In my last journal entry 14, I discussed my current money habits. You can check out that blog post by clicking here.
Today, I want to discuss what I’ve been doing to increase my income. Hopefully, by reading this post, it will also inspire you to increase your income.
As you may or may not know, I am on a journey to achieve financial freedom. Along with that journey, I am also at the start of achieving financial abundance.
There are many reasons why these are both goals for me.
One of the reasons is a completely selfish one. I want to be able to live bicoastal (now that all my children are self-sufficient adults). The second reason I want to increase my income is to contribute to my adult children’s milestones, like weddings and more.
My first step to financial abundance is to achieve financial freedom. Unfortunately, I have not been the smartest with my money in the past and have accrued a lot of debt.
If you follow along in my journal entries, I share how I am taking steps to build my financial literacy, which I lacked before. Even at the age of 46 years old.
You can read my first blog post on my financial situation here.
When I started this financial journey of getting control of my finances, I knew my situation was messy. I didn’t know where to begin, and I was living check to check. Some months, my bank account would be overdrawn. This is even after I started making six figures. I know, I know…
I moved my money around a lot from one account to another just to make sure my bills were getting paid.
When I decided to change my mindset and take control, I not only had to learn the words of positive manifestation again, but I had to come to terms with my money habits and the amount of debt I accrued.
For the most part, I’ve always felt confident in the power of manifestation in my life. Most things I set my mind to, I pretty much have manifested.
I remember when I was in my early 30s, I told myself I wanted to make 100k by the time I hit 40. When I hit 40, I reached that goal or manifestation and stopped manifesting financially or setting any more long-term goals.
I think by the time I reached 40, life was getting to me, and I was starting to get tired. I had a lot of resentment I needed to deal with at the time. It also didn’t help that a lot of my early 40s were spent during the pandemic.
I digress…
We’re here to talk about steps to increase income.
However, all that I wrote above is not in vain. It has a lot to do with the steps to increase income.
Once I committed my mindset to achieving financial freedom and learning different ways to increase income, opportunities started to manifest themselves.
I remember on December 31, 2024. My daughters and I all sat around my middle daughter’s living room floor. We were all creating our vision boards for the coming year.
One of the manifestations I already had in mind since November, as you can guess, was to achieve financial freedom and abundance.
I know that for me to manifest what I want, I also need to take action. Part of this action was to take control of my finances by knowing my debt, net pay, and net worth.
Not only did I think about financial freedom and abundance, but I also created a visual blueprint (vision board), if you will, of what I wanted.
The beautiful thing is that the universe is listening.
At the end of August last year, I decided I wanted to take on a second job. I applied to so many jobs and received a bunch of interviews. I even went to an interview, received an offer letter, and completed my orientation. It was for a per diem position.
I remember going to my orientation, and something in me was like, “Do you really want to work hard again for someone else?” The whole point of wanting financial freedom and abundance was to have more freedom of time as well.
Taking this second job meant more restrictions on my time and less time spent with my family, which continues to grow.
One of the things I manifested for myself over ten years ago was to work from home, which I accomplished about eight years ago.
The thought of having to go into work didn’t appeal to me. So I never submitted my required documents to officially start working.
I had to get clear on what I wanted, and that was to increase my income in a way that didn’t require me to leave home.
Lo and behold, after almost ten years of working for my current company, they finally approved us to work overtime! There was a special project they needed help with.
Seriously, they have never allowed overtime in the almost ten years I’ve been there. Now, from December to May (I got approved to work OT in January), they let us work overtime without any restrictions as long as we worked within the legal limits of overtime.
I would say during those months, I was working a minimum of 10 hours of overtime a week. To me, working overtime was a lot easier and much more convenient than working a second job for many reasons.
First, I didn’t have to travel for work. Second, I know my job well. Third, I got paid more in overtime than I would have if I started somewhere new. Four, I was able to set my hours when I wanted to work overtime.
Now, things have slowed down. Although there isn’t as much overtime needed anymore, I can still clock in at about 8 hours a week of overtime.
To me, that’s a win.
My point in sharing this is that it’s true when they say to be clear in what you want when manifesting. For me, I got clear on the feeling I wanted to manifest. This feeling is what I thought about a lot. It helped me increase my income.
Making it clear on how I wanted to increase income meant not having to leave home for work. I wanted to make increasing my income efficient; I wanted it to be convenient; I wanted it to feel easy.
