Kathy
in Memos & Musings · 8 min read
Thinking of buying the new iPhone 12? Or the newest oven in town for your baking needs? Or saving up for the renovation of your dream house? You might be looking to bolster your finances, more specifically boosting your income for present purchases or upcoming events in life or for earlier retirement goals. Usually for people who want to improve their finances, they focus purely on trimming their expenses. But let’s just face it, unless you are someone who spends extravagantly, cutting costs can only go so far to help. Furthermore, the more you try to trim your expenses that are close to necessities, your quality of life suffers. Therefore, for our article today we will look for various ways to increase our revenue streams without compromising our current living standards as we head towards a more joyful life!
This is by far, one of the most common approaches people go for. Maybe a year or two ago, there was the hype of becoming a grab driver as it was a popular way of earning big bucks. At that time, grab drivers were able to earn about an average of $27 per hour. But probably not anymore with the gradual changes in the rules and regulations for this industry, coupled with the current COVID-19 pandemic.
If you do not know how to drive, don’t worry as there are many other interesting part-time jobs available that can let you earn money as well! From time to time, there are companies looking for brand ambassadors or even part-time sensory panelists! Sounds pretty cool right?
The job scope of brand ambassadors includes promoting the products of the brand to reach out to a larger pool of audience, thereby converting into customers. A sensory panelist job, on the other hand, requires you to evaluate food products by doing taste testing before these products are pushed out to the market.
There are actually many interesting jobs that we can take up to earn some extra income. You do not always have to limit yourself to an office-style kind of job. And you can simply google for these job postings and you may even find yourself seeing some familiar retail brand names!
But if you prefer to stick to the usual ones, you can always choose from providing home tuition, web design services, writing assignments, translator services and even voiceover services! There are many opportunities for you out there, you just have to know where to look.
If you love creating content and sharing these contents with people around the world, you can try creating a YouTube Channel and uploading your video contents on your channel! So how do you earn money by being a YouTuber? First, you’ve got to accumulate a minimum of 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours over the last 12 months and set up a linked sense account to become a YouTube Partner. Once you qualify as a YouTube Partner, you can then unlock the various monetisation features such as channel membership, selling of merchandise and the super chat feature.
You can create content on all sorts of topics such as music, fashion, cooking, gaming or educational content. And there you have it, you are a YouTuber now!
If creating and producing videos are not for you, Twitch has gained a massive following over the years with many gamers and lifestyle vloggers hopping onto the app to interact with their viewers. Twitch is the world’s leading live streaming platform for gamers by Amazon. Streamers can earn money through subscriptions by subscribers who want to support their favourite streamers and to watch ad-free channels. They are able to cash out the ‘bits’ received from their subscribers. Isn’t it such a fun way to earn money?
Do what you love to do! What is better than earning money by doing things that you love to do at your own time? With established platforms like Fiverr or Upwork, you can now find clients and land gigs on your own terms online. If you have an interest in photography, you can try searching for photography assignments. You can also take on design related assignments, band gig performances or even provide coaching for a particular sport or music instrument.
The list goes on and on!
Find out what is your passion, open a side business and then earn some extra income from it! To quote what Joker from The Dark Knight says, “If you are good at something, never do it for free.”
Some people purchase properties for investment purposes and earn rental income from these properties. Some may also have spare rooms in their current home to rent it out to tenants. Whichever the arrangement is, this can help to earn some extra income on a monthly basis. Renting a room in a HDB flat can earn you about $550 – $800 a month while renting an entire condominium apartment can earn you about $3,000 – $7,000 a month depending on the location.
However, a word of caution: if you don’t own a property to rent out in the first place, maybe it’s not a great idea to purchase one for the sole purpose of earning another source of income. This is because buying a property for investment purposes is no longer as lucrative as it was 30 years ago! You may want to instead consider investing in REITS instead of owning the property.
Securities are financial instruments that can be traded. A few examples of securities are equity securities such as stocks, debt securities such as bonds and debentures as well as derivatives such as options and futures. You can earn varying returns based on the securities you are investing in. For example, if you have invested in the SPY ETF 2 years ago, you would have profited by about 30% till date! Investment or trading income when done correctly, can provide a relatively passive form of income to most people.
Increasing your disposable income does not have to be as stressful and time-consuming as it may seem. It can be something as uncomplicated as doing a part-time job on social media or a tedious yet fulfilling investment. What is important is to enjoy what you are doing in order to attain financial comfortability. Hence, these are 5 ways you can boost your income and we hope it inspires you to live a more joyful life!
About Kathy
Co-Founder of The Joyful Investors and Manager of The Moneyball Portfolio. I graduated with a degree in Economics in National University of Singapore (NUS). My previous experience with traders at the Merrill Lynch enable me to realize many counter-intuitive truths about how the financial markets work and to uncover the challenges faced by many new investors. We believe that investing can be astoundingly simple and want to make financial education understandable for everyone.
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