Ditching The Paycheck: Discover The Power Of Multiple Income Streams
Ditching the paycheck from your employer is rewarding. You can do it once you start to build passive income streams. You can help someone else reach their dreams or work to achieve your goals.
Comfort and fear could be preventing you from taking action to leave the false safety of your job. You may ask yourself, how could I ever leave my job? Why would I want to? I enjoy my job, and I doubt I could do anything better than what I have now. What if my employer finds out about the project(s) I am working on outside of work?
Risk is required if you want to be different from most people. That requires you to go against the grain. It would be best if you went against the herd mentality.
The Internet makes It easier to create multiple income streams. Of course, you will still need to put in the hard work. You can stop trading your time for money and have money enter your checking or savings account every month.
Related - The Power Of Not Fitting In
Risks Of Being An Employee
As an employee, you can clock in at the start and the end of your shift. As an employer and business owner, you do not have that option.
The average salary in the United States is between $40,000 to $60,000, depending on the state. With the rising cost of living and inflation, the average wage no longer goes far.
Two-income households have become more common. Gitnux reports that “over 61% of married-couple families with children have both parents working.”
More than sixty percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Employees have little control over how much they get paid. An employee can only make so much in one’s career field. Eventually, you will reach the peak of the money you can make in your chosen career.
The most significant risk of being an employee is you can be fired at any time. You can be replaced by or demoted to a contract worker. Your hours could be reduced, so a company no longer needs to pay you benefits. Your paycheck is at the mercy of your employer.
Employers do not need full-time employees as more positions become remote, freelance, and contractor roles. They may only have part-time jobs. They may only need to hire someone to perform specific tasks for several hours each month.
This means employers do not need to pay for healthcare or provide benefits as freelance and contractors become standard. It makes things simpler for the employer while also saving them money. It is not good for the employee, but an employee can be replaced by someone willing to work for less, someone more skilled, or by technology.
It is in the employers’ interest to reduce their bottom line as much as possible while still being able to provide their products and services to their customers. If that means firing employees or making them an independent contractor, so be it. It is just business. According to Monster.com, more employers are moving to contract workers.
Forbes writes, “It’s increasingly becoming clear that replacing humans in mundane, repetitive, and low-value jobs means people can be given more rewarding, high-impact tasks.” The Brookings Institution explains that artificial intelligence could affect every professional group. Highly educated white-collar workers risk the most exposure to artificial intelligence replacing their jobs.
Choices As An Employee
You have a few main choices as an employee if you want to work to increase your income. You could:
You can work a second or third job.
You could start a side hustle.
You can create your own business.
It is becoming more common for people to work multiple jobs due to the rising cost of living and inflation. The problem with always adding another job is you are sacrificing your time for another paycheck. Your job could end at any time.
I experienced this during the start of the Covid pandemic. I was working freelance jobs on Upwork. Due to the uncertainty of the unknown severity of COVID-19, employers canceled my contracts. Those contracts were never renewed.
You could start a side hustle. You could do this alongside your main job to make extra money. Common side hustles are:
You can drive for Uber and Lyft (car sharing) or deliver food (GrubHub, Uber Eats, et cetera).
You could freelance on the side of Upwork or Fiverr.
You could start your own website, newsletters, or YouTube channel to transition to making an online business.
The first two options are just ways to make extra cash. The third option is scalable and puts you in control of how much money you can make.
Related - 3 Types Of Business Structures
Transition From An Employee To A Business Owner
One of the most rewarding things you could decide to do is work to start working for yourself. You could transition from being an employee to self-employment to growing a business. This is not for everyone since there are more risks involved, but there are greater upsides regarding the amount of money you can make.
With a business, you can separate yourself from your business accounts with the proper business structure. You can work to find ways to scale a business from just you to hiring employees or contractors. You can make it a goal to make your business run on autopilot. That means that other people will be doing the work for you. You then only need to manage the most critical tasks of your business.
As a business owner, you would have to accept more responsibility for yourself, your employees, and your business than being an employee. A business is the best way to build multiple passive income streams because it is an investment vehicle.
There are costs and benefits to everything in life.
Why You Want To Have Multiple Passive Income Streams
As an employee, you trade your time for a paycheck. You could stop trading your time for money money by creating a passive income stream. With passive income streams, you make money as long as your product or service is available for people to buy.
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