Skip to main content

Exercise and Finding More Income

Well, I've hopefully given myself enough time off so that my body can heal. I started yesterday with extremely light exercise and I am planning on working my way back up. It has taken a huge amount of self-control to not do something for these past 10 days. I feel like I am missing out somehow by not doing anything really active.

Today I am able to get out a little bit early and I plan to meet some friends this afternoon, but I will be using the time until then to work on some pet projects that have been brushed aside lately with the hope that they will eventually yield me some additional income.

My consulting work has been rather slow, of late. And the my situation with side work may well be drawing to a close so it is critical for me to find additional sources of income in the near future so that I can continue my debt repayment. Again, this is not money needed for expenses, but only to continue accelerating my plan of getting out of debt fast.

Additional Income Pain

Originally I had hoped that elance and other sites would be a good way to get additional jobs but I am finding that the difficulty I experience when browsing those sites is not terribly unique. I personally have a hard time when I have to compete with people who can afford to work doing technical or design jobs for 5 or 10 dollars an hour. That just isn't worth it for me. Apparently, this is a similar issue for other people who use these services. I'm looking for quick hit jobs that can generate income, but not tie me up for months or years into the future unless I choose to be. I like the freedom that comes with doing this kind of work on the side. But I wouldn't want to be stuck doing these side projects for main income.

Doing What Works

My personal experience is that getting clients really requires referrals (which I've had success with) and also doing high-quality work that serves as a reference. This is also doable, but can be frustrating depending on your clients. The advantage of price is simply over. There are way too many people in Asia or Eastern Europe who will do the same work for pennies on the dollar. I don't begrudge these people for doing the work; its great if they can do it. I simply need to focus on doing things that will grow my opportunities for side income rather than repeating the same cycles which lead to low levels of reward.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Blogging WealthTrack: Christine Benz (Retire Early? Or not?)

 This morning I've watched an interesting video on Consuelo Mack: WealthTrack. Here, Consuelo's guest, a longtime contributor, Christine Benz, a personal finance expert from Morningstar joined Consuelo for a discussion on issues related to retirement, in particular in the current market environments. This conversation is even more interesting against the backdrop of The Great Resignation. I found Christine's advice to be particularly interesting on a couple of fronts. Her advice in dealing with talking about retirement in general, in particular for people who are in the process of thinking about retiring early gave me pause. She is considering the traditional advice of a 4 percent withdrawal rate to be dangerous and indeed, actually concerning. According to the recent research she cites, a 3% withdrawal rate is a better option. Even more than the four percent rule, I think that her comments on annuities are particularly interesting. While annuities have been given a bad nam

More Money Into Ibonds

 At this point, it seems like a well-known strategy for handling inflation: ibonds. While there was not much press about this, it is in fact something that I did late last year in order to capitalize on the fact that this interest rate was bound for up to 10000 dollars as part of my allotment for 2021. Then now that we're in the new year, I have moved another 10000 into the account. All of this can be done easily at http://treasurydirect.gov if you're willing to give up the fact that the money is locked up, that the interest rates to be paid will be somewhat lower than you could earn in the market, and you're able to ensure that you're not needing the money for the near future.  For me personally, I find that this is a great way to lock up about 25% of my emergency (safe) money instead of putting it into a High Yield Savings account. This interest rate changes every six months, but even if it is much lower, I think that we're going to be in much better shape than if

Credit Report Review

So, one of the things that I've started doing is trying to pull my credit reports at regular 4 month intervals so that I get a free one frequently to make sure that things are progressing as I'd like them to and also as a safeguard against identity theft. Of course, the part that I don't like is that these reports don't include a fico score - the key number when it comes to determining if you are going to be extended credit and at what interest rate. This time, I got the report from Equifax - I went to the end of the process and for 8 dollars more I could get my credit score. And the Equifax gave me a credit score of 742. This of course is not even close to the perfect score of 850 when it comes to fico score nirvana, but 742 is still a respectable fico score. Things to improve are basically lowering my balances on my credit cards and loans, which I already have a plan for. And also I noticed that the amount that I paid off on one of my loans is actually still being rep