30 Steps to Great Finances: Steps 7 through 9

Welcome to the third post in the series 30 Steps to Great Finances series!

If you missed the first two posts, you can find them here: 30 Steps to Great Finances: Steps 1 through 3 and 30 Steps to Great Finances: Steps 4 through 6.

Today we'll detail steps seven through nine that will take anyone from financial zero to financial hero.

Let's get started.

Step 7:  Grow Your Career – Other Opportunities

In addition to the career-related tips we've already suggested (over-delivering, networking, being likeable), there are several other ways to advance your career (and thus increase your income.) Here are three of the best ones IMO:

• Get educated. Take classes to learn more about your field or to become a better manager (or potential manager).  Showing the initiative to learn more says a lot to your supervisors about your dedication to the job.
• Get certified in a skill important to your field.  This may set you up to be a specialist in your department, which makes you more valuable.
• Apply for awards. Don’t sit around waiting for recognition, awards and praise to come to you—look for the opportunities yourself. You may be surprised how few people do this, and if you are the best of those who applied, you get recognition by winning the award. Awards look great on a resume and also reinforce to your current employer what a great asset you are.

The more you can gain recognition and experience in your field, the faster your career can grow, and, often the more money you can make.

Step 8:  Develop a Side Business Using the Skills You Already Have

Once you take steps to make the most of your day job, it is time to focus on additional income streams. And one of the easiest ways to do this is to use the skills you've developed over your career and freelance at night and on weekends. A few examples of how you might be able to do this:

• If you are a teacher, you can tutor students on the side. As a homeschool parent, I hire teachers all the time to teach my kids subjects my wife and I can't (Spanish, chemistry, etc.)
• If you are a computer engineer, you might offer consulting. Know anyone who needs their computer fixed? Me too.
• If you are a business executive, you could advise small businesses on how to grow their sales, market their services, save money in operations, etc.

Any way, you get the idea. Take what you already do/know and turn it into an extra money-maker.

And who knows? You might find that you enjoy your side gig so much that you can eventually quit your day job and run your side gig full-time.

Step 9: Turn Your Hobby into an Income

What do you do for fun?  What do you enjoy?  Make a list of your hobbies.  Then think how you can turn your hobbies into money making opportunities.  Some ideas:

• My son and I both love soccer, and we have made decent money refereeing soccer games. 
• I know a painter who is an animal lover, so she draws portraits of people’s pets and makes a tidy profit. 
• I used to do quite well as a freelance writer.

Think about it: many hobbies could also be money making ventures. 

Love to garden? Grow organic produce and sell it to stores or at farmers' markets. Play the piano?  Why not give lessons to those wanting to learn? Like to bike? How about a side business repairing and maintaining bikes for others?

There are almost as many money-making ideas as there are hobbies if you just open up your mind a bit and consider the possibilities.

Stay tuned for the next steps coming up soon.  If you have been following along in this series so far, what success have you had following the steps I’ve given?  Share them in the comments.  I’d love to hear them!

Update: Click here to read steps 10 to 12.

Comments

[MITM @ Nakedbudgeting]

What I like about this post is that it is about income. I've seen so many websites or books just talk about saving money and being frugal, but we have to also work on income.

When it comes to career tips, I would also add "Raising your hand and volunteering for opportunities." It's kind of in-line with over-delivering but in my humble opinion, I consider it to be one the best habits I ever started.
I started off as a staff accountant and now, 7 years later, I'm a regional CFO of a fortune 100 company. And part of it was that I just kept raising my hand when opportunities came up. Even if they weren't asking for volunteers, I asked if I could be included on projects outside of my area.

[Old Limey]

I couldn't agree more about "Raising your hand and volunteering for opportunities". One such opportunity for me was when a co-worker sought out my advice because he was getting nowhere on his project. I could see immediately that his approach was all wrong and would never work, partly because he was a Math major working on loan to our engineering department and lacked the appropriate experience and background. I asked our manager if I could have a go at it with a totally different approach. He gave me the "OK" and within 2 or 3 months I had the software finished and in use. It turned out to be such a labor saving software program that I received a Cost Saving award, a promotion, and a raise, and it kick started my career and lead on to greater challenges and opportunities. Finally by the time I retired I was directing and coordinating large software projects that involved engineers from several different disciplines.

[JZ]

Agree with MITM - just like a business, you can only cut out so much...at some point top-line growth is needed to advance further

[Rob of Car Insurance Naperville]

I totally agree about getting educated. You can take online short courses, etc. You can even be a sales agent including a car insurance agent in your community.