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By Kevin M
 What are you doing to make extra money these days? I’ll tell you what I’m doing—and it’s working! Freelance blog writing. I’ve often thought that the best way to make money—from a full time business or a side business—is to find something you’re good at, something you’re already doing, and then monetize it. I’ve been writing on my own blog for over two years, so why not take what I’m doing here and “sell” it somewhere else for extra income? The best ideas are the simplest ones–that’s why this is working.
I’m of the opinion that most everyone could or should have a side business—some type of additional income stream that isn’t dependent on a traditional job. The way the job market has deteriorated in the past few years, having a side hustle (or two) may be the best insurance against a career crash-and-burn. Put another way, multiple income streams are fast becoming the wave of the future. It’s mostly a matter of deciding which ones you’ll use.
Could you be a freelance blog writer?
Continue reading The Perfect Side Hustle: Freelance Blog Writer →
By Kevin M
 I don’t normally write much on economics, largely because I think its one step above fortune telling—maybe. You look into the tea leaves (“economic data”), sift it around a bit and make predictions about what you think is happening and more particularly, about what you think WILL happen.. Hence the fortune telling analogy.
So why am I sticking my hand into this hornets nest of omniscience? Mostly because I write about personal finance, and I’m of the opinion that personal finance without some concept of economics is akin to taking off in an airplane without radar. How do you know what to prepare for if you have no concept of what it is you’re heading into?
Even though my crystal ball is still malfunctioning, I figure I’ll take a stab at what I think is happening in the economy and where I think we’re heading. Heck, even without it I doubt I can do a more laughable job than the people who do it professionally, also known as “economists”.
Warning: this won’t be light reading—and for some, it won’t be at all pleasant.
Continue reading A View From the Economic Cliff →
By Kevin M
 One year ago—just about to the day—I took my first stab at this topic in Why Earning More Money is More Important than Frugality. It was one of the most popular posts I’ve done in the two years that I’ve had this site up and running. It seemed for a while that I’d covered the topic as thoroughly as I could imagine, but the subject has hit the blogosphere with a vengeance in the past couple of weeks stimulating additional thinking.
That doesn’t mean I’ve changed my original thoughts on frugality—quite the opposite. I’m now even more convinced that I was heading in the right direction on the first go round. My comment on Len Penzo’s 100 Words On: Why Frugality Has Its Limits made me realize that the subject is even more important than I imagined and that it’s time to take it on with some fresh ideas.
Continue reading How Frugality Becomes Counterproductive →
By Kevin M
Money Reasons did a review on a book called How Rich People Think. I commented on the post, and it got me to thinking about some issues that may go deeper than rich versus non-rich. As much as we might want to think of rich and non-rich as a state of being, there are components to each that make them happen—a mechanical process perhaps.
Much of that seems to come down to how we think about money. Money is the conventional dividing line between rich and poor, but it seems that our attitude toward it—whether we see money as an obstacle or as an opportunity —seems to have a huge impact on where we go with it.
So how exactly do we define obstacle and opportunity mindsets as it relates to money? Rather than attempting a deep analysis, we might be better to focus on examples of each type of thinking. In this way, we can not only see our own thinking, but we might also see how it either holds us back or pushes us forward.
Continue reading Is Money Your Obstacle – Or Your Opportunity? →
“You have to spend money to make money” is a popular business adage but the wisdom of this advice can be applied to your personal finances as well.
Spending money in business is all about assessing risks, taking chances which will grow your brand, and looking for opportunities. These are all attitudes you should take toward your personal finances in order to make your money work even harder, and to have the skills and knowledge to make the best investments.
Successfully making money by spending it will mean following these four tips to ensure you choose the right spending options which will make you money.
Continue reading How to Make Money by Spending Money →
By Kevin M
Jobless recovery–that’s an obvious oxymoron if ever there was one. I first heard the term coming out of the last recession in the early 2000s. Then as now, the economy was somehow miraculously growing without worker participation. Now the term is starting to be heard in connection with the latest “recovery”, and it seems just as meaningless now as it did back then.
