Increase Your Income In 2012

Even in a rural area, you can develop many steams of income!

I am ready for the new year. 2012..........good things are on the horizon for me, I am sure. What about you? It has not always been easy for me since I am living with some stressful situations. I just try to deal with it the best I can, but do not allow it to penetrate my being.

When that happens, it would be very easy to fall into the way of others. Instead keep your mind open and focused. Keep thinking about your plans, your ideas, positive thoughts and plans only! That is what I do. If you allow others to affect you, then you will never get anything done or any success. Maybe instead.........your positive attitude will affect them! Something to think about?

I am working on so many different things. They are all the things I talked about previously on this blog. The many streams of income. I feel if I can concentrate on all these various streams...................I will have much success. Look at how someone who works a job, and only has that job for income...........and gives up at least 40 hours a week of their lives, for that measly bit of money. That is your life, and is that all it is worth? If you took that 40 hours a week and concentrated it on a variety of streams of income, you could very well, live your dreams!

Selling three eBooks, affiliate links on my blogs, renting space on my blogs to advertisers and selling guitar strings are all  my streams of income. They are all independent of each other. If one does well, and the others don't, I still have some money coming in. I am adding to my streams as I can. It is not a matter of having too many irons in the fire, but a matter of having more than one way to make money. Presently I am working on another homesteading book and this one should be a bestseller. What are your plans for 2012?

Copyright © 2011 Kathleen G. Lupole

All Photographs Copyright © 2011  Kathleen G. Lupole

If Money Were No Object

Photo Credit: Sam Mugraby

Yesterday on Face Book, Kim Kiyosaki asked if money was no object what would you be doing right now? I answered that I would be finishing the remodeling of my house and buying a brand new Tesla Model S car. But in all reality that might not be what I would be doing. Maybe I would be working on my business if that was gave the money to begin with. You have to keep working at it or it could be lost.

Having a business means you have to keep working or hiring someone to work for you. I know that would be the way to establish the passive income I so desire. But I also have a problem with depending on others to do things I feel I can do better than they. It seems to me that is when you get in trouble with people stealing from you or not doing their job correctly. Or maybe you are paying them and they are not doing their best because they feel they should be paid more. It is hard to just hand over your business to someone you hire.

That is another reason for your many streams of income. You make money from many different things until you have a little empire. I see it with so many people. Most of the stars do it. They make movies or television shows and then they do advertisement endorsements and then next thing you know they have a pet food company (Dick Van Patten), a salad dressing company (Paul Newman), a grill (George Foreman), a perfume company (Elizabeth Taylor), a jewelry company (Joan Rivers), a cosmetics company (Naomi Campbell), exercise equipment company (Suzanne Somers), a diet book (Suzanne Somers), etc.

So make a list of all the things you can do to earn money. The types of skills you have and what kind of income those skills could bring in. Or do you have something growing on your land that can be harvested and sold? Can you do a service for someone that would bring in a little money? All those things can add up a good sized income over time. So really think about it.

The Root Of All Evil Is NOT Money!

Photo Source: Smithsonian Institution

If you work at something long enough you expect to have some kind of success. Somewhere along the line even if it is small successes. Hard work usually equals success. Right? Well, not always. We can work and work and then the economy goes downhill. Politics start effecting all facets of our lives. The political arena will often cause the financial downfall of it's citizens. Which I see happening presently. You have to change the way you think and live. You have to become independent, self-sufficient, self-reliant. I am not saying this to scare you but it is important to provide for yourself. Not depend on others to do it for you.

Even working a job is depending on someone else. Now if you have a business of your own that is fine, but you cannot have all your eggs in one basket. Have several different ways to bring money in. That way if one goes down the others are still there. That is what I refer to as "many streams of income". And that is what we all want. Sometimes one stream has a slow season and maybe two of the others are so-so, but another one is really streaming! Makes up for the others. They all go through these times.

