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| You can always offer yourself a 2nd job. |
I now know that the only way I will be able to work a second job is if I set aside time from my personal life to do that. And I have figured out a way to make this a reality: I am going to pay myself to do things I have been putting off doing. I don't have much money so I can't become my own full-time employee. It's more like an allowance I want to pay myself.
Here is how I plan to do it: say I have a lot of junk piling up in the garage (and I do). I keep putting off sorting that out. So what I am going to do is go buy a $50 gift card and set it aside. Then I will earn that gift card by working on the garage.
I think I can do a project like this every month, so that should mean by Christmas I will have over $500 in gift cards. That should pay for some presents and other nice things during the holidays.
But will I be able to stay on board with this plan? I don't know. I am only asking myself for one weekend a month. And $50 may not seem like a lot of money for a few hours' work but it is about the best I can manage for now.
And there are other ways I can hire myself as my own employee. For example, last year I paid for car washes about 8 times. I think I spent around $15 each time. So that is $120 I can pay myself to wash my car. And instead of sitting in the car and doing nothing I will be burning a few calories by getting out and scrubbing the dirt off by myself.
So what should I do with the $15 each time I wash my car this year? I can put that in an envelope and hide it from myself, or use it to pay for something else that I would normally buy anyway. But maybe the best decision would be to add that $15 to one of my bill payments. That should pay off our Victoria's Secret card pretty quickly.
There are no end of ways that I can pay myself to do the things I have been paying other people to do for me. It's not healthy for me to sit around and do nothing. I can pay myself $10 to cook a hamburger and french fries. I can pay myself $25 to cook a steak and green beans and toss a salad together.
Instead of eating out twice a week we can go eat with friends and split the costs with them. I should be able to save $150-200 a month on food. That sounds like a lot of money and it is. But I am not making any promises I may not be able to keep.
If I can save just $50 a month over last year on eating out I will be doing good. That $600 less than I spent last year, and it will pay off a small credit card I have.
I can do this. I just have to stick to the plan and remember that I am working for me now.
