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2 Guaranteed Ways to Stop Stressing About Money

We’ve all been there: bills are due, things around the house keep breaking, a child gets sick, we of course need to eat, and basically the expenses just don’t stop rolling in.

I would say our “low” point was right after our first daughter was born (this was about four years ago). I had quit my full-time job when she was born and was just starting to break into freelancing. My husband was working for himself in construction and remodeling. We had just gotten back from a week-long family reunion (that my parents so graciously paid for or else we would not have been there) which meant my husband missed an entire week of work. We had savings, but for a few months, we were forced to make so many withdrawals that we were practically down to nothing.

I hated that feeling. Every day I woke up with a pit in my stomach. We lived in a very, very modest house (we purchased our first home for less than $150K), we ate pasta with sauteed onions for dinner multiple times per week, we didn’t go out to eat, and we by no means went shopping for fun. We were on a super tight budget, and even then we were still just scraping by.

Can anyone else relate to this?

Stressing about money sucks, period. And heck, I’ll say it, being on a tight budget sucks, too!

Fast-forward four years later (now), and we’ve completely changed our situation. I can honestly say that I haven’t been stressed about money (in that sense) in a while, and it feels incredible. I’m sleeping better, I’m happier and have a healthier outlook on life, my relationship with my husband is better than ever, and I’m truly enjoying life.

Want to know what I did to stop stressing about money? Grab a cup of coffee, this one’s a long one…

Six Smart Financial Moves for Future Millionaires

Whether your goal is to become a millionaire by a certain age or to save a set amount of money so that you can retire early, the way to get there is deceptively simple. Save more, spend less. It sounds easy, but if it were easy then everyone would do it. Here are a few tips on how to build your wealth.

1. Clearly Define Your Goals

When you decide to start getting serious about saving money, it is a good idea to have a set of goals in mind as well as a plan for how to reach them. Think about writing down a business plan of sorts, with a timeline, goals, and small clearly defined actions that will allow you to reach those goals. It is very important to be clear about what you are trying to accomplish, whether it is retiring early with a set amount of money in the bank, saving money for your children’s future, or something else.

2. Pay Yourself First

With any income you receive, whether from your full-time job or a side hustle, pay yourself before spending money on anything else. This means to put money towards savings before you start spending your income. Some people put a set amount into savings every month, and those that have a more variable income will sometimes save a set percentage of their income towards retirement, other investments, emergency fund savings, or college savings funds.

3. Have a Side Hustle or Two

Frugal Millionaires know that while having a full-time job is a great source of income, you are not limited by your FT salary. You can always start working on the side to increase your income, and if you’ve already been living on your full-time salary alone then you can devote your side hustle income entirely to meeting your financial goals faster.

My side hustle is blogging (learn how to start your own profitable blog here!). This month, I’m on track to make close to $700, and I spent maybe 8 hours this month blogging! It took some time to build up an audience and create posts, but now my income is steady and dare I say…passive? Which leads to the next point…

4. Set Up Passive Income Streams

Passive income is money that you earn without having to do very much for it after an initial output of effort. Something like writing an eBook and self-publishing through Amazon, designing and selling a course on Udemy, or even simply selling t-shirts and stickers with a logo you designed are all ways to earn passive income.

5. Always Have Insurance

Frugal millionaires like to cut costs in order to put more money towards their financial goals, but having proper insurance will save you money if you are ever in the position of needing to use it, and is not a smart way to cut costs. Renter’s or homeowner’s insurance, good car insurance, life insurance, and health insurance are all important and well worth the cost. Visit this link to learn more.

6. Maximize Your Tax Breaks

Never pay more in taxes than you are legally required to. This means fully funding your IRA and any other pre-tax retirement accounts you have, investigating whether you should itemize your deductions or take the standard deduction, and following any other advice your accountant provides you.

Through setting clear goals, increasing your earning and saving while minimizing your effort, and protecting yourself from financial catastrophe, you should be able to meet your savings goals. With common sense and determination, you can be a millionaire.

Our Four-Step Plan on How to Become a Millionaire

Today I’m getting back to the roots of this blog: Our journey on becoming millionaires.

John and I are just your average couple. We both work full-time with average salaries. We have our own side businesses. John works in construction and gets roughly one job per month. I am a freelance writer and blogger, making between $500-$3,000 extra per month (you can read my income reports here). We’re not unlike any other couple or family that I’ve met. We have kids, we have bills, and we work hard.

