Hello, I'm your host, Mr. Chuck. I'm a retired accountant, turn truck driver, I have reduced my debt to zero in a short matter of time, debt reduction to achieve financial freedom takes commitment, confidence determination, should you work at increasing your pay at your full time job? Or should you look into starting a side hustle, we'll talk about these options back in one moment, going to explore our finances and figure out how to improve them. reduce debt increase wealth is a podcast to inform those to improve personal finances, whether it's eliminating debt or making smart investments. Should you work for a pay raise at your current full time position? Or should you look into starting a side hustle? Why not do both, you're going to be at your full time job on a regular basis. Why not do things to improve your career? For some reason, you decide you don't like that career, then you can start looking at a side hustle. Or if you need money quickly. And it doesn't look like you're gonna get a pay raise anytime soon. You can do a side hustle as a temporary gig to make some quick cash if there's such a thing. But before you do all that you must consider is your full time job a career choice that you're working to improve yourself? Is this a company you see yourself working for long term? Or is it just a stepping stone to move up the ladder, and your particular career field. All these things are to be taken into consideration. If you're trying to work up the ladder, whether you're gonna stay in the current company, or try to find new employment down the road, you need to do the best you can do. But in the meantime, you need to also know when and how to ask for a pay raise. If you don't ask, most likely you won't receive. But before we even get to that point, you got to do your homework. You have to keep track of all the good achievements that you've done, the date, what it was, and what you did. So you have a journal that you keep, you don't tell anybody about you keep on all what you feel are your achievements. So what you're contributing to that company, I go to I have an article from the balance career.com How often should you ask for a raise? It's a good article, it talks about how to negotiate a salary, for instance, often to ask and how often not to ask for a pay raise. If you're fairly new with the company, you got to be there at least one year before asking for a pay raise. Also, if you're fairly new, set yourself up a work journal and document what they ask you to do, what you have done, and how well you've done. So if you if you've done a project already, and you did a good job, just note everybody to congratulate you how high up the boss ladder Did they say something positive about your work raises are not guaranteed. In some companies may have a work employee performance at a six or 12 month intervals. Maybe if you're new, they might have it at a three month if you're on probation. And then later on a year from there. Or maybe they have pay races at their year end or fiscal year in or calendar year in. So you shouldn't ask for more once a year but you need to get along with your current boss or your most direct supervisor. And my position my career, the position I had where I got the most frequent pay raises. And the best pay raises is when I had my most direct supervisor like me, we got along really good. And I covered for him when he was out because he had medical issues and he helped me get pay raises on a more frequent basis, which I was really happy about. So if you don't like your current most direct boss, don't try to work around them. Try to make amends. You don't have to like them personally, we're talking about liking a person professionally? Are they good at what they do? are they helping you advance your career in any way? Be kind and considerate. And don't be obvious that you may not like them personally. And that don't mean you have to go out to lunch with them. That don't mean you have to go out for drinks after work, or anything like that. You don't have to socialize them just have a reasonable excuse of why am I going? Like, I don't drink alcohol would be a good thing. Why should I go out? If I don't drink alcohol, I don't like going to bars come up who has a good reason why but don't say something. And then later on, they catch you doing what you said you don't do. So be aware of that also. And this article was written by Alison Doyle. And it's fairly good. It's in my show notes. So you should look it up and read the whole thing, how the time your requests timing matters when it comes to asking for a raise. So don't ask for one when your boss is having a bad day, and hold off making a request as a company isn't doing well. If news breaks that a major deal fell through, for instance, as to reschedule the meaning about your salary, I would be asking my most direct supervisor, play it in his head, because he's the ones gonna go to bat for you. You're most direct supervisor is the one that's going to make the recommendation that's going to be instrumental and how much you pay raise or if you get a pay raise. That's why you got to make sure you get along with that person. Don't have to like them just got to get along with them. also figure out when raises are typically awarded Amy request a few months in advance. For