When I made it super clear about what I wanted, the universe listened, and I took action.
At first, my company wasn’t offering overtime to everyone. When I heard my coworkers were working overtime, I asked them how they were able to and spoke to my manager right away. He gave me the approval. From there, things started to fall into place.
Not only did I work overtime to increase income, but I also started selling periodically again on online reseller platforms like Poshmark and Mercari.
Several years ago, before the pandemic, I had a goal of making $100, which I accomplished for a year. However, to me, the gains weren’t worth the extra work anymore.
One, I didn’t have enough space for the items I needed to hold on to. Two, it was time-consuming for me to package and deliver the items.
Now, if I’m selling, it’s usually a hot item I know I can get rid of quickly to help with decluttering.
My point is, when you have a goal or start visualizing your manifestation, your mind starts to work with your body. This will inspire your creativity and help you generate actionable ideas you can implement.
You know what I do feel is worth the time for me? It’s blogging. I’ve been blogging for eight months now.
I recently got approved for Google AdSense. And although they haven’t paid me a commission yet (the payment threshold is $100). I’m excited to say I see some income growth, even if in cents.
Since I’ve been approved, this month alone, I’ve made $0.52 so far! And the month isn’t even over yet, lol.
Yes, I know you may be laughing because it’s not even a dollar, but to me, this is a huge win! Because before this month, I was making ZERO.
I’m also happy because this shows me that there is potential in making more money if I stay committed and consistent. At this point in my financial journey, anything is helpful.
I’ve been listening to a lot of finance YouTubers, podcasts, and social media influencers lately. I don’t remember where it was from, but I heard someone say, “You will never become a millionaire from your 9-5 job.”
Their point was that there will always be a cap on your salary when you work for someone else’s company.
I will admit that when I started this blog, in the first few months, it was exciting. I was so eager to write and work on my blog.
However, after the 3rd month, I started to lose my motivation. I wasn’t generating as many blog posts anymore, nor was I excited to write like I did in the beginning.
Perhaps a lot of that discouragement came from some blog courses that talked about making a lucrative amount of money within the first four to five months. Because I wasn’t seeing any monetary value in the first four months, I lost all motivation.
In March, I just stopped writing a post altogether. I blamed it on writer’s block. Slowly, in the months of April, May, and June, I only wrote two blogs for each month.
Now, it’s July and my motivation is coming back. But again, here is what I learned. I cannot depend on motivation if my goal is to increase income.
At this time, I do not need to make increasing my income a priority. I need to prioritize how my blog can be helpful to others. I will admit I was losing sight of this.
When you keep reminding yourself that money is the priority, it does not drive you successfully. Sure, the goal is to manifest abundance and wealth. But it’s like, I was preparing to run a race and not a marathon.
Sustainable success will take time.
Manifesting to become a lotto winner may be on a lot of people’s minds. But think about it, the faster you gain something, the faster you may lose it if you don’t learn proper skills.
I’ve come to realize that when it comes to manifesting our desires, we need to change who we are to become the person we are visualizing. To become wealthy, you need to learn financial literacy.
What does becoming a lottery winner mean to you? What does that actually look like to you? For me, I can only assume based on past experiences that most lottery winners play a lot. Hence, they’re gamblers.
Most of my exes were gamblers, sad but true. Notice how I probably attracted a reflection of myself? Others who also made poor decisions with money? Let me tell you, they lost more than they won.
When I picture a lotto winner, I think of someone who is consistently at the liquor store buying their tickets. Like one of my exes, sometimes he’d spend so much on lottos that he wouldn’t have enough til his next paycheck.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I still play the lotto now and then. But I don’t make it my identity, like my ex at the time did.
I also had an ex, who was my longest relationship. I’m still friends with him to this day. He, too, was a gambler, but he didn’t play the lottery. As a gambler, he would be what some would consider a high roller.
He made his money in Vegas. He was such a high roller that we frequented Las Vegas almost every other weekend.
We’d get picked up in limos and stay in penthouse suites. I’d get complimentary Day Spa services. We even had the privilege of being flown in a private jet.
All this is to say, that’s who he is, a gambler, whether a high roller or low. At the end of the day, that’s his identity and still is to this day. His money is never consistent.