However, John and I have a big goal to become millionaires at some point in our lives (the sooner, the better). Here is our four-step plan on how to become a millionaire. As a disclaimer, this would be a “perfect” scenario. I know life can, and most likely will, throw us curveballs that will set us back. One of us might get laid off, we might have a medical emergency. You can’t predict the future; but I think it’s always good to have a plan and goals in mind 😉

Six Figure Business Ideas: How to Start a Six Figure Business

Are you ready to start a six figure business? Do you dream of one day working for yourself and bringing in more than enough income to support your entire family? If so, now’s your chance. Don’t wait any longer; instead, let 2016 be the year you decided to make a change. Below are top six figure business ideas that you can do from home.

Six Figure Business Ideas

I’m first going to share my two favorite ways of making money: freelance writing and blogging. I don’t make six figures (yet), but I also don’t work full-time on my side hustles. They’re merely a fun hobby of mine that just so happen to bring in a few hundred to a few thousand extra dollars each month. You can view all of my income reports here.

Freelance Writing

Freelance writing can be an incredibly lucrative career. I started out making $25 per post and now make almost $300 per post. That adds up big time. I can spend just a few hours per week writing and make well over $1,000 per month on my efforts. Holly Johnson, who blogs at Club Thrifty with her husband, will invoice more than $225,000 this year in freelance writing. She recently created a course to help those that want to become a freelancer called Earn More Writing. Her course is packed full of information on how to get started freelancing, where to find jobs, how to raise your rates, and more!

Blogging

This is where I plan on building my own six-figure business. I love, love, love blogging. I started this blog in 2014 and am now making over $2,000 per month blogging. Growing a blog and earning a full-time income from it takes serious time, but it can be extremely lucrative for those that work hard and keep at. If you love writing, I highly encourage you to start your own blog. If you do so through my Bluehost link, you’ll receive an exclusive discount, a free domain name, and I’ll give you a copy of my book – The Beginner’s Guide to Blogging – for free!

Have an idea for a blog name?! You can check available domain names here:

And, if you’re not sure how to make money blogging, I created a very specific course on how you can make money as a web hosting affiliate. I use and love Bluehost, so that’s what I recommend to readers looking to start a blog. When they make a purchase, I get a kickback at no extra cost to them.

My course – How to Make Money as a Web Hosting Affiliate – will show you exactly how you can make thousands per month helping other people start a blog! It’s super fun and has been very lucrative for my family and I.

Publishing

Nowadays, you can write and self-publish your own books on platforms like Amazon Kindle or Gumroad. I used Gumroad for my book, but have heard wonderful things about Amazon Kindle. Writing and uploading is the easy part; it’s the marketing and promoting of your book(s) that will take time. However, if you’re a good author and you know how to market yourself, you could easily make six figures per year from book sales.

Don’t believe you can really make that much self-publishing your books? Check out this story in Forbes featuring a writer who made $450,000 from Amazon publishing in one year.

Buy, Refurbish, Sell

Do you love garage sale-ing, shopping for antiques or fixing up older appliances/furniture and making it like new? If so, why not start a business doing what you love? An old boss of mine made $800 per month re-selling items she found at garage sales. She spent roughly 15-20 hours per month finding old items and then listing them on eBay for a profit. By scaling the business and investing more time into it, one could reach the six-figure income level in no time.

The same goes for refurbishing furniture. I repainted a dresser I bought off of Craigslist for $15 and could have sold it for $200. I’ve also repainted our $100 Craigslist kitchen table and am about to start on a heavy-duty dresser for my daughter’s room that we got for free. Between Craigslist and Goodwill, there are gobs of stuff people are looking to get rid of for little to no money. Make it your job to fancy it up and sell it for a profit!

Make Money Doing What You Love

We all have different passions and hobbies. If you want to make big money, you have to figure out a way to leverage your talents so you can earn a six-figure income. My husband, for example, works in construction. He loves fixing up houses and making them custom. There are many routes that he could go – he could flip properties, manage his own rental properties, be a licensed contractor and hire subcontractors to do the labor, start a blog on renovating homes and make money via advertising and affiliates, or a combination of the above.