instance, if your company awards promotion or cost of living raise at the end of a fiscal year in June. Aim to make your case for a raise and APR. That gives your manager to cut time to consider your request and meet with others responsible for determining who gets a raise and for how much and don't complain perception persuade. This isn't a time to whine about how much everyone else is making more than you are how you take on twice as much as work as they do. Even if it's true. Complaining rarely convinces bosses to loosen up the purse strings. Don't talk about how much your own expense like rent or loans have gone up. Your financial situ ation is not your managers concern. And Stand, and base your argument on data. Talk about how your accomplishments have added to the organization's bottom line, and about the market rate for your role and skills. So be positive, don't be negative. is a promotion a possibility? Is there any job openings that hasn't been filled, that you're suited for, wiggle your way into getting a promotion, which comes with a much bigger pay race. So you got to be prepared with an agenda for the meeting. And some salary scripts have an argument for why you deserve more, and be prepared to discuss it. dressing the part even if your office dress code is casual or not existing. Now is not the time to come to work in your beach attire. dress professionally. After the meeting is over. Your boss should be thinking about the case you built, not what you were wearing during the conversation. I say dress professionally at all times. look the part that you're trying to get the job for. look the part that your position requires. That's a long standing thing. And if they do have a casual dress code, maybe do the casual dress on Friday, not on Monday through Thursday and not when you're having a meeting with a potential customer or client having a plan B. What do you do if your manager says no and doesn't offer hope of a raise in the near future? quitting on the spot is seldom advisable. But you'll feel more confident in the discussion. If you have a backup plan pursuing leads at other companies and that's why I say At the beginning, is this a company that you feel comfortable in staying with long term? Or is it just a stepping stone up the ladder, a place where you get some experience, and then you can move up at a different company. So that's all very important. If your career you have a contract, you need to fulfill that contract. Before you ask for a renegotiation of your contract. If it time, is set for one year, unless you've completed or achieved the project that you was assigned to, if the project and changes, your contract has maybe been fulfilled, once that happens, then you can renegotiate a contract. But I'm no attorney, I'm not really sure about that. So you should consult an attorney or whoever wrote up or helped you with your contract. So now you're doing everything you can do to help yourself get pay raises and be promoted at your current job. But for some reason, they're not hiring in your field. So you don't have the option of changing employers at this time. But you still need some extra cash to get by. Maybe they help you pay down some school loans to pay off some credit cards, or just increase your savings for your emergency fund, then a side hustle is a way you could go, I would first recommend is to find something you enjoy doing. Do you have a hobby that you can maybe make some extra cash on? Do you have any special skills or knowledge you can help people with and you can turn that into a side hustle, where you can be paid to make extra money for things you enjoy doing. And that's really important and you can be a consultant in your current field. But I don't know about that, because you might run into conflicts with your current position. So I was kind of stay away from that unless you know the person really well and you're gonna be changing jobs and you can use that as a stepping stone to get in the door. But then you got to be really careful because your for your current employer finds out you could be an unemployed quickly, there is a bunch of side hustle stuff out there that you can do. If you're looking for something just to make money, things off the top of my head is established businesses that are looking for somebody to do on your time and resources, such as delivering food for grub hub, or delivering food for your local grocery store, or doing shopping for people. If you do a my article I got here is from the college investor that comm side hustle ideas 50 plus ways to make money fast. I'm not sure how fast it is, or how much you can make. But you can check out the article. And they have a list of 50 things like deliver for door dash blogging, online survey, search the internet, sell gigs, sell on eBay, online, freelancing, ebook publishing, I mean, all this is time consuming type stuff. And it's a personal service type stuff. dog walking, estate sales. I don't know what they mean by that. modeling, hauling service house setting, pet setting, moving service, guarding service painting service pool cleaning service be someone's friends shoveling snow donate Plaza. I don't know how much you make on that. Get a part time job get a higher paying job. We already kind of talked about that cleaning service rent your