The number one money maker for 99 per cent of people

There’s a straightforward way to make enough money to cover your mortgage, buy food and clothes, pay for your kids’ haircuts, and leave enough money to spare for investing.

This method is not effortless, but you’re not afraid of hard work, right?

This top money-making method will also:

• Teach you new skills
• Help you meet new people
• Make you a valuable member of the community

All that and it earns you money!

So why don’t you hear about it on any of the ‘Get Rich Quick’ Internet sites?

Because there’s not much money to be made reminding people that their career and salary could be their number one financial asset.

Health is wealth

I was reminded about this last week. Having foolishly taken a few days holiday, I ended up confined to bed, hit by a flu virus that felt like a baseball bat.

(I always thought colds and flu were synonymous. Not any more!)

I’m a freelance writer and consultant, which means I get no sick days covered by an employer.

Usually this is a great deal for me, since luckily I’m very rarely ill. (One motivation when I went freelance a decade ago was I was fed up seeing colleagues taking 2-3 days off due to illness every month. I didn’t call in sick once since leaving university!)

But when illness does strike, it also hurts financially and professionally.

This flu was all-consuming. I was able to do a little work at the start of the week, and some caretaker stuff to keep certain projects ticking over. But I’d estimate the illness cost me £750, which comes straight out of my net worth.

I’m not even taking into account the knock-on effects on my side projects, or the tiny income Monevator makes. Nor that the market rallied hard since my last proper post on its lows, which could have presented some interesting trading opportunities for someone who could get out of bed without falling over.

The period of not earning money and disrupting my clients served as a reminder that while the time I’ve spent learning about investing and passive income greatly outweighs the time I’ve spent managing my career, I’m still hugely reliant on the latter as my main source of income.

This situation has got worse in recent years, since the bear market of 2007-2009 has reduced the value of my investment portfolio.

Yet I’ve also allowed my earnings to plateau or even drift downwards, after I re-entered the contracting business after my middling business venture.

Is your career delivering good returns?

Most readers have probably not taken the Catch 22 route of risking a lot with a start-up business and not seeing a financial reward (most start-ups fail), and then returning half-heartedly to their day job.

But it’s easy for anyone to grow too comfortable in a job – or bored by it – and to then to look to save a few pennies on coffee or cinema tickets instead of getting back to growing their main income.

This is a mistake: earning is as important as saving if you want to achieve some measure of financial security, especially when you’re young.

Warren Buffett is an anomaly; nearly all non-inherited wealth is built up through either entrepreneurship or by earning a good salary and reinvesting, not through investment returns alone.

That’s frustrating if you find investing and the markets more compelling than your day job, certainly, but it’s also an important reminder.

Hence this new series on Monevator, which is all about making more money through your primary income, whether you’re in a salaried position or self-employed.

In the next post in the series I’ll look at just what a good salary is really worth, financially speaking, so subscribe to get the next installment.