How To Super-Size Your Income
By Paul Esajian on May 4, 2015
Recent coverage of the #Fightfor15 protest by Boston.com highlighted what it’s like to work on a Burger King salary in America. If you’ve got two newborn kids needing formula, diapers, medical care, and a roof over their heads – it isn’t easy. Not when Zillow says that it takes $40 to over $200 an hour to afford the median rent in many U.S. cities.
For a family of five, it can be very difficult to get by on $50,000 or $60,000 a year. It gets harder as a single parent, or when you are paying child support and household expenses for multiple families. There is certainly a point between making $25,000 and $75,000 where you might actually have more food, housing, healthcare, housing, and disposable income if you actually don’t work, or work less and rely on the system more.
Anyone who ever worked a summer or part-time job in the fast food industry knows that flipping burgers on your feet for 10 or 12 hours isn’t easy. It is hard physical work.
Minimum wage workers do need to understand the obstacles. Some businesses like Gravity Payments can afford to give their entire organizations a $70,000 minimum salary. Most just can’t – especially overnight. Maybe fast food restaurants can, and there are a lot of people that would be happy to pay for a $2 menu, instead of a $1 dollar menu, if that helped. A business that designed their whole business plan on paying $10 an hour or less wages isn’t going to make it. If there isn’t room in the income to pay you $15 and still give you 40 hours of work a week; guess what? You are either going to be out of a job, or you are going to be working far fewer hours.
Why $15 Doesn’t Cut It
A recent report shows that housing costs have been growing 17 times faster than wages in parts of the United States. There is even a gap where rent and buying a home has only grown at 10% to 30%, and wages have risen 5 percent
Fifteen dollars an hour isn’t a magic number. It isn’t going to solve your financial problems. Most will find it just means they end up with higher bills each month. Not if you want a whole apartment or a house.
You’ve got to find a way to hack time. A way to make more money per hour. And preferably a way to keep bringing in money if you get sick. Otherwise if you miss two paychecks you still might wind up homeless.
The Golden Spatula
There is a ‘Golden Spatula.’ There is a way for all the current fast food and minimum wage workers to catch up, and stay ahead. It doesn’t require a college degree or taking on $100,000 in student debt either.
How about flipping houses instead of flipping burgers?
It’s no secret that there are billions of dollars of distressed and vacant homes in America. There are far more vacant foreclosure homes than there are homeless people in the US. There are many more underutilized properties. Fixing up and flipping these houses can provide a pay raise in line with how fast living costs are going up. In fact, it is one of the only choices for most.
For those that aren’t afraid of hard work, there is the hands on rehabbing of houses. For those more inclined to take a hands off approach, there is wholesaling. For those that like helping people, there is the landlord option. Some real estate wholesalers say they can make $96,000 a week! Even if you make $100,000 a year, that’s a pretty solid income.
Getting Started in Real Estate Investing
Getting started in real estate investment can be hugely profitable. But it is not literally like forging your own money. It might be close to printing your own money, but it will require some learning. It will require some effort. It will demand a little time. Aren’t you already doing all this? And for less money?