car ran out room in your house, rent your house on Airbnb, which probably not so good. Now, Uber or Lyft driver enters on and on shoveling snow. A lot of the side hustles are you I would recommend doing one that's established like Uber, Lyft and doordash delivering pizzas for the local pizza shop down the road. Those are all good ways you can make money now delivering pizzas, you make more money on tips. You're going to use your own vehicle you have to have insurance on the vehicle and you have to have a dependable vehicle. Now you got to put wear and tear on your car. You got to keep those things in consideration. But it could be something you can do one or two days or nights a week. So it doesn't take up a whole lot of time and you can make some cash doing it. How often they pay I don't know. You can also do things I saw in another list, do Facebook ads for local businesses, go out and find a couple of local businesses and see if they have anything on Facebook as far as advertising, if you're good with social media and know how it works, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, all those things. And you have a local businesses not using them, you can go ahead and be like a freelance consultant, you can set up and do their social media advertising for them for a fee. Now your fee should be enough to for your time, but also cover all your expenses. So if you're setting up like a Facebook page, you want to do it for them. And there's there's any fees involved in advertising, like Facebook, you can do a four minute video to advertise a local business. And then you can promote it or boost it at $1 a day. But don't use your credit card to do that use their credit card to do that. And you get paid separately from them paying the Facebook fees or the social media fees for the advertising. So there's a lot of them up there. You can do blogging, I'm not sure how you do money, I can tell you one thing, you won't make any money doing podcast, I do this because I enjoy it's more like a hobby. I never intended to make any money doing this. But if I do, it's okay. sell on eBay. I mean, everything you do has some risk involved in somebody trying to rip you off article I have a link to has links within the article on a bunch of different things. Survey junkie can do online surveys, and you get paid for that swag bucks survey. You know, I tried that one time a few years ago, it really didn't make any money. But if you don't need to make a whole lot of money, that might be good. And don't take a whole lot of time. I think I also saw, get paid to shop, sacred chopper, whatever they call that. And a lot of these ideas or I would say duplication of others. Other similar ideas like deliver for door dashing is deliver food from restaurants. I would say if you have a hobby enjoy doing it, there's any way you can turn it into making money. Such as consulting, maybe reach out to other people with the same interest hobby interest, maybe your higher level than they are. Maybe they could use some advice. He give them a little bit of freebies and then hold back the main thing and then charge them 25 bucks or something for that little extra advice that they may not be thinking of maybe they'll figure it out on their own. Also look around your neighborhood and do things that other people are don't want to do. I live in the north and it snows here occasionally, three, four times a year. And there's neighbors around me that never shoveled their driveway. Sometimes they get lucky and in a couple days it melts, but their driveways facing north. It's not gonna melt. This is gonna get packed down, it's gonna turn the ice and is gonna be slippery. Maybe go over and offer to shovel their driveway for $50 bucks or $25. Maybe you have neighbors who have pets, dogs I'm thinking and they never clean up their dog poop in their backyard. Maybe you can go around and clean up their dog poop for $10 bucks a week. 20 $2 a week. Make sure you throw i in their trash can not yours You don't want to have a lot o dog poop in your trash can o bury it or do whatever Or maybe it's a one time cleanup dog poop because it snows on the ground or not out there cleaning up dog poop when the snow melts would be dog poop everywhere. He can go and maybe say a one time fee $20 and I'll clean up all the dog poop in your backyard. But I'm gonna throw it in your trash can I'm gonna put it in his bag and put it in your trash can. Or maybe somebody has a service that moves their yards but they never had their yard treated for weeds. I'm thinking dandelions because that's big hair. He can offer to spray their yard they got to be careful they're doing that and and plant chemicals may have some risks because you might need a license to do that. It's just a thought or idea. You don't need a license to do it in your own yard. If you do it for a fee, they call you a professional. And then you need a license to apply chemicals. Maybe they don't ever ask. The yard maybe they mow their yard once a week. And it's kind of ratty looking, but they never edge it in, go over in the spring and offer I'll add you yard for $15 your driveway and your sidewalk, make it look good. Now $15 to the number I'm throwing out there, if they have a long or a corner line or whatever, you got to figure out how long is gonna take you and