The title of Ramit Sethi‘s latest post couldn’t be more timely for me. It’s simply called “Earn More Money in 2010.”
My week started out in a panic when I faced the doom of my credit card balances on Monday. Things got out of hand over the holidays, and, as a Catholic girl who was raised to believe that debt is worse than the devil, I was definitely bound for confession.
If you have the “Post-Christmas Credit Card Blues,” I highly recommend that you follow Ramit’s blog this month. Ramit is doing a whole month of helping you earn more money, overcome psychological barriers, get clients and get paid for what you love to do. Ramit says it best, “there’s a limit to how much you can save, but no limit to how much you can earn.”
I’d love to hear what YOU think about the idea of earning more instead of spending less:
What are you going to do to pay your debt down this year? Continue complaining, making excuses and sitting on the couch every night after work?
Do you believe you can make money doing what you love without quitting your day job?
Are you focusing on cutting lattes out of your week, when you should be focusing on much bigger things?
Do you freelance or work part-time now? What do you do and how has it helped your financial situation, confidence and/or entrepreneurial spirit?
Does your mind tend to go to “cut cost” mode rather than “earn more” mode when in a financial rut?
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If anyone can relate to where you're at in your career, it's Nicole Crimaldi: Nicole spent 5 years in corporate America, switched career paths, worked at a start-up, survived a layoff and is now self-employed. Nicole believes that career satisfaction is a huge part of overall happiness. Therefore, she started Ms. Career Girl to help other women get off the treadmill and onto a more fulfilling path.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
My instinct is definitely to save, probably because it feels like more immediate satisfaction, so this is a very thoughtful post. My husband would love this post ~ he’s great at keeping his eye on the big picture, and constantly telling me to enjoy my lattes, as his goals align to moving upward on our career paths, not pinching pennies
perhaps it is really all about a balance of both~
The only true path to wealth is both. Cut back and make more money.
He’s not saying anything profound in my opinion. Everyone wants to make more money.
The focus is probably more interesting if you talk about ways to make more money.
He’s forgetting there’s a limit to people making more money as well. You can only work so many hours of overtime. Or take on so many freelancing projects.
Or there’s a skill and/or education deficit that stops people from earning more money, and they may not have the money or chance to go back to school.
@FB – I’m surprised you feel iffy about Ramit’s series, especially because you paid a lot of your debt off by freelancing. I agree that there is a definite limit to how many hours you can work overtime/freelance, but I disagree about a lack of skill or education. In fact, I think a lot of people use this as an excuse, along with the recession. I had an interesting phone call w/ my father about this topic this week.
He barely graudated college yet built a multi-million dollar business with my Mom. He said, Nicole if I had a shovel and some dirt, I could work 4 hours after my day job and pay off any debt I had if I were you.
I think about the dog daycare I send my dog to, for example, which was started by immigrants and now has at least 30 dogs a day at $16/day. That didn’t require any special skill or education. In fact, going back to college would put the owner of the daycare at a disadvantage because now he has tons student loans to pay, and can’t pay for his family to eat.
We live in an age where there are so many ways to make money, let’s stop making excuses and get on it!