Work is part of our design. It’s how we participate in the economy, contribute value, and provide for people we love. But how much we chase and what we’re willing to trade for it are decisions that form us. A steward thinks carefully about what they’re earning for, what it actually costs, and when enough is genuinely enough.
This post is less about maximizing income and more about understanding the levers you have and choosing which ones to pull. So before we dive in, a few questions to anchor ourselves:
What does enough look like? Am I chasing money in lieu of a larger purpose? What are my motivations for wanting more money?
Rest matters. Play matters. Relationships matter. What good is a bigger paycheck if it comes at the cost of your family, your health, your sanity? Wrestle with what enough means in your season of life, and recognize what it might cost you to make more money.
If you are content, blessed be your contentedness and stop here! If after an honest look at yourself and your season you are looking to increase your income, keep reading.
It’s worth naming the anxious drive that gets pushed on social media. There’s an unhealthy spirit of hustle than goes beyond working hard and pushes towards monetizing every hobby and every minute of the day. I don’t want to sprint towards burnout, I just want to be strategic and in doing so create a little margin.
Remember that equation from the last post: Flexibility = Earning - Spending
Start where you are
The quickest way to increase your income is to make more at your current job. If you’re good at what you do and you’re valuable to your company, they want to keep you. And keeping you happy usually means paying you more.
If you have a flexibility fund and some runway, you have leverage because you’re not desperate. You can leave if they won’t pay you what you’re worth.
One way to do this is to approach your boss and ask what you need to do to level up, then go do that. Come back to your boss and revisit the conversation, and your boss will likely be quite happy to give you a raise and will see your drive and work ethic.
Another option is to do some research about market rates and upward mobility in your industry and role, then be ready to communicate the value you bring to the company (“I generated X in revenue” is stronger than “I want more money”) and ask for a number. If they immediately give you the raise, amazing! If not, ask them to outline a clear path to advancement for you. You’ll be able to sniff out if you are stuck in a stiff structure that will keep a ceiling on you no matter how fast you learn, at which case you may need to consider moving on.
I’ll never forget one of my first jobs. I made a strong case to my boss about what I was contributing, what the market rate was, how I was twice as efficient as when I started. They basically ghosted me. Months later, I found out from a Post-it note that my raise was 2.6%. This was a pay cut when you factor in inflation!
I realized I was in a job that would be a long slow slog to a higher salary, and I wasn’t crazy about the work anyways. So I left. I spent a few years exploring jobs I was excited about before pivoting to a totally new industry.
The point is: start by asking. If they won’t pay you what you’re worth, you have options.
Change jobs
I value loyalty a whole lot in personal relationships, but unfortunately the days of employer/employee loyalty for an entire career are mostly gone, and job hopping is often a way to get recognized for the increasing value you bring by giving you a pay bump. This might mean looking at similar roles at other companies, negotiating on starting salary, or even switching industries entirely.
I know job hunting is a drag. Updating resumes, interviewing, working hard on applications only to be ghosted by an application-eating algorithm. But if it means a 20-30% pay bump, that is worth a few weeks of discomfort. Online job postings often get swarmed and overwhelm recruiters that can’t possibly reply to the volume of applications that come in. Start with your handshakes and try to reach real people at real phone numbers and emails.
If you get a new offer, you can take it back to your current employer and see if they’ll match. Either way, you win.
Side gigs and freelancing
If you like your job or can’t leave right now, you have options for both extra cash and testing out long-term business ideas.
When quick cash would make a big difference, trade some time and skills for money. If you have extra breathing room to explore, test run any number of creative ideas that have the potential to balloon. The internet lowers the barrier to entry here - much can be done with little upfront cost, and you can scale it or shut it down.
I personally had a blast on TaskRabbit getting to know a new city and testing out what different home services were worth to people. For me this was my first step away from traditional employment and got my wheels spinning about what I could do on my own.
Start a business (maybe)
Owning a business is often the fastest path to significantly increasing your income. If you’re getting paid $20/hour as an employee, the company is probably charging $40-60/hour for your time. They’re not necessarily taking unfair advantage of you, they keep the difference to cover overhead, insurance, payroll, and make enough profit to make all the time and effort worthwhile.
If you cut out the middleman and offer those same skills directly to customers, suddenly you are doing the exact same work but you own the upside. The catch is you are not just doing the work now, you are also layering in marketing, sales, accounting, customer service, and admin work.
You might find you hate that extra stuff and prefer to focus on the work itself. Running a business is not just “do what you love and get paid more.” There is extra work, responsibility, and risk involved, but also the benefit of extra control, ownership, upside potential, and learning.
Learn new skills
Sometimes the problem isn’t your work ethic or your hustle. It’s that you’re in a field that doesn’t pay well. If you’re maxed out in your current industry and there’s no room for growth, it might be time to learn something new.
You don’t necessarily need to go back to school for four years. Trade schools, bootcamps, online courses, YouTube tutorials, all of these can teach you marketable skills in months, not years.
I spent three months pivoting industries by learning a new skill set with YouTube and online courses. The information is all out there and much of it is free!
What about passion?
If you can support yourself doing what you love, by all means do that.
The slippery slope is sometimes when you turn your passion into your business, you slowly stop loving it. Because now it’s not just the fun part. It’s also the marketing, the sales, the taxes, the difficult customers. Some people are better off keeping their passion as a hobby and doing something else for money. Something they’re good at, that pays enough, and doesn’t drain them. Then they use that money to fund their actual passions.
Enough
The goal here is to create enough margin that you have options. It also means recognizing when enough is enough - when the trade-off isn’t worth it and knowing when to rest instead of grind. You’re not a machine, you’re a human being with limitations that you need to honor with rhythms of work, play, and rest.
Back to where we started: Flexibility = Earning - Spending
If you’re making $50k and spending $45k, you’ve got $5k of margin per year. If you cut expenses to $40k, you’ve got $10k of margin. That’s double. If you increase income to $60k and keep spending at $40k, you’ve got $20k of margin. That’s 4x what you started with.
The more you widen that gap between income and expenses, the more options you have. The faster you can pay off debt, build savings, give generously, invest for the future, or just breathe easier.