Start putting aside a little bit of money. Even if it is only $5.00 a week, a month or whatever you can. Put it in a savings account or your paypal account or even in an envelope in your dresser drawer. Put it away regularly and do not touch it no matter what. And if you do touch it, replace what you took plus add more. Just see how fast you can increase it. Then you won't be wanting to touch it for any reason. I know of someone who puts any five dollar bill she gets in change away. She saves all the five dollar bills and won't spend them. It adds up pretty quickly. I knew someone who used to put all change in a jar and he'd use vending machines at his job and would purposely use bills and not the change so he could add the change to his change jar. There are many creative ways to save money. Try some of you own!

My plan is to not live cheaply, frugally or tightfisted the rest of my life. I want to enjoy life. I want to do what I want, when I want, and how I want. What is wrong with that? I am not going to say that I do not like money. I do. I have lived with it and without it. It is much nicer to have it. And to say the root of all evil is money is very wrong. It is not. It is what people do to get that money or what they do with it once they get it that makes it evil.

According to Wikipedia:


Root of all evil is a figure of speech denoting something that causes all wickedness or suffering. By extension, it may be applied to any cause of serious problems. The phrase derives from a saying attributed to Jesus in the Apostle Paul's First Epistle to Timothy in the New Testament: "The love of money is the root of all evil" (1 Timothy 6:10, KJV). The expression is commonly misquoted as simply "Money is the root of all evil". A more accurate rendering from the original Greek may be: "For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil," (New American Standard Bible). This phrase may signify:

• Greed, the excessive love of money and other possessions.
• Money itself, and particularly wealth.

Welcome To Little Steps!

One of my many steams of income comes from my eBook,

My Homesteading Journey

Welcome to my new blog, Little Steps! I am hoping to share my knowledge with anyone who comes here looking for answers. Answers to what? Answers to living in the world we now have. A world of depression and economic uncertainty. Doctors now say that the biggest cause of disease and ill health is caused by stress. Stress that comes from financial struggles. And I am not talking about just people living at or below the poverty level. I am talking about people making what most consider to be good incomes. Makes sense to me. The reason being that people who are living at poverty, or below poverty levels, are used to it. They know what to do to survive. Not people with good incomes. Or people who USED to have good incomes. By the way, what exactly is a good income anyway? 

Everyone is looking for money. Everyone is looking for an easy way to riches. Everyone is searching for a way to eliminate debt. People are struggling financially the world over. If you are not rich you are suffering from no freedom. Freedom is only available to people with the means to pay their own way. To pay for their own health care. To pay for their own food, housing, transportation, etc. What to do? Such a big to do over the health care insurance that is being forced on us. Don't you think everybody would have it if they could afford it? So what happens if you just don't have the extra money for it? Do they throw those people in jail? Maybe they should, because then they could get their health care without having to pay for the insurance. Maybe that is what will have to happen. If you are stretched already trying to live from one paycheck to another, how do they expect you will be able to pay for another bill? And how much will that bill be? Health insurance is very expensive. Otherwise, everyone would already have it!  

I presently have eight different streams of income. Some provide more income than others. Some do well for awhile and then lose their momentum for a period of time. You have to work hard on each of them. But I have learned not to keep all my eggs in the same basket. If I am too dependent on one income and something happens to it then I would be out of luck. Luck? Not really luck but hard work. Even with hard work things happen.One other way to have extra income is by cutting expenses in other areas. Now I am not talking about living frugally..........even though I have written often on my other blog about living that way. I have decided I want to live the good life, but not by being a penny pincher or a tightwad. I have cut expenses in ways that have raised my standard of living. I will elaborate more about that in future posts.

I believe you need a goal list or a map of sorts. One that will keep you motivated to actually do what needs to be done to realize your goals. Little steps is what my husband calls it. Little steps lead to the bigger steps, to attaining one of your goals. You work on one of your little steps and that will enable to move up to another step, and soon those little steps have enabled you to attain one of your goals. Your goals can be whatever you want them to be. There are no rules in following your little steps. It is what you want to do with your life. Think about it.

Copyright © 2010 Kathleen G. Lupole

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