When discussing matters of personal financial management and budgeting, two common advices in response to tight resources are; cut on your expenditure or increase your income. Though undesirable, the former is often the easier option in the short term. The latter, despite being preferred, is never easy – it’s more of mere theoretical advice to most if anything.
However, with rising inflation and a rising cost of living, it is advisable to constantly consider ways through which you can increase your income. There are a number of ways this can be done. Among them is getting a better paying job, expanding your business or starting a side hustle while in employment.
This sounds easier said than done. This is because it is not so easy to get a new job, a salary raise or a stable business in such a competitive economy.
Today’s article zeros in on one particular concept that can help us to raise our income levels. This is the concept of value.
In one of my previous articles on this platform, I explained how money respects value and not time. The more value you add to yourself or your business, the more money you are likely to attract.
So here are five easy ways through which you can improve your value in order to improve your income.
The first way is to be authentic and honest with yourself about your spending habits. One of the reasons why people struggle financially, despite having numerous salary increments overtime, is that they are not financially honest with themselves.
Whenever their incomes rise, their expenditure rises even higher. By becoming honest with yourself and living within your means, you will improve your value in that you will have mastery over your expenditure patterns. This will in turn allow you to better benefit from gains in your income.
The second way to improve your value is by increasing your technical worth. You can do this by going back to school, horning your leadership skills, reading books, working on your communication skills, improving your speed and accuracy of execution and developing a strong personal brand. When you work on your technical worth in this manner, you increase your chances of promotion or employability. So instead of focusing on that promotion that has delayed or that better paying job you hope for, you can focus more on improving yourself as it will give you a better chance to succeed when the opportunity comes.
The third way to improve your value is through research and differentiation. Look at your sector, industry or area of expertise and identify things that can be done better or communicated more effectively. Once you do so, begin to fill those gaps by doing things in a way that no one else does. For example, if you are in business, research on the quality of customer service that your competitors are offering.
If you distinguish yourselves as a business and begin to offer a kind of customer service that your peers are not offering, you will get a higher number of customers and customer loyalty compared to your competitors and this will increase your revenue. The same principle applies at an individual level.
The final way to increase your value is to be consistent in doing the above listed things. Everyone wants to associate themselves with durable products, services and brands.
Same applies to your personal or business brand. If you consistently improve your value, it will be easy for your employers or customers to notice this and hence entrust you with their money. People do not just pay for goods and services, they pay for brands – consistent brands.
When you constantly have a tight budget, you have two options; either to cut on your costs or to increase your income. Increasing your income is not as easy as it sounds but if you follow the above tips and raise your value, you will achieve it.
Be money smart, raise your value.
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