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How to Increase Your Income by Diversifying Your Skill Set

With the rate of inflation not getting any better anytime soon, one of the only ways to get ahead is to earn more. While there may be many different ways to do this, there is one way that works so much better than everything else. At least, in my opinion. In order to increase your income at a faster rate than inflation, it’s important to learn how to diversify your skill set.

WHY Should you DIVERSIFY?

First and foremost, when you learn a new skill you’re already diversifying. You do this by going outside of your comfort zone, and by doing so you become much more effective at problem-solving.

Therefore, diversifying is what can help increase your income fairly fast. And at the same time it also helps increase your problem-solving skills. These two happen to have a direct correlation to each other, coincidentally.

When you learn a new skill you are increasing the thickness of the myelin sheathing in your brain. This white matter protects the large system of nerves that run through your brain, which is what sends all communications to every part of your body. By increasing the thickness, you’re increasing how fast, and accurate, messages travel in your brain. This increases your overall cognitive ability and, therefore, your problem-solving skills become that much stronger. By doing this, you increase your potential value as an employee, which then directly correlates to increasing your income.

INCREASE YOUR INCOME

If you’re already happy with your job, learning new skills is the next step forward. By doing just this one thing, you set yourself up to earn more money.

You can do this by now being able to potentially perform another possible job function. Or can perform your job at a higher level, and both of these increase your overall worth. This increases your value and therefore your worth.

Some of the best skills to look at incorporating to gain the highest rate of return are:

  • Accounting
  • Bookkeeping
  • Currency Exchange Trading
  • Customer Relations
  • Data Analysis
  • Digital Marketing
  • Excel
  • Graphic Design
  • HTML/CSS Coding
  • JavaScript
  • Mobile App Development
  • Networking
  • PowerPoint
  • Public Speaking
  • Python
  • Real Estate Investing
  • Social Media Management
  • Video Creation
  • Website Development
  • Writing

THE ALTERNATIVE

If you aren’t as happy in your current job, then another way to diversify your skill set is to take on side hustles. Whether you work a primary job or multiple side hustle types of jobs, adding in another can only help increase your income. By incorporating side hustles, you’re not only increasing your skill set but also diversifying your income stream.

By doing both of these you end up creating more overall financial security for yourself. I have found this to be extremely helpful because things change all the time. So by not putting all of our eggs in one basket, there’s a much better chance that major changes at a primary job, or the market, won’t affect our financial bottom line as much.

Some of my favorite side hustles are:

  • Accounting/Bookkeeping – Quickbooks is what I have been using since the 1990s, but Freshbooks is another great option.
  • Airbnb & Airbnb Experiences – these are great options if you have extra space or a specific talent to share.
  • Buying and selling electronics – some of my kids have been doing this for years and made some pretty good money.
  • Real Estate Investing – buy and holds, land, lending trusts, fix and flips, etc.
  • Rover – this can include boarding dogs, doggy daycare, dog walking, drop-in’s for dogs and/or cats.
  • Selling at Consignment Sales – while you might not make a ton of money doing it, it’s still a pretty great side hustle.
  • Surveys – such as America Consumer Opinion, Pinecone Surveys, Survey Junkie, and Swagbucks.
  • Uber and Uber Eats – these can be done on your own schedule, which is great for those of us with a hectic lifestyle.
  • Writing a book or Freelance Writing – this can even create passive income, which is a huge bonus.

Increase your income summary

By learning new skills you increase your diversity, which in turn increases your problem-solving skills. And when you increase your problem-solving skills, you have a much better chance of increasing your income because you’ve become a more valuable player at your job. Or you can use these increased problem-solving skills to embark upon some side hustles instead.

Either way, you’re only setting yourself up to be a better version of you in the future and also increase your income at the same time. This sounds like a major win-win to me!

What are some of the best ways you have found to ultimately increase your income?

Why a UTMA Account is an Awesome Way to Help Kids Save

When it comes to helping kids save money, there are just so many different options. Of course, you could go with the traditional savings account. However, those generally don’t keep up with the rate of inflation, so they will actually be losing money. There are also money market accounts and CD’s, which can be some other better options. And if your child has any earned wages, then you can open up a custodial Roth IRA for them. Roth IRA’s can earn the highest market returns of an average 8%. But, if they don’t have any earned income, you can’t use those types of accounts. This is where a UTMA account comes into play instead.