how much you want to make per hour. So if it's gonna take you an hour, 30 bucks, it's gonna take you two hours, maybe 60 bucks, do one time it look good for a while, maybe mid summer, go back and hit them again. There's all kinds of ways you can make money, you just got to look for opportunity. Opportunity is usually dressed and overhauls. And it looks like work. So people just don't do it. That's Thomas Edison, quote, a lot of truth to that. If you want to make money, there's ways to do it, you just got to look around and figure out, check around, see who's hiring, a side hustle, something you do and your time for your convenience. When you want to do it. If you get a part time job, working at the grocery store, then you're working there hours, their rate of pay. Yes, you can make some extra money. Yes, maybe it's enough for you to help you out. That if you want to be flexible than doing your own thing is more important than you want to look for something where you can be self employed. Also remember, if you're self employed or not withholding taxes, if you're doing stuff for your neighbors, if you make more than $400, you're subject to self employment tax, you got to file a Schedule C on your income tax return, and pay self employment tax. Also keep track of any expenses you may have. Like if you're out doing deliveries keep track of the mileage you put on your car doing that keep track of your gas receipts and maintenance and repairs of your car. It's an either or thing that you want to take whichever one is the highest expense, which is usually gonna be the mileage but not always, if you use more than one car, you gotta keep it separate. It won't say more than one car one car at a time. If you have a fleet of cars doing this, then the fleet yas to use actual expense for your income tax. So it's just a matter of look around, keep track of what's going on, see what's available. Maybe you can deliver pizzas for a couple months and then maybe find something else. Maybe you can do Lyft or Uber maybe don't like dealing with people. So delivering products might be a better fit, so it's going to be up to you. And recycling B also is one of these it's not become an album at the park rummage for cans. Though you can't do that. I'm talking about encouraging your friends and neighbors to leave their cans and bottles aside for you. If you want to take up or not look for recycling metal and scrap to get even more money this is even easier if you have a truck and are willing to haul for others. So he's calling recycling is picking up scrap that people you know drive around neighborhoods see what people are throwing away if they're throwing away any type of metal. You pick it up, put in your pickup truck, you accumulate a truckload you take it to the scrapyard you sell it, I'm not sure how much money you can make knowing that because you're going to be driving a lot, let's say estate sales. Instead of just selling stuff on eBay can also host the state sales I used to host estate sales online and offline. And it can earn you a nice amount of money if you had customers was a full house of stuff. This is one of the early signs I did to earn extra cash, I would resell items on eBay and Amazon eventually want to conduct estate sales. To be successful though, you're gonna need help from some friends involved to help income $3,000 per estate. So there's, they'r called auctioneers do that i you have a largest date, mos likely it's going to be a far or something like that. And far equipment units advertise it, guess. But if you're not professional auctioneer, wouldn't, he could do it. Bu it's not recommended to say tha if you're handy at fixin things, he can be a handyma around the neighborhood. An it's a matter of just puttin out little flyer advertising o the couple streets around you And make a list of I fix thes things I live nearby. I can b there on evenings or weekends whether it's fixing clogge plumbing lines or cleaning ou gutters, you know, again, it' things that people don't want t do, or maybe they're unable t do it because of their age. I'l be back in one moment with m final thoughts. If you listen t this podcast using an appl podcast app, please rate an review this podcast for all your non Apple users. You can download iTunes on a Windows machine and go to the upper left hand corner, select podcast, do a search, reduce that increase wealth, he can subscribe to the podcast. And you can also rate and review the podcast. I appreciate any feedback that I get. So you should first concentrate on improving your current job situation. By doing the best you can. Journal of all your accomplishments projects you've completed, and how well you've done. So you could remind your most immediate boss in the future, that you may deserve a bigger pay raise than normal. If you're looking for a side hustle, try to do something that you enjoy. If you have a hobby, you can turn into a profit business then maybe that's the way to go. Or look for side hustles of things that are already established is your best bet, because they'll have all the rules and regulations stuff under control and in place so you won't be reinventing the wheel. Look for things your neighbors don't want to do or give you opportunity and make some extra cash and help out your neighbors at the same time.