Your income level fits the demographic as average but you don’t consider yourself average. You have always thought one day I will find something that will start the dough rolling in. Hasn’t happened yet? Why not? Have you not given much thought to how you might find that one idea or break that gets you on your way?
You are not alone most people haven’t given much thought to how to substantially change their financial situation other that maybe finding a better job or a second job. These choices won’t get you to where you want to go if your desire is for a major boost in your life style.
So what if you did take some time to think about the best ways to boost your income to live the good life? What increase in income will it take to get you where you want to go, would it be double of triple your income or more? What are some of your choices to consider? Would a better job of a second job get you there? Remember to get a better job normally requires extra skills or knowledge that you can obtain but in the end you still only have so many hours per week to give to your job.
How much would you have to increase the dollars per hour you get paid to create the wealth you desire? Would a 5, 15 or even 20% increase make substantial difference? I think not. Could you increase your income by that amount with a second job? Even if you could, you wouldn’t have time left to live that new life style and you still would not be producing enough income to make a substantial difference.
So what are your realistic choices? What activities are available to you to produce the wealth building you desire? First think about what those activities must do for you. Trading hours for dollars like you have been doing won’t get the job done.
You must find income producing ideas that will produce income while you are doing others things like sleeping, relaxing or going about your daily activities. What that means is that you have to search out activities that produce wealth for you based not on just what you do but what others do that produces income for you. This is called leveraging your efforts. Which means you can produce more income from your activities than you could produce from your labor alone.
When you buy a home and put down a down payment of 5 or 10% you are leveraging your money which enables you to move into a new home and enjoy its amenities without having to come up with the full purchase price. When you put a down payment on a car you are leveraging your money.
This type of leverage will give you a temporary improvement of your life style, but if you want to generate real wealth you have to find an income producing activity that will allow you to leverage your labor and money so that over time you can produce more income than you would trading hours for dollars such as you do in a job.
What you are looking for is something that takes a modest investment of income and doesn’t require a major investment of time to learn the ropes. Finding the activity that is right for you is the key. I would suggest you do some brain storming. Take a blank sheet of paper and write down anything you can think of that you might like to do that will produce income. Then go back and review each one and determine if you can use leverage to take advantage of that activity. Eliminate those that require a large infusion of cash or have a steep learning curve. Examples to eliminate would be a bricks and mortar businesses requiring substantial outlay of cash. Activities that require long and arduous training such as 4 year college, or advanced degrees or any extended training time.
Hopefully you will find an activity that will work for you. It is important to find an activity that will fit you and will be something you will enjoy doing.
Activities that you should not ignore when doing your evaluation are trading stocks and options and investing in real estate. In either case you can start with a minimum of investment and training. Training for either can be done on your own time and pace.
David is a long time businessman and investor with experience in sales and marketing, real estate investing and stocks ownership.