What is a utma account?

A UTMA account is a Uniform Transfers to Minors Act account. This is a custodial account that is for taxable investing. Which is slightly different than a Roth IRA account, in that anything your child withdraws from the account in the future will be taxed.

We opened all of UTMA accounts at Fidelity, since they are one of the few that have custodial accounts. Initially, we planned to open all of the Roth IRA’s and UTMA’s with Betterment, since that is where our Roth IRA’s are. But, we found out that they don’t support custodial accounts yet, so that wasn’t an option.

Since I had an old 401k with Fidelity, it just made the most sense to stick with them. Plus, their customer service is amazingly helpful. So, if you decide to open either a Roth IRA or a UTMA for your child, you can call them and they will walk you through the whole process.

HOw can it be funded?

UTMA accounts can be funded through any account you care to connect to it. They don’t have the restrictions that Roth IRA’s do when it comes to the funding or where it comes from. What this means is that you can attach any account with EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer) capability to each UTMA. Most banks won’t open anything other than a savings account for younger children, which don’t have EFT functionality, though. So, if you have younger children, you will probably have to fund their UTMA accounts with your own checking account.

Initially, we found out that some of the kids had savings bonds purchased for them when they were first born. Instead of just letting them sit there earning very little interest, we decided to cash them out and put the money into their UTMA accounts instead.

However, you can put money into these accounts at any time for any reason. So it wouldn’t just have to be from old savings bonds.

We also found that some grandparents like to give money for birthdays and holidays. Or they send us a check to get their gifts and we don’t spend all of it. So we have started putting that “extra” money into their UTMA accounts also. This way it will really help the kids in the future because they don’t even realize the money is there. And, they aren’t just getting more toys for us to break our toes on. Bonus for us!

With that being said, here are some ways you can think about funding your children’s UTMA accounts:

  • Old savings bonds
  • Extra birthday money
  • Allowance money
  • Side hustle money (kid’s lemonade stand, yard work, etc.)
  • Money for good grades
  • Gifts (just because)

teaching about investing

One of my favorite things about these accounts, besides how easy they are to fund, is that it helps us teach them about investing. Even the youngest one, at the ripe old age of 8, has found this to be a lot of fun.

Once you put money into the UTMA account, it just sits there in a money market earning basically nothing until you choose your investments. The kids can invest in mutual funds, individual stocks or ETF’s.

Teaching them the difference between the three is just the beginning of the lesson. Once they grasp the different types of accounts, then I let them find companies they are interested in. I had to explain what publicly traded meant a few times, but once they got that concept, they were on a roll.

After they wrote down a list of everything they were interested in, then came the extra fun part for me. I like for the child to see how certain assets are performing before they decide whether to pull the trigger or not. There are many different places to look up ticker symbols to find out how they are performing.

Marketwatch is a good one to start with because it is very in depth. But, if you can’t remember where to go, you can always just type in the ticker symbol in the Google search box and the first thing it usually pulls up is how the stock is performing.

I like to make sure the kids see how an asset has been performing for the past 6 months, 1 year and 5 years. A lot of times this has changed their mind about purchasing a certain fund because they don’t like how it has been performing.

I answer all of their questions to the best of my ability, but I don’t want to choose for them. This is a huge learning experience for them while they are young, so I don’t want to push them one way or another. After all, if they lose money on their choices right now, it won’t really hurt them financially in the future. So this a great time to get their feet wet.

utma account summary

Overall, opening up a UTMA account for your child is a great way to help save for their future. While these accounts are a bit different than Roth IRA accounts, they operate fairly similarly with rate of returns. These accounts have the potential to net your children some great interest on money they aren’t spending while they are young. Which means they have the opportunity to create a decent sized nest egg before they leave your nest.

Plus, you get to teach them about investing and the stock market. Which is a great lesson to learn while they are young. I know I wish my parents would have taught me more about it when I was younger, because I would have been a much savvier investor in my early twenties. But, you can’t change the past, only the future. And that is exactly what we are trying to do with our children by opening up UTMA accounts for them now.