What I want to manifest is financial freedom and abundance. If that’s what I want, that’s what I need to identify with. That’s who I need to become. Someone who can succeed in financial freedom and attain financial abundance.
I need to start with learning financial literacy. I want to discover ways to earn income that feel sustainable and meaningful to me. Additionally, I need to learn how to manage my finances responsibly.
In 2012, I used to have another blog. I think it was 2012, give or take a year or two. This was purely for personal entertainment, like an online journal.
Although I loved my blog, it became too personal to share, so I stopped posting. At the time, it was therapeutic for me to write my thoughts. I had that blog for over a year, and it was a lot of fun at the time.
With this blog, I need to stay disciplined and have a plan. Another thing that clicked for me was something I heard through one of the financial resources mentioned above. They said I need to treat my blog as if it’s another job. It’s a job that, to me, is worth my time investing in.
When it comes to my full-time job, I depend on it. This means I can’t just call in sick whenever I’m not feeling motivated. I need to show up, be responsible, be reliable, and be professional. I need to realize this too for my current blog.
I’ve now committed to working on my blog on Mondays and Wednesdays, right after my workout classes.
I’ve also applied this mentality to working out. Before, I used to work out whenever I “felt” like it, which was not often. Now, I think of working out as a job; I have no choice. This switch in mindset has helped me tremendously!
Sorry if this blog post doesn’t give you an exact answer on how to increase income. I guess the point of writing this post is that when it comes to the desire to increase income, you need to figure out what that looks like for you.
Do you want to go to the office? Do you want to work from home? Or do you want to paint beautiful art all day to increase income? Imagine what will bring you joy when you, too, are trying to increase income and take action, even if small.
I love to write. Blogging feels natural to me. Sure, there are times when I don’t want to do it. But once I do and finish a blog post, I love how I feel after, kinda like working out.
Getting started is hard, but the aftermath is worth it.
We live in a time where there are abundant ways to increase income in our own way. Take some time to think about what you can offer and research how you can monetize that.
This is an age rich in resources, especially in terms of access, education, and tools. When I wrote my blog back in 2012. I didn’t take any courses and felt overwhelmed with technical applications.
At the time, I had just learned the basics of how to write and upload my blog posts. There were no pictures, nothing.
I’m surprised I even got approved for Google AdSense back then and knew how to connect it to my old blog. I made $0.93 for the year of blogging!
Never got paid because I still needed to meet the minimum threshold of $100.
I even attempted to start another blog between the years. I had my middle daughter create a WordPress account for me, register my domain, etc.
However, when I’d attempt to understand WordPress, I’d feel so overwhelmed that it paralysed me from even writing a blog post.
I wrote nothing; I wasted over $100 in registering a domain and starting a website that I never utilized. I also wasted my daughter’s time setting up my website.
It wasn’t until around November of last year, something clicked in me again. I told myself I wouldn’t give up on the first, second, or third challenge I faced. I wouldn’t give up at all. If I didn’t know how to do something, I would simply learn, even if painstakingly.
I always said I’m not tech savvy. I realized that was just an excuse. This was just to block me from my goals.
I never understood when I heard someone say, “Some people are scared of success.” I thought, who would ever be scared of success? What I realize now is that to be successful, there is always some kind of failure first.
As cliché as this sounds, the only way to succeed is to fail. Some people are more afraid of the thought of failing, it prevents them from even trying.
Stay committed, stay resilient, stay consistent, stay patient, and stay learning. Keep these things in mind, and I’m pretty sure you will find ways for you to increase income as well.
And if increasing your income is not what you want to manifest, that’s okay. Remember, to just be what you want to manifest.
It starts with your mind. There are things we need to unlearn and learn. Inundate yourself with the subject you want to become better at. For me, currently, it’s my finances.
They say you should surround yourself with people who inspire you, are smarter than you, or whom you want to emulate. Currently, it’s difficult for me to find people who are at the level of success I would like to be at.
So instead, I surround myself with literature, media, and education, both free and paid for, that inspire me. Like I said, we have access to so many resources now. Use it to your benefit.
Use your imagination to create the life you want. Visualize it. Be detailed. Then learn skills to help you get there and take actionable steps.
Start small, stay consistent, stay disciplined, keep visualizing, and continue to educate yourself. Eventually, you will be on the right path to increase income if that’s what you want to manifest as well.
Thanks for reading!
Love, Sutivi.