Hey there! It's Stephanie from SixFiguresUnder.com where I share frugal
inspiration and financial motivation! Today I'm excited to talk to you about
how to increase your income while you're paying off debt. For those of you who
don't know our background story, my husband and I paid off a hundred and
forty four thousand dollars of student loan debt between 2013 and 2016 now as a
blogger I get lots of emails from readers who are in similar situations
who also have a family, who are paying off medical school debt or law
school debt or some big debt and they can relate to me and they they are
inspired and encouraged that we were able to pay off that much debt that fast
while I was still staying at home with our kids. Now if you're just getting
started paying off debt, setting a goal, making a plan, I put together a free
resource for you that I will share at the end of the video so stay tuned and
I'll explain all about that. Looking at our income now (we still make our
finances public share our our budget report our income and expenses every
month on this channel and also on my blog) so if you look at our income now
you might think paying off that much debt that fast isn't isn't that big of a
deal but in reality at the time we set the goal we were making $40,000 a year
before taxes we had three little kids. It was, it was a struggle. We made
sacrifices, but over that time our income increased. Increasing our income was a
huge part of our debt payoff. Let me show you this graph here. The blue bars
represent our income throughout our debt payoff time. You can see at the beginning
where it was and at the at the end. So I shared this graph with my readers. When
we finished our payoff I I put this in the the post and everyone was wondering
how did you increase your income so much over that time
and so those are the things that I want to share with you today: the
tried-and-true ways that we increased our income so that we could pay off six
figures of debt. I'm going to throw in a couple of other examples of things that
you can do to increase your income in a real, significant way
Hold up though before we talk about increasing income I want to touch on
spending and budgeting. Focusing on increasing your income before your
spending is in check and your budget is made is like blowing up a balloon with a
hole in it or filling up a bucket with a leak. If you're trying to increase your
income right now and don't have a budget that works, all that extra income is not
going to be funneled towards your debt it's going to go all over the place and
you're not going to know what happened to it.
To make the most of this new income you need to make sure you've reduced your
expenses and your budgeting and being intentional with all of your money. If
you need help with this you should check out my book Frugal Fresh Start: A 28-day
challenge to trim your expenses build a budget and fix your finances. You can get
the paperback version on Amazon or I'll leave a link in the description to where
you can get the PDF and if you use the coupon code YOUTUBE you can get it for
just $5. Ok with your budget in order here are some tried and true ways to
increase your income. Now the first one is to sell stuff. I know that's not a
novel idea but it's simple. It's something everyone can do. You can start
now and it works. Not only will you make money but you'll also declutter your
home, you will get some momentum to paying off your debt. Be sure to take
clear pictures. Write an honest, detailed description of your item and you can
post it on Facebook in the buy sell trade groups or some things are better
on eBay or Amazo. There are loads of videos and blog tutorials so you can
search that and find great ways, great tips on that
That's the way that's the way we started when we first started paying off debt. I
sold clothes furniture kids stuff all sorts of things that we had (that we
don't miss) and we use that income to start paying off our debt. Now this isn't
a long-term solution to increasing your income for most people, though some
people really like thrifting and yard sale-ing and end up making a business out
of it. The second way to increase your income to help pay off debt is to start
a business. Now focus a little bit more on this because this one was major for
us. Both my husband and I started businesses during our debt payoff time. I
actually started my first business before we went to pay off our debt. About
the time my husband started law school I started an Etsy shop where I sold paper
cupcake toppers and birthday banners, baby shower banners, that sort of thing
and that is what paid for our groceries during law school which prevented us
from getting into more debt I only stopped doing Etsy when my blog started
really taking off and earned more money with less effort and on my own schedule.
That's why I I decided to stick with the blog I couldn't, I did not have enough
hours to do both. In 2013 when we started paying off our student loans, I started a
blog to chronicle our journey of paying off debt. Each month I share our our
income, our expenses, how much we paid off in debt, and what we saved. I also share
budgeting and frugal living tips and after having read blogs for years I knew
that if I did it well and did it right that I could make an income from it. And
that's what happened. In the description I'll leave some links to some great
blogging resources if you're interested in doing something like that too.
