If you have been affected by the recession, perhaps by losing a source of income, you may not want to hear suggestions for turning a bad situation into an opportunity. In fact, the idea of turning challenges around for your own benefit is in line with the annoying soundbites that productivity gurus sell. But I firmly believe that it’s best not to let things happen around you without reacting and adjusting. Here are some ideas to keep you moving while the world is slowing down.
1. Reassess your finances. If your income has changed, you may find yourself increasing debt at a faster rate or worse. I suggest going back to the beginning by following the map set forth in Take Control of Your Finances. This involves reevaluating your goals, your income, your expenses, and organizing your savings and investments.
2. Consider your primary and secondary skills. If you are out of work, and particularly if you have experienced difficulty finding a new place of employment, it is easy to feel your skills are not appreciated. Perhaps this is a good opportunity think creatively about different ways to apply your skills or hone your other talents. In college, did you have a minor in a different area than your major? If you did, chances are you have marketable skills in some other activity. During my first two years of undergraduate studies, I had difficulty choosing my minor, switching from computer science to psychology. If necessary, I would enjoy pursuing either of these paths.
3. Turn your hobby into your own business. I have found that many people are reluctant to take the avocation they enjoy and turn it into a profitable endeavor. I can understand this; I work almost constantly these days between my day job and everything else I do. But if that day job were to disappear, there would be no question that I’d use this as an opportunity to ramp up my projects. I have already turned my hobby — blogging and building communities — into a business. Now my newer hobby is photography. I have tons to learn about this new hobby (and I still have tons to learn about personal finance), but if blogging were my “day job,” I might have take on photography as a more serious hobby, and possibly turn that into a business of its own.
4. Go back to school. Modern educational technology has made it convenient to earn another degree. You can take classes online in the comfort of your own home or you can go on campus and hang out with the young co-educational students. Do not focus on the return on investment (ROI) for the funds you put into additional education. Learning a new skill or studying an interesting topic has intrinsic value that can’t be measured by a financial analyst.
5. Consider frugality. I admit I’m not a big fan of most frugality tips out there. In the past, many frugal tips have required a lot of effort and therefore remained under the domain of people without other timely responsibilities. But online coupon websites and other modern technologies take a lot of work out of frugality, so this now is an option for more people. Frugality means different things to different people, so today’s recession provides an opportunity to explore and decide on where you can intelligently save money.
Check out this extensive list of frugal tips from Being Frugal.
6. Eliminate your credit card debt. Credit card interest is expensive. You don’t have to be frugal to realize that interest is in most cases an unnecessary expense if you spend less than you earn. If you’re out of a job, this can be difficult, particularly if you do not have enough income to cover the minimum payments. Call your credit card companies to see if they can assist you by lowering or forgoing your payments until your income returns. If not, perhaps they will lower your interest rate. It never hurts to ask, and ask a supervisor if the first customer service representative won’t provide satisfaction.
If you do have income, start the debt avalanche, the least expensive, quickest, and most efficient way to get out of debt.
7. Eliminate meat from your diet. I love a perfectly cooked, rare filet mignon. But meat, even steak from the grocery store, is expensive.
If you drop red meat, poultry and fish from your diet, you’ll find plant proteins cheaper than the equivalent amount of animal protein. The cheapest cuts of beef, such as ground round, average $3 per pound in U.S. cities (lean and extra lean); boneless chicken breasts cost $3.40 a pound; and canned tuna is about $2 per pound. Contrast that with dried beans and lentils at less than $1 a pound and rice well below $1 per pound… Even tofu, the chicken of the vegetarian world, is usually well under $2 a pound. Go Vegetarian to Save Money, MSN Money
Healthy diets help you save money later in life with fewer visits to the doctor.
8. Sell your extra stuff. The great thing about eBay is its enormous reach, bringing people from anywhere interested in owning anything closer together. There’s a market for practically anything transferable on the auction website. Sell your clothes, your furniture, your electronics, your art, your classic video games, and your baseball card collection gathering dust in the attic. Don’t expect to consistently make a lot of money selling your old items on eBay unless you own something truly rare. One drawback of the aforementioned reach is that lots of people are selling the same things you are.
But if you can create something original and use eBay to sell that product, you may be in a good position to earn a consistent income.
What would you add? How are you surviving this economic recession?
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