Welcome back to Broke is Boring. In today's episode, we are going to talk about it is not expensive. You are just underpaid sister. So most things aren't actually out of reach. They're just out of reach right now based on your current income. What would you say to someone who says, oh, I'd love to do that thing, whatever it is, but it's just too expensive.
I would tell you to stop shrinking your dreams to fit your current paycheck and it's time to find a new paycheck girlfriend. I think when people are dreaming, they're trying to think about things. That they, that feel possible to them. And that's not a dream. A dream is something that feels impossible.
Now, once you set that goal, then you work backwards and you take the next right step to go towards that big goal. And budgeting is not the answer. It is when you're newly on your debt-free journey and you're trying to backtrack of all the things that you did to put yourself in that situation.
For sure. You gotta readjust yourself. But you can only cut so much. But you can increase your earning potential very quickly with the skillset and actionable items. Mm-hmm. You can trade time for money. You can create something that's going to make money when you sleep. You can buy a rental property.
There's different options that you can do to increase your income. Go drive for Uber or DoorDash for goodness sakes, but that is just gonna baby step you towards some extra income. Towards your goal. The, the first step is to just not accept the income that you have right now. It's possible to, to get more.
And as you're thinking about, okay, what kind of business could I do? Think about the types of things that can scale. Just as you mentioned, you could go drive for Uber. Yes. That will get you out of maybe your minimum wage job that you really hate that you're doing right now, and it will get you more flexibility.
However, you're still trading time for money in that and you can't scale that. Right. Uber does because they can just get another driver and another driver and another driver. But you as the driver can't scale that. I even found this with our rental properties, so perfect. Great. Right? We have an Airbnb.
Well, if that Airbnb is sitting empty, I'm not making any money. So that is a great business opportunity. It's passive, it's, you know, residual in that way. It will continue to pay me over and over and over again. But if that house is sitting empty or we have a long-term rental and we have a month gap between when renters are leaving and coming in, I'm not making money that month.
And so. I even challenge you to not settle for that. That's one stream of income for you, but don't have that your, be your entire income. Do something that is scalable, that you can continue to grow. I, and I've seen a variety of examples of this. Like for example we were looking at a, kind of like a campground.
One time we were looking at a campground and I said, okay, cool. There are 200 plots that people can have. But what happens then? Like if those 200 plots are all filled, we still can't scale any further in this business. But if you just have a, you know, open area that people can just come and set up their camp.
You have way more access to future income than if you're just limited to what you already have. You know, my, my husband and I have coached small business owners for years, and one of my most controversial things I've said over the years business related is. Go ahead and increase your prices. The customers that are going to support you will stick around.
And the people I've said that to were floundering in their business going under because they couldn't make ends meet because their prices were so low. And they were, they were doing a lot of sales, but they didn't have the margins that were keeping up with inflation and, and with rising costs. And I said.
Stand up for yourself. You have to increase your prices. If you are a if you cut hair and you need to increase prices because rent is increasing or something, it is okay for you to make a business decision because you need more income. We actually had this with a housekeeper once. She said, I can't clean for you anymore.
I can't do it for that price. 'cause she had moved and commuting too far with all the gas and extra childcare. And I said, oh, well we love you. What? What would you charge to stay? I'll happily pay more. I love you. Please stay right. And she was like, oh. It didn't occur to me to raise my price on you. I felt bad.
No. Like I'll pay you what you're worth to make it worth your time to come out here. Money is so funny to people sometimes. I really encourage people to stand up for themselves and what I've gotten pushback from from some of my coaching clients was, oh my gosh, then I'll lose customers. Yep. You definitely will, and you'll keep those loyal ones and gain ones who are paying you properly from this point forward.
What's the alternative to continue going in debt? To continue to lose money every month at the cost of your vanity, of staying open when your business is in the red. That's not the answer. And so if you are willing to take a hard look at your income right now. Versus your expenses versus your goals and make some hard decisions.
There's, there's better things on the other side of that. The other thing that I think makes a big difference is like not always just buying the cheapest version of something, because that's gonna break in in a short amount of time, and then you're just gonna have to buy another one all over again. When we quit our jobs, you know, we had this opportunity cost of we could either stay in our six figure careers or we could become.
What our dream was, was a full-time family with our daughters who were one, two, and four. And so I will tie this from financial conversation towards a time wealth conversation. Yes, we made a very expensive decision by. Cutting ties with our means of income. But we became the most time rich people.
We knew we were able to be at parks on Tuesdays and our girls, who, our babies who were the one, two, and 4-year-old had mom and dad with them at all times. So if you have that mentality that things are too expensive, you're just always gonna be stuck in that mindset instead. Just think about how, it's not that you need to dream less, you don't need to shrink anything smaller. You just need income that can grow along with you. So your action step today is to write down three things that you've been telling yourself are just too expensive.
Then next to each one of those things, brainstorm one thing that you could do to increase your income to make that happen instead of canceling the dream. Mm-hmm. And I. If you're in the process of starting a new business or you have dreams of starting one and you're narrowing down what that might be, think about is this something scalable?
Is this something I have to be present for every dollar is this something I can step away from for a month and, and have someone else lead it for me and still come back to earning even more than you left? Thank you so much for being here with us today. At Broke is boring. Jane and I are only rooting for you and we wish you so much more than luck, so it's not expensive. You are just underpaid. Let's flip that script.