Right out of law school my husband started working at a small firm where he
made a small (for a lawyer) salary then changed to making a small Commission off
of his work instead of the salary and eventually he ended up changing jobs
which I'll talk about in a minute. When he changed jobs to practicing a
completely different, unrelated type of law his clients didn't want him to leave.
He ended up starting a part-time law firm so he could continue to take care
of those clients. When he left his firm and went to work for the state he kept
his clients that he had before and continues to do work for them and has
gotten new clients and his his business really started growing. We've really had
to keep it and on the side business. So for us starting our own businesses has
been a great way to increase our income for paying off debt. Now what does that
mean for you? What are your talents your skills things you're passionate about?
What what could you turn into a business? The sky is the limit. There are so many
things you can do, products and services that you can could provide to increase
your income. It's not easy. It takes work. You have to invest time and heart and
even a little bit of money into it, but it can definitely be worth it. The third
is to get a job on the side. Now being an entrepreneur isn't for everyone.
Not everyone wants to go out and create their own job, but there are a lot of
jobs that already exist that you could have, whether it's getting a part-time
job out of the home aside from your your regular nine-to-five or whether it's
working at home. Now there are scams out there so so be careful, but there are
lots of legitimate work at home companies these days. Now I'm not going
to go through all the legitimate work from home jobs but I do want to
highlight one that has really caught my attention and is one that I would want
to do if I didn't already have my blog business. It's VIPKid and it's teaching
English via the internet to children in China. Besides an internet connection you
also need to have a bachelor's degree and
some experience with kids whether it's teaching kids at church, coaching a team,
teaching school, homeschooling, babysitting, whatever it is you need some
some experience with kids and a bachelor's degree in in any field. I'll
put a link down below so you can get more information. Now the fourth way to
increase your income to help pay off debt is to ask for overtime and a raise.
Now if you're lucky enough to work for a job that has overtime, make it known to
everyone, your co-workers, whoever, that you are willing to work overtime. That
you want their extra shifts if they are going out of town or if they're sick.
Racking up over time, especially if it's time and a half or double time, really
can increase the income that you have to pay off debt with. Funnel all that extra
income towards your debt and you'll be making great progress! Assuming that
you're a hard worker, easy to get along with, you go above and beyond, you help
the company by sharing innovative ideas and sharing ways that they can save
money, just really show that you're all in in the company, don't be afraid to ask
for a raise. You might be surprised how willing they are to to compensate good
employees. Don't wait for them to offer it though. Go and ask! The worst they can
say is no and if they do say no then ask what it is that you need to to do to be
valuable enough to merit a raise. And the fifth way that I want to share with you
is to consider a job change. I know that sounds extreme but it can be so worth it
I wish we had looked at this one earlier because when my husband changed jobs not
only did our income increase but we had better health insurance benefits, we had
better retirement, just everything all around was was better when we when we
changed jobs. It's easy to feel just stuck in the job you're in but you don't
have to. Look around see what else is out there.
When you're comparing your current job with the potential jobs be sure to take
into consideration the insurance, the other benefits, the driving, the commute,
take into consideration everything when you're comparing so it's closer to
apples to apples, but don't dismiss the possibility of a job change or even a
career change. Okay, I promised I would share with you a
resource to help you if you're just getting started paying off your debt. I
put together a 7-day email course that walks you through the steps of figuring
out how much debt you actually have, deciding how you're gonna make a plan to
pay that, I just walked through the the steps that we went through as we
paid off our debt. It's completely free and includes some principles to help you
get organized. You can find it at SixFiguresUnder.com/SmashDebt
I'll put a link below to make it easier. I would love to hear what you are doing
to help increase your income to pay off your debt, what you're planning to do or
what you have done. I would love to hear your ideas down in the comments. If you
want to see more videos about increasing income and reducing expenses to help pay
off debt, give this video a thumbs up and if you're new to my channel I would love
for you to subscribe. I will be sharing more frugal inspiration and financial
motivation. Until next time
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