Increasing your income

Increasing your income is perceived to be a hard thing. Your salary is usually the primary source of income, and employer's don't like to give out raises just so we can all fatten up our bank accounts. So how can you speed up your accumulation of wealth without a raise?

The good news is there are lots of opportunities out there for enterprising people. One of them is taking advantage of free money. There are many sources of it, which is great because not everyone will be comfortable with all of them. So here is a list of things I've done so far:

• Take advantage of store promotions. This netted me $20 in free gas.


• Find out what deals and coupons you can get from your company. This saved me $150 in groceries.


• Open accounts and earn free gifts. I scored $50 on this promotion. I got another $200 from opening credit cards.


• Use a balance transfer to earn interest. I make about $60 a month off this.


• Cash those checks from your CC that auto-enroll you in their credit protection program then cancel a month later for no cost. I've made $20 on this not long ago.

For those of you who don't like doing the promotion deals, or just can't seem to find them, you still have options. I started doing side gigs late last year just to pad my resume. I never thought it'd bring in any significant amount of money, but boy was I wrong.

So far this year, I've made a decent amount contracting, and I've got an invoice that I'm submitting next week for another payment. My only regret is that I didn't start doing this sooner!

How about you? Are there things you could be doing right now to increase your income? And if there are, why haven't you done them yet?