Do you ever get the feeling that most of what economists mean when they talk about “the economy” is a semi-worthless pile of possibly bogus statistics?
Mark Twain was credited with saying, “there three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies–and statistics”.
To that I say a big, fat AMEN!
If you have a sense that economy isn’t quite recovering, you’ve got a lot of company—I mean apart from just me. A recent article from CNNMoney (posted on Yahoo!Finance), titled How the middle class became the underclass confirms our worst suspicions.
“Incomes for 90% of Americans have been stuck in neutral, and it’s not just because of the Great Recession. Middle-class incomes have been stagnant for at least a generation, while the wealthiest tier has surged ahead at lighting speed… While globalization has lifted millions out of poverty in developing nations, it hasn’t exactly been a win for middle class workers in the U.S.”
Continue reading How Are You faring in the “Jobless Recovery”? →
By Kevin M
 You’re over it, all of it—the job, your career, the nine-to-five routine, the morning commute, the cubicle in the corner—you want to ditch it all and finally start your own business.
You’ve already decided what that business will be, and now you’re setting down to consider the details of how you’ll get it off the ground. There’s a major choice to be made: buy an existing business, or build your own from scratch.
Which route will you choose?
Continue reading Buy a Business OR Build One From the Ground Up? →
By Kevin M
 Are you thinking about starting your own business? If so, you have a lot of company. According to the Department of Labor, more than one million new businesses are formed each year. Depending on the source quoted, somewhere between 50% and 90% will fail, usually in the first year.
Why do so many businesses fail? And if you’re planning to start a new business, how can you avoid becoming one of them?
Some business ventures fail for bad luck, but probably far more fail for causes that were not only known up front, but could have been prepared for in advance.
Continue reading Why Most New Businesses Fail – And How Not to Become One of Them →
The American Dream – what it is, and what it isn’t
By Kevin M
There’s a growing perception that the famed “American Dream” is dead. You see it written about, discussed in the media, and books on the subject are even coming out. The housing industry has collapsed, sucking out economic activity, jobs, home equity and even mobility.
Housing is, after all, very essense of the American Dream–or is it?
Writer and historian James Truslow Adams, the man who coined the term “American Dream” in his book The Epic of America, written in the depths of the Great Depression in 1931, had a rather different concept. He defined it as…
“…that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement…It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”
Continue reading Is the American Dream Dead now that Housing is in the Tank? →
By Kevin M
Welcome to the 21st Century, where job security is a thing of the past! No one wants to think about this, but because of technology and globalization, the possibility is very real that many jobs and careers that have recently disappeared aren’t coming back.
There may be a temptation to think that you have nothing to worry about because your job or career isn’t immediately threatened. But that’s just what many people in customer service, information technology and many other fields thought just a few years ago before their functions were moved overseas.
There are almost no jobs that can’t be replaced by a machine, a computer software system or a lower wage worker in some other country. The economic landscape is changing and though we may not like it, we have no choice but to adapt. Are you ready?
There is no more job security
Continue reading All Jobs are Temporary! (And What You Can Do About It) →
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General: Any information in regard to money, credit, personal finance, or in regard to any other monetary topic, provided or shared on OutOfYourRut.com is presented for information and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. It is intended to provide general information only and does not constitute personal financial advice in regard to your specific circumstances...MORE-->
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A View From the Economic Cliff
By Kevin M
So why am I sticking my hand into this hornets nest of omniscience? Mostly because I write about personal finance, and I’m of the opinion that personal finance without some concept of economics is akin to taking off in an airplane without radar. How do you know what to prepare for if you have no concept of what it is you’re heading into?
Even though my crystal ball is still malfunctioning, I figure I’ll take a stab at what I think is happening in the economy and where I think we’re heading. Heck, even without it I doubt I can do a more laughable job than the people who do it professionally, also known as “economists”.
Warning: this won’t be light reading—and for some, it won’t be at all pleasant.
Continue reading A View From the Economic Cliff →