Increase Your Income: Focus on Saving

I'm always on the hunt for new opportunities to make additional income or to add a stream of income to diversify income streams. That being said I run into quite a few people that are looking to increase their income and get away from the daily grind.

This is good in that you're starting to think about ways to improve your situation, but increasing your income whether through a promotion, better job or taking on more client work is tough and on top of that, when you increase your income in this way you are also increasing the amount of taxes you have to pay.

What I'll be talking about today is how you can "increase your income" or have more money in your pocket every month to either invest, start a new opportunity or have some fun!

Saving to Increase Take Home Pay

The header of this section is slightly misleading in that your take home pay won't actually increase, but it will feel like it has because you will have more money at the end of the month.

Step 1: Create a Budget
This is easier said than done as I still struggle with doing this every month, but its been proven that sticking to a budget and knowing how you spend your money will indeed save you money each month.

Step 2: Evaluate Bills / Expenses
The next step which coincides with the first is to evaluate your expenses. Take a look at your bills, such as home mortgage, car loan, utilities etc. and take note on how much you're paying out per month.

Step 3: Cut Unnecessary Expenses
Are you currently paying for a Netflix subscription you never use? What about cable...Do you use it? Can you cut the cable cost and use an alternate service? Do you have the right bandwidth internet plan or are you paying for more than you need? Cut back on these expenses and you can easily increase the amount of money you have at the end of each month and spend it on things you need.

Step 4: Renegotiate Bill Payments
Are you paying too much on your mobile plan? You can contact your provider and see if they can offer a cheaper plan or negotiate a cheaper cost on your current plan. Shop around for an alternate provider, you might find a better price and plan. (I did this at the end of this year and I cut my mobile bill in half.) You can do this with quite a few of your bills, the worst that can happen is that you pay what you pay now, so why not try?

There are so many ways in which you can save money every month and I plan to write more on this topic, but I think this is a good start for anyone to help them begin saving money. All of the steps mentioned above are also worthy of an entire post dedicated to just that. Maybe I can expand on some of these.

Let me know your thoughts! What would you like to read about next?