Life Changing Money Advice — You Could be Working Less and Making More!

 

 

Your traditional nine to five job is keeping you poor.

At the start of 2020, 64% of the U.S. population was living paycheck to paycheck. Among those who were earning six figures in their job, an astounding 48% of those say that they are also living paycheck to paycheck.

According to a recent report, Americans now say that they need to be making roughly $122,000 a year in order to ensure financial security. However, for those of you who also live in California, the numbers are much higher — a yearly salary of $120,000 is considered low income. Inflation is outpacing wage growth in the United States, and this is a huge problem. Here’s how to earn beyond what you thought possible:

How to Have Unlimited Earning Potential

Quick Note

Before I explain this, I want to acknowledge that this is option is not for everyone. There is immense value in job security, set hours, employee benefits, company health care, and not being responsible for the fate of the business. But for those who have the motivation to be their own boss and break through the income limitations, I want to share with you how being self employed can change your life.

Why 9–5 Employment Will Limit Your Income

There are two problems with traditional employment which keeps workers in an exhausting cycle of working paycheck to paycheck.

1. You have an income ceiling — a maximum amount that you can potentially earn in a specific job. This may be increased over time with raises, bonuses, or overtime, but you are still going to receive a certain amount of pay for a certain amount of work.
2. Your income amount is defined by the time spent working. Whether you are paid hourly or you are salaried, you have an amount of time that you’re expected to work. This time exchange for money means that you can never grow your income beyond the amount of work that you can take on.

You have 24 hours in a day and no more. This can lead to a frustrating cycle of trading time for money, which results in little financial growth — not to mention extreme exhaustion of the paycheck to paycheck lifestyle.

We are taught to approach work this way. We go to school and we either learn a trade or go on to earn a degree — then we trade our time for money. What the schools are failing to teach is that this is not the only option. Trading time for money means that there’s a limit on your earning potential. Developing income streams that are not dependent on a time exchange means that you are opened up then to the possibility of breaking through that ceiling and changing the limitations previously imposed on your earning potential.

When you trade your time for money, you are providing a service, completing a task, or creating something, all of which you must physically be present and spending your own time on. Moving away from this work model will allow your income to take off.

Self Employed v.s. 9–5 Individual

Think of a direct comparison between two types of workers in the same field:

The self employed graphic designer spends three days out of the month creating digital products, one day loading those products into their online shop, and two days setting up an automated marketing system. In one week of work, they have created digital products which they never have to create again. As long as they market them properly, their products will sell and be automatically downloaded.

Because they don’t have to create this work again, they can focus on creating new designs and setting those up to bring in more passive income. They can easily increase their prices, increase their marketing sales funnel or their advertising budget. and they can create content — such as a YouTube channel — to funnel viewers in to make more sales. Over time, they will be able to increase their earning ceiling because they are not limited to the constraints of time faced by traditional employment.

Now, if the same graphic designer was not self employed, but instead was working as an employee for another company, they would arrive to work at 9:00 a.m., they would leave at 05:00 p.m, and they would take home a paycheck by trading time for money each day. They might incur bonuses or increases over time, but they will be stuck at a capped income because they can’t possibly work more — we only have 24 hours in a day. Trading time for money means that you automatically have that income ceiling imposed on you.

How to Start Generating Passive Income

There’s a number of ways you can develop streams of income that are not exchanges of time for money. Passive income streams will continue to generate income well after the initial work was created.

Some of the most profitable of these include selling online courses, creating digital products — such as templates, PDFs, educational materials and printables — building membership sites and communities, and creating a monetized YouTube channel, podcast, or blog.

If we are constantly trying to keep our heads above water and focusing only on the day to day time for money exchange, it’s incredibly hard to build financial freedom. I would recommend everyone seeking financial freedom consider ways they can develop streams of passive income.

For those of you wanting to create passive income but still want to keep your 9–5 job, these income streams can be built in the background in small chunks as you continue your current workload. Choose one passive income stream to begin building slowly and stick with it.

What you can create in small chunks each day can be built over time, and will continue to earn you income in the background for years to come. Changing the way that we think about earning money and taking steps to break through that income ceiling can completely change your financial situation.

Want to learn more about how you can become self employed? Watch the video here!