Or, perhaps you like doing a bunch of different things but don’t want to be tied down to one field. You could freelance write and bring in $2,500 per month, create and sell items on Etsy for $1,000 a month, run your own blog for $3,000 a month, manage rentals for $1,000 a month, walk your neighbors dog during the day for $500 a month, and refurbish furniture for $1,500 per month. Before you know it, you’re making six figures a year by doing what you love. (I know all of this would require a decent amount of time on your part and that everyone’s circumstances vary; these are merely ideas.)

Do you run a six figure business? If not, what type of business would you start?!

Why Do You Want More Money?

Happy Thanksgiving Eve, everyone!

I’ve been thinking recently a lot about the “why” behind doing what I do. For any new readers, I am a wife and mom to two toddler girls, I work full-time, I freelance write and I blog. Not to mention cleaning the house, running errands and all that. To be honest, I don’t feel like it’s too much, but I do have very little downtime. When I’m home, I’m normally doing something productive (I count playing with my kids as productive, haha) except after 9:00 pm. Then, I watch a show with John and we go to sleep. I really love my life, but the busyness of it all recently got me asking “Why?

Confessions of a Work-from-Home Mama

I started my journey into motherhood and working from home at exactly the same time. Three years later, I’ve added another baby to the mix and more to my plate when it comes to working from home. While working from home is what many believe to be the best of both worlds, all is not what meets the eye.

These are my confessions of a work-from-home mama.

How to Be a Freelance Writer

Do you want to be a freelance writer?! I have been freelancing for more than four years as a side gig and consistently make over $1,000 per month. You can see my income reports here! I have FT job, two toddler little girls, another girl on the way, a husband and a big house I take care of. I love my life and love having extra spending money each month!

There are many ways to get your foot in the door when it comes to freelancing. I first recommend you start your own blog to develop contacts, guest post and use your blog as writing samples for when you apply for freelance writing positions or work for a content mill (like Demand Media) to get your feet wet. Content mills usually will hire inexperienced writers because they typically pay less than most other clients, so it’s a good place to start and gain experience. You can pitch article ideas to print and online magazines. You can search websites like oDesk or Elance and so on and so forth.

Three Simple Ways I Make Money Blogging

I’ve been very transparent around here lately regarding blogging and my hopes for the future (if you’re new, I have a goal to make $10K per month within one year, and I’d like most of that income to be through blogging). I’ve been at this blogging thing for a little over a year now, and it seems like I’m finally starting to make a little headway in this whole income thing.

A little background: I started my blog to make money; I did not start it just as a hobby. If you’re looking to do the same, I have an eBook coming out in January that will help you set up your own blog that you can use as a business to make money. I’m so excited about it, and I hope you are too!

I took my blog very seriously at first, and then I sort of fell off the bandwagon a few months in. I didn’t stop blogging, but I stopped trying to monetize, I didn’t have an editorial plan, and I just didn’t have a general direction at all. My book can help you make sure you don’t fall into the same rut.

So, I didn’t really begin taking my blog seriously again until September of this year. This month, I made $380 from my blog which will be reflected in my next income report. That’s not much, but it’s something. Today I wanted to share the three simple ways in which I’m monetizing my blog.

September Freelance Income

I set a goal a few weeks ago of making $10K a month within one year. To clarify, that is one year from October, not September, since I set the goal toward the end of September. But, it’s kind of funny (well, ironic maybe?) that this month was my lowest freelance income month in a while (and by “a while,” I mean three years).

However, I am committed to being open and honest with my readers. In a way, it’s good that I’m basically starting from nothing, as hopefully I can encourage those of you who also don’t have a huge clientele that this can be done.

So, let’s take a look at my freelance income for September.

10K per Month in One Year Challenge

Hi everyone! How is everyone’s week going? It’s Friday, so that’s a good sign 😉

My week has been great! A week full of work with a little bit of fun mixed in (a trip to The Fresh Market for pumpkins, fresh coffee and dessert!) – nothing better. Tomorrow I’m working from home and plan on relaxing this weekend with my family. My girls have been so tired all week after daycare, so I haven’t seen too much of them and I want to make up for it this weekend with lots of quality time. Cami, my 3-year-old, has actually been asking to “go rest” when she gets home from daycare, and she usually ends up falling asleep for the night 🙁 This is at roughly 6pm, by the way. (Perhaps this is why she wakes for the day at 5am, haha.)

Today I wanted to elaborate a little bit more on my “Life Update” post from earlier this week regarding my goal of increasing my freelancing and blogging income to $10K a month within one year.