from a job you could potentially lose overnight. This is one of the reasons why it is very important to have an emergency fund.
So what type of investments are we talking about? Although real estate is the most renowned of them all (probably in the form of flipping homes or rental real estate), your vision should not stop there. A variety of sorts of investments are worth looking at. For instance, stocks, index funds, dividend stocks, cryptocurrencies, peer-to-peer lending, precious metals and other commodities can yield the desired results. We advise you to check out our Investment Canvas in our free eBook library for more exhaustive information.
4. Compound by reinvesting
Do you know what is the best thing to do when you have invested? That’s right, reinvesting your profits. Why? Simply because you will earn increasingly more through the phenomenon of compounding interests. In the long-term, compounding interest turns a steady growth curve into a tasty exponential growth curve.
Let’s be honest, sometimes you will not be able to reinvest your proceeds. Or you might not want to in order to use said money for another purpose. You might also face discouraging capital gain taxes. However, if you can always abide by reinvesting at least part of your proceeds, it will highly increase the likelihood for you to become wealthy.
Do not underestimate the power of compounding. It’s also worth noting that compounding works with everything, not only in monetary terms. If you can “throw in” your skills, experience, creativity, hard work and connections, all of this makes for a winning cocktail. We will never stress it enough. But that is the key.
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5. Start a side hustle
Another way of increasing your revenue streams is to start a side hustle. In all likelihood, this will require more time and efforts than investing. However, it is not impossible to automate it or delegate it entirely in order to minimise your involvement. Even if it was not possible, a side hustle is precisely what it is, it is not a second full-time position. It does not have to take the whole weekend away from you neither. You might also potentially turn it into a full-scale business of your own.
What forms can a side hustle take? Here you can be creative. We’ll just list a few examples that are highly conditioned by having an internet connection. This list is absolutely not exhaustive, its only purpose is to inspire you. Please note that we are not sponsored by any of the businesses cited below. The list of businesses is not exhaustive.
- Open an online e-commerce store on Shopify or WooCommerce
- Run affiliate marketing programs
- Freelance, sell your services on Fiverr or Upwork
- Sell leads to business through an automated website
- Sell online courses on Udemy or SkillShare
- Write articles or newsletter on Medium or Substack
- Grow and monetise a YouTube channel
- Sell merchandise products on websites such as RedBubble
- Grow and monetise an Instagram page
- …
6. Refuse fringe benefits
If you enjoy fringe benefits linked to your employment contract, you might want to reconsider them. This is not to say that they are not interesting. A company car, insurance or company savings plan for instance can be useful for a variety of reasons. After all, it can reduce your personal expenses by some margin. However, in some cases, you might prefer a cash alternative simply because you make different choices. If you do prefer the cash alternative, talk to your HR department to understand the possibility of trading fringe benefits for more cash income.
7. Monetise your passion(s)
This tip is heavily linked to tip #5-start a side hustle. One way of creating a side hustle is to monetize your passion. This is something that most people completely overlook. We tend to believe that our work cannot be mixed with our passion or that we need to be lucky. It is often the case that our passions are hard to make a living with, but that should not be a reason to not be creative in monetising them.
For instance, becoming a professional footballer is hard, but one could think of becoming a weekend football trainer for kids. Touring the world as a DJ is not evident, but does that really imply that your music is bad and cannot be launched on Spotify or used for commercial purposes? How about photography? That is definitely a “crowded” space. But what if you tried growing a blog or selling your pictures on sites such as iStock?
You now perhaps understand that it is at least worth investigating into trying to generate money through what we enjoy most in life. I mean people earn money with blogs about beer nowadays. The Internet has changed the game. It doesn’t have to be so hard, to replace your 9-to-5 or to ask that you take a significant amount of risk. If you manage to move through the impostor syndrome, you might even manage to teach loads to others about your favourite topic! How cool is that? (See online courses in tip #5 for instance.) This one requires self-confidence. Something you should always seek in life anyway.
8. Provide spontaneous services to people in need
Another tip that is heavily linked to tip #5-start a side hustle. Have you ever been in situations in which you understand that you have value to provide to others in need? Chances are that you haven’t even thought of the possibility to monetise such an opportunity and to potentially do so repeatedly.
There is a variety of said services that we tend to offer for free to our friends or family. Think of helping them move for instance. However, in some situations, we can provide value that is perhaps more precious because it is less easily replaceable. For instance, you might have sketched a logo for your neighbour’s new business or sat down with your friend for hours while helping them plan their wedding.
Fair enough, you do not wish to make your friends pay. That makes entire sense. But have you thought about the next person down the line? The word spreads quickly, it should allow you to find more opportunities to help others. Why not count on that to make extra bucks? The beauty of this is that it can be perfectly spontaneous. It’s about seizing the opportunity when it happens.
9. Reduce your taxes
Want to earn more? It would be so easy to do so if we could just reduce taxes first. But can we really do so as an individual? To some extent, yes. It’s perhaps not so easy though, especially if you are against the idea of moving abroad. We look at some viable ideas in our article: 9 ideas to reduce your taxes.
DISCLAIMER: Keep in mind that taxation is not a universal matter and highly depends on where you live and work. For reliable information, consult a local tax advisor. It is also worth mentioning that you should always try to minimise taxation by complying with the law. Tax fraud can result in heavy fines and sentences. We strongly discourage it.
10. Reduce expenses
Cutting down expenses while you grow your income is simply increasing the purchasing power of your wallet. It’s fast-tracking your wealth creation possibilities. Cutting down expenses might just be the best sanitising solution for your finances as well. It’s not about suffering, it’s about weighing the efforts intelligently. Read our article with 8 ways to reduce your expenses.
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