Many people, including high-wage earners, are struggling financially and living paycheck-to-paycheck. Here are five simple Baron strategies that will help you increase your income and savings.
1. Find a coach or mentor and expand your network. One of the quickest ways to increase your income is to change the people with whom you spend the majority of your time. It is often said that if you take the median income of the people with whom you spend the majority of your time, that number will serve as an accurate predictor of your income. Forming mentoring relationships and networking with individuals who have achieved a higher level of financial success will expand your knowledge and expose you to new investment ideas and unprecedented opportunities to build wealth.
2. Get paid what you are worth. If you are an employee, that means going after higher-paying jobs in your industry. If you are a business owner, that means going after larger clients and deals. It is important to make sure your time is directly aligned to where the lion’s share of your income either is or is going to be, and to make sure that you are doing the most important activities every day that will change the condition of your life or business financially.
3. Reduce your expenses. Cutting your expenses is an easy but significant way to boost your net income. You can increase your income by thousands of dollars by consolidating your long-term debt and reducing your interest rates; doing comparison shopping and buying products in bulk; purchasing consolidated services; and doing a better job of budgeting and planning to reduce late fees, bounced check fees and penalty fees.
4. Buy assets that produce income. By keeping your expenses low and investing in income-producing assets such as rental real estate, tax liens, dividend-paying stocks, options on stocks and corporate bonds, you can generate a stream of passive income that over time will replace your earned income from a job, allowing you to retire years or even decades earlier.
5. Start a business to increase your income and tax deductions. A small or home-based business can be very profitable and can also save you thousands of dollars through tax deductions every year. You can work with your accountant to take advantage these deductions now by adjusting your withholdings to immediately boost your take-home pay.
Remember, it only takes a little bit of intelligent thought and action to make a big difference in your bottom line.
William R. Patterson is CEO of The Baron Solution Group and The Warcoffer Capital Group, LLC. He is an internationally recognized wealth coach and business coach who has been a featured guest on over 300 television and radio programs. William is a two-time award-winning lecturer and national best-selling co-author of The Baron Son. His Web site, BaronSeries.com, is winner of three 2008 Web awards including Best Wealth-Building Site. For information and coaching on THE BARON SOLUTION Strategies for Wealth and Business Success, visit http://www.baronseries.com/coaching.htm.