Your Money Hustle

How To Make More Money Without Working More Hours

The key to high financial wellbeing is to make sure that your income and expenditure balance each month, and that some of that spending is for the future you i.e. repaying debt and building financial capital.

As I explained in my blog – Can you afford your job? – if you can’t reduce your spending any further then you will need to find a way to earn more money. Either you’ll need to work overtime, do an additional job or change your main job for a higher salary.

But before you focus on working more hours or looking for a possibly more demanding but higher paying job, I want you to have a serious think about how much time you devote to managing your money on a monthly basis.

In my experience - and I’ve interviewed in excess of 1,000 about money over the years – few people put aside enough (if any) dedicated time, on a regular basis, to manage their money properly. But being more intentional and proactive about your approach to money, including knowing where it all goes, can yield a lot of savings.

Whether it’s cutting spending on things you don’t value, need or want (e.g. subscriptions, socialising, eating out, fashion items or beauty products) or essentials that can be bought cheaper (e.g. food, insurance, borrowing, investments), the chances are that you could find savings.

Let’s say that you put aside two hours a month to review your spending. That would be about eight hours a quarter, about a day.

Let’s say that you could find savings of £250 per quarter, about £1,000 per annum. That would equate to earning about £57,500 after tax (230 working days x £250 saving).

Unless you earn more than £85,000 gross, that time you spend each month looking at how to optimise your money would be time well spent from a financial wellbeing perspective.

If you find it difficult to do monthly money planning sessions, perhaps looking at it as highly paid work might inspire and encourage you to change your ways.

As I said in my blog – Why your financial wellbeing isn’t about what you earn – it doesn’t matter how much money you earn, if you don’t know how to spend it wisely, you’ll never get ahead. Putting structured time aside regularly to review your money is an essential way to stay on track. And if you do earn more than £85,000 per annum, then hiring someone to do that for you could be a good move.