Tips to Increase Income and Not Work More Hours

by Paige Panzarello | Apr 19, 2019 | blog, 2019, investing, real estate, Uncategorized

Looking for tips to increase income and not work more hours? If so, you’re not alone.

According to CNN, millions of people are constantly looking for ways to increase their income.

The good news is, with the advent of the internet, it doesn’t matter if you’re looking for ways to make money at home, or online, there are now hundreds of ways boost your income.

And the best part about it? A lot of these side income ideas require very little work.

Tips to Increase Income and Not Work More Hours

1. Ask for a raise – This is probably the first thing to do. If you work full time, every $1 per hour raise means $2,000 more for you each year. So yes, it’s a stressful conversation to have with your boss, but it’s still worth it!
2. Change Banks – Move your savings over to a bank account that actually pays you a decent interest rate on your savings. CIT Bank pays 25x times higher than the national average.
3. Take Paid Surveys – one of the easiest ways to increase your income from home each month. There are tons of reputable sites out there that pay you to fill out surveys online. By completing a few surveys a day you can easily boost your income by up to $200 a month.

Best websites for paid online surveys:

Survey Junkie – Our favorite in terms of survey selection.

Swagbucks – Free $5 bonus for signing up.

Vindale Research – Free $1 for signing up. Some surveys pay up to $50.

4. Sign on to Airbnb – This is something that not nearly enough people are taking advantage of! If you own a home, consider putting a room (or the whole place) on Airbnb if and when you leave town.
5. Grocery Shopping Means Extra Dollars – Start by downloading the Ibotta app. One of the best money saving apps out there, especially for high-volume grocery shoppers, users can earn rebates on virtually any brand of item you buy. To get your cash back all you have to do is scan the items’ bar code, take a photo of your receipt, and the money gets credited to your account within 48 hours.
6. Lending Club – This is a website that lets you act as a lender and earn interest on your money by letting other people borrow from you. Essentially, you act as the bank, which is pretty neat. Lending Club is the world’s largest online credit marketplace connecting borrowers and investors.
7. Hard Money Lender in Real Estate – Real estate Investors are always looking for short term (6 to 12 months) financing when they buy houses to fix up and sell. The returns can run from 10% to 12% per project.
8. Monetize a website and make money blogging – Starting a blog is something that can forever change your life. With blogs, you are able to connect with people all over the world on topics that you are passionate about and can make $100 to “the sky’s the limit.” per month.
9. Do You NetFlix binge? There’s an app called Swagbucks. The next time you are watching Netflix (or doing whatever you do), pull out your phone and open up the Swagbucks app and click “Watch” and then pick a video. They will give you $5 to sign up and voila, you’re now making extra cash while vegging out.
10. Flip Flea Market and Garage Sale Items – Chances are you’ve been to a flea market and/or estate sale in your lifetime. And chances are you’ve thought to yourself that you could probably sell one of those items for even more than what you paid for it. Well, you’re definitely right. In fact, people make a living from it. Take Rob and Melissa at Flea Market Flipper for example. They make over $100,000 a year traveling to flea markets and flipping items for a profit.

Retirement – How Much Money Do You Need?

by Paige Panzarello | Jan 16, 2019 | blog, 2019, investing, real estate, Uncategorized

Christy Bieber at the Motley Fool writes, “Retirement is a milestone most of us will someday reach because few people work until the end of their lives. But only around one-third of Americans are very confident they’ll have enough money to live comfortably — and some may actually be too confident because we tend to overestimate how long we’ll stay in the workforce and underestimate how much healthcare will cost.”

I just flashed on a “what if.” What if one of us gets Alzheimer’s? We have a friend who was paying $8,000 a month for her mother’s care in a memory care unit. Even in some foreign countries, the cost can be $3,000 a month. I have not factored that into my retirement budget.

To make sure you’ll have enough money to live on during your golden years, it’s important to figure out how much money you need to retire. This can be more complicated than it seems because there are different theories and formulas.

To determine how much money to save for retirement, you should figure out how much money you plan to spend.

Once you have this number, you’ll consider all of your sources of retirement income to make sure expected income matches expected outflow.

If it doesn’t, you’ll need to adjust your expectations and scale down your expenses or — if you still can — find ways to increase the income available to you in retirement.

you may want to create a sample budget for how you’ll live as a retiree. Of course, the closer you are to retirement, the easier that is to do.

Estimating retirement spending using a budget

If you’re within a few years of retirement, you should be able to project spending in key categories including:

• Monthly housing costs
• Transportation expenses
• Food costs
• Taxes and insurance
• Clothing and personal care items
• Travel and entertainment
• Contributions to help out adult children or grandkids
• Healthcare

The big unknown is inflation. If you are 50 years old now, and rent increases at 5% a year, rent will double about every 14 years. Rent now at $1000 a month could be 2000 in 14 years when you are 64 and will double again in another 14 years to $4,000 a month when you are 78. That’s pretty tough to deal with on a fixed income.

The biggest threat to your retiree lifestyle is debt. You may be earning half your income when you were working, but your debt payments are the same. That puts you at risk financially. We recommend getting out of debt. That may mean you either downsize or sell your house.

What Happens If You Have Debts Upon Retirement?

by Paige Panzarello | Jan 9, 2019 | blog, 2019, investing, real estate, Uncategorized

For many people, retirement means living on a fixed income that comes from Social Security or a pension. Unfortunately, this is almost always significantly less than the income you made when you were working full-time. What happens if you have debts upon retirement?

While your income may be less, your debts may remain the same, which can lead to a few missed payments. If you didn’t pay off all your debt before retirement, you could be experiencing some financial stress with calls from debt collectors.

Your Social Security and pension cannot be garnished as a paycheck can. However, debt collectors may request a bank levy from the courts, which would allow them to take funds directly out of your bank account in order to repay the debt. A debt collector probably won’t go this route, depending on the size of the debt, because of the long and costly process. Should a creditor levy your bank account, however, it’s in your best interests to connect with a local attorney.

According to the Motley Fool, “We tend to think of debt as a younger person’s problem, but in reality, it impacts seniors to an unhealthy degree. An estimated 30% of seniors 65 and over still have a mortgage, and as of 2015, 2.8 million seniors aged 60 and older were on the hook for student debt.”

“The problem, of course, is that when you carry debt into retirement, you not only lower your chances of ever paying it off but also risk struggling financially when your debt payments monopolize too much of your limited income.”

So, if you’re about to retire and haven’t managed to pay off your various obligations, here are some tactics that will help you cope:

1. 1. Pay your costliest and least beneficial debts first. Credit cards carry the highest interest rate, and the interest is not tax deductible. Pay these cards off and then attack student loan debt or mortgage.
   2. Get a Job. If you’re entering retirement with debt and don’t want those monthly payments eating up too much of your income, getting a part-time gig to generate extra cash could be just the trick.
   3. Sell other assets. For example, if you own a larger home that’s not paid off, downsizing might serve the dual purpose of eliminating your mortgage and giving you a sum of cash to apply to other debts you might have.