Have you heard of a UTMA account or opened one up? If so, what has been your experience with them so far?

Teaching Children Money

How to Teach Money Lessons Early For the Win

Editor’s Note: Hi everyone! Please welcome our new staff writer, Shanah Bell. Shanah will be sharing her story and advice on the blog twice/month. We thought she’d made a great second voice on the blog in addition to Laurie’s. Enjoy!

Teaching children about money, and the power that it truly has to make or break your life, is one of the hardest parts of parenting. As a family of 5, with the age ranges of our children vastly different, that gets even more difficult to navigate. How we need to teach the 5 year old is completely different than the way we can teach the 12 year old.

Read more

12 Things You Need to Know About Your Money

So, I’m confessing off the bat that I’ve ripped off this post idea from Rockstar Finance. The short, but thought-provoking post needed an expansion – at least in my mind.

The fact of the matter is that too many people don’t have as much of a clue about their money as they should. They have no idea how much debt they have, when they’ll be able to retire or what they’d do if the financial SHTF in their house.

This post today is designed to help you answer those questions. Read more

How Millennials Can Get Started Investing

Millennials, it's time to grow your money!
Millennials, it’s time to grow your money!

If you are one of the millions of young adults in this country and you’ve been considering investing, congratulations!  You’re already ahead of the majority of the other millennials out there.  But don’t pat yourself on the back just yet. You still need to do the work to get the ball rolling. But what’s the best way to get started? It may seem difficult, but it doesn’t have to be. Here are some tips that can help you get started investing right away. Read more

Why You Should and How You Can Save More Money

6355840185_8e1c4d8f11_zFor most of the nearly twenty years of our marriage, we never had any money in our savings account. Oh, we’d occasionally shove some money into the account for a week or two, but we’d always find a reason to take it out and spend it. Either we’d spend it because we needed it to pay bills (because we spent our bill-paying money on other stuff), an “unexpected” expense would rear its ugly head, or we’d see a “new and shiny” thing that we “needed”.

We read all the advice about paying yourself first, but, you see, that “didn’t apply to us” because we were “different”. We didn’t make as much as others. We had more expenditures than others. On and on the excuses went for many years. Read more

Balance Transfers and Consolidation Loans: Yes or No?

Balance transfers and consolidation loans can be powerful tools to help people eliminate debt faster. They can also be a train wreck leading to the accumulation of more debt.

How can you be sure that using one of these options to get debt under control is best for you?

Personally, we’ve used balance transfer and consolidation options that have saved us a ton of cash. We’ve also used these options and have had them lead to more debt and bigger financial trouble than we had in the first place.

I want you to avoid the mistakes we made using balance transfers and consolidation loans and to learn how to use them wisely as you pay off debt and build wealth – IF that is the right choice for your individual situation.

Here are some questions you can ask before you sign on the dotted line and reroute your debt somewhere else. Read more

4 Reasons Why You’ll Never Be Debt Free

Debt Freedom Will Elude You Forever Unless You Do These Three Things
Debt Freedom Will Elude You Forever Unless You Do These Three Things

You’ll NEVER be debt free. EVER!

Does that thought scare you? Good. I want you to experience some serious fear when you read that line.

Why, because fear can be an astronomical motivator.

Back in December, I wrote a post giving 7 Reasons Why You Can’t Get Out of Debt. I feel like I need to expand on that some more and share some additional reasons why some people will never, ever get out of debt.

I hear so many people saying that they simply can’t get out of debt.

I get it. Getting out of debt is hard. It takes work beyond what you can imagine for most people.

The reason for that is because many people with debt truly do have more debt than they can handle. Read more

colorful umbrellas

Can an Umbrella Policy Benefit You?

colorful umbrellas
Do you need an umbrella insurance policy?

Part of creating a smart total wealth picture includes living by the rule of “Insure What You Can’t Afford to Replace”. You’ve likely investigated or currently own insurance policies for your home, your car or your life.

However, have you investigated an umbrella policy and learned how one can potentially save you hundreds of thousands of dollars?

Read more