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Make 15% More with Minimal Effort

Upskilling to increase your pay potential

Author

Grace Lemire
November 10, 2023

Hey,

Today we’re diving into some cool ways to make more money. Let us know what you’d like to see in future newsletters. Just hit “reply” and give us your thoughts.

🤝 A Message from Athena

Athena pairs leaders with elite Assistants trained in the art and science behind delegation (our library of 100+ playbooks), so your EA becomes an extension of you.

Don’t open your inbox to 1,000+ emails, miss valuable connections because you’re double booked (again), or end up in travel purgatory because you planned last minute. An assistant can do that and more.

Use this link to skip the waitlist and receive a $1,500 credit on your first month.

Action Step: Upskilling

Workers that take an upskilling program earn on average $8,000 more than people who don’t – around an 8.6% increase in their salary, on average.

Better yet, those that fund their own development receive an average salary increase of 15.3 percent! Take 15 minutes today to select a course within your industry that suits your current availability and enroll.

Here are a few of my favorite places to explore free upskilling opportunities:

If you work in marketing, HubSpot is the place to go. I took their free digital marketing course 2.5 years ago and it taught me a ton. They’ve got courses on everything from social media strategy, to inbound sales, to building a website.

Coursera is a more general learning platform, with courses on just about everything. Here are a few that might be of interest to you:

LinkedIn Learning is free for the first month, so if you enroll in a program, you’d want to complete it within that timeframe to avoid paying. They’ve got a ton of killer courses, with some being taught by top professionals in the field.

If you have a completed LinkedIn profile, it’ll even show you which courses could improve your profile based on the skills other people in your field have.

edX is different from other platforms because all of their courses are taught by professors at top institutions. Yep – learning from top IBM professionals and Harvard professors for free.

That said, some of their courses are paid or have an optional certificate you can purchase at completion of the course. Most are free though.

Quote

“The ability to do what you want, when you want, with who you want, for as long as you want, is priceless. It’s the highest dividend money pays.” - Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money

The life of the rich is often appealing because of the freedom and choice they have. It’s not that we particularly want the exact things they have, it’s that we want the option to buy whatever we want. We want the option to travel wherever we want.

If you’re ever feeling unmotivated in your financial journey, remember that more freedom and choice are on the other side. And if you haven’t read The Psychology of Money, you should – it’s the best personal finance book I’ve ever read.

Ibotta is a cashback app, primarily for grocery purchases. Users earn around $10-$20/month. It may sound small, but if someone offered you a $20 coupon on your groceries, I bet you’d take it. Plus, more active users earn $100-$200 per month (which is quite a bit more don’t ya think).

They’re currently offering 100% cashback on turkey, gravy, corn muffin mix, and other Thanksgiving items.

Make Money

🎙️ I (the gal who writes this newsletter) make $100k+ freelancing. Listen to this podcast episode to learn more about how I did it.

📦 Deliver packages for Walmart this holiday season. Make $20-$30/hour before tips.

Save Money

🙅🏻‍♀️ Join this creator’s No Spend November challenge.

🛫 Save money on holiday travel by transferring credit card points.

💸 Get exclusive discounts on gifts and experiences.

5 new opps this Friday! If you’ve got specific requests, let us know – this newsletter is for you!

If you live near an airport, consider driving for Uber this fall/winter. With the upcoming holidays, there will be tons of people flying home and looking for transportation to their final destination. Uber drivers make around $50k/year before tips.

The holiday season and travel also means there’s a massive demand for pet sitters while folks are away. Pet sitters make up to $59/night for 1 pet.

If you know your way around a camera, offer fall mini shoots in your local community. Families will be looking for opportunities to score a quick family photo for the Christmas card, and you can earn around $250 to $350 per shoot. 👀

This person is looking for a freelance designer to help with sales decks, sales collateral, and infographics.

Looking for writers to work on 800-1000 word product and service review articles.

Want to see a specific type of work? Just let us know.

Ask the Sidepiece Team

Answer: The sooner the better. Investing uses the power of compound interest – which basically means you get to earn interest on your interest.

For example, let’s say on Day 1, you invest $500. You earn 5% on that investment and on Day 2, you’ve got a balance of $525.

Now, on Day 2 when you earn interest, you’ll be earning based off your new total of $525. If you earned the same 5% interest again, your balance would increase by $26.25 this time around (an extra $1.25 than you earned on the first day).

This is a simplified example and the 5% earnings aren’t guaranteed of course, but you get the point. The earlier you can start investing, the longer your balance has to reap the rewards of compound interest.

I recommend using a retirement investment calculator to determine how much you need to invest to retire at your desired age.

See ya on Tuesday,

Grace