One of the most common pieces of advice in personal finance is to increase your income. It’s a solid suggestion. Until it’s not. The truth is that you can’t always make more money.
There are a lot of instances when layering on a side income or two is hugely advantageous. I’d argue that in just as many instances, focusing on maximizing your main income source is even more important.
But sometimes there just isn’t any more money to make. There are only so many hours in a day and there is only so much a body can do. (Despite what the motivation bros and Beyonce memes would have you believe.)
So what if you can’t make more money right now? I don’t know the right answer for everyone, but I do know what we are choosing to do.
What I’m Doing When I Can’t Make More Money
Thankfully, I have long believed that personal finance is about operating multiple levers: sometimes you rely on making more and other times it’s about spending less.
When I started out teaching, I was a lot less frugal by choice. I fell into frugality as a necessity. I realize that I simply didn’t earn enough money to spend how I was spending. If I’m entirely honest, I didn’t earn enough to buy the house the bank let me buy either.
But I pushed through.
I hustled and hustled and hustled. I grew my side income streams and I doubled my salary at work. Making more money as a teacher is slow going, but I went.
But now I sit here with my last paycheck before my second unpaid leave starts, and I’m left with a new, albeit temporary, reality: I can’t make more money. This is what I’m doing instead.
Make the money I can.
For the next three months, I’m not going to earn a paycheck. My work will pay me zero dollars and zero cents during my maternity leave. I’ll return to work and earn about 60% of my salary for the remainder of the school year as well. Yup. You read that right. I won’t actually get a regular paycheck until August of 2022.
No amount of freelancing is going to fill in that gap. Not only do I not want to do that much work on my maternity leave, I’m not even sure I could.
Instead, I’ll make the money that I can and focus on another financial lever instead.
Shop our house.
No, no. I’m not entering the real estate market any time soon. In fact, I plan to live to the ripe old age of 107 and die in this house. I hate house hunting, home buying, and property renovating that much.
We’ve all heard or even said the phrase “There’s food at home.” Yeah, well, that’s not the only thing in my house. We’ve flirted with the idea of decluttering for years and years. But there’s still so much stuff.
So I’ll take a look at what’s in my closet to make some fresh outfits. We’ll rotate through our preschoolers toys to keep things exciting. Rather than run out to the store, we’ll make due with what we have.
Those hotel soaps and dentist toothpaste samples? Yup. I’m using those too.
Budget and track.
I was so sick during my pregnancy that anything other than existing and growing an eyeball or rib or whatever my body was working on that day felt like too much work. There was no way I was keeping a strict budget or doing any real tracking of any kind. Our money just sort of went on autopilot…along with most other parts of my life.
Now that I feel better, I can get back to what works. That means looking at our budget, paring down as much as possible, and keeping track of the money that we do spend.
Tiny leaks are tiny when you’re drawing an income. But they are a lot more significant when nothing is coming in.
Push pause on our goals.
People like to equate financial journeys to marathons. I personally think swimming is more effective than running as far as money metaphors go. Why? Because sometimes you need to tread water. That’s exactly what we’re doing in this short season of life.
Our mortgage payoff dreams aren’t destroyed. Our savings and investing plans aren’t done for. I’m confident we’ll come back more motivated than ever.
So I’m putting them on hold for now because it’s important not to create any extra stress.
Spend our savings.
This is painful to even type but it shouldn’t be. We’ve saved and saved, probably much more than we need by most personal finance standards.
And it’s a good thing you can’t tell me nothing ever.
Because that “too much money”? Yeah, I’m spending it. I’m not spending all of our savings or anywhere near it. But I know that we are going to have to rely on at least some of it. Because preschool doesn’t pay for itself.
For whatever reason (there are many but that’s another post for another day), I feel all sorts of ways about actually having to spend our savings.
My goal is to reframe my outlook so that I see my savings as a tool to make the most of my maternity leave, appreciating the freedom rather than focusing on the bank balance.
You Can’t Always Earn More Money
It’s good advice to make more money when you can. But it’s also worth realizing that it isn’t always possible. That’s why it’s so important to understand how to earn more and how to spend less.
Because the best way to navigate money is to know how to do both.
So Tell Me…Are you in a season of earning more or spending less?
Penny, I have no doubt after reading your posts for awhile, that you have your head on straight about finances! Relish your maternity leave and know throughout your journey that you are soooo much more than your paycheck! Take it from a retired pediatrician who will continue to read your posts.
I totally relate to your new “spend your savings” stage. As savers/investors, we’ve been accumulating digits and commas (well, one so far) and it’s a huge mental shift to start drawing that down. But that’s exactly what the money is there for in the first place!! Past Penny and Mr. P loved future Penny and family so much that they made sure they’d be ok later in life. That’s not just at Old Age.
Penny, I remember the decision to stay home with my little one, I was so grateful that my teaching job would still be there when I returned to my students. But yes, we really treaded water those 2 years. In a blink my little girl has graduated from college and is on her own. During her undergraduate years I was in my heaviest season of earning, picking up every stipend I could alongside extra chaperone/service work. It was exhausting but it was to the benefit of the family (no student debt, maxing out retirement accounts). Now I am coasting a bit, no stipends this coming year and I doubt I will pick up too much extra work, only if it is of interest to me—call me burnt out! Some habits die hard though, I still track every penny (year 5 of tracking net worth as well). But my mindset is adjusting to coasting towards retirement. The intensity of earning extra money just doesn’t seem healthy right now. I am reaching that point in life–celebrating that elusive feeling—We have enough, I am enough!
I love your blog. It’s so refreshing to read a personal finance blog written by someone with a relatable income.
We also just took an income cut. I quit my job to stay home with our baby for the time being rather than paying a huge portion of my income to put her in childcare. We can’t afford to do this long term, but we can afford to do this for a bit provided we are frugal.
I think you are right. Or in the case you might could make more money it would involve terrible trade offs that more than negate the value of the money. Like you are doing you just have to deal with what you have for a season. I always made more than I needed or felt like I deserved and we lived in a low cost of living area. I also did not want to retire very early because I was one of the unicorns who loved his job. So we never had to pull back spending. But you’ve obviously thought this through and will do a great job. It is kind of a slap to people’s faces to tell them they can just earn more money. Because as you point out, that’s not the case a lot of the time. Glad you said it.
Teaching ourselves to switch gears may be one of the most valuable life lessons. ? You deserve to spend this time with Squish and HP and not try to knock yourself out earning supplemental income, and that’s why you worked so darn hard before this season.
We’re earning well but we may end up spending a HECK of a lot too as we try to find a safe alternative for JB and Smol this coming year.
I have had years where earning much simply wasn’t in the cards. Fortunately my wife was the high earner (pharmacist) so living in her income wasn’t too bad.. I could “Shop our house.” I learned how to shop for the best deals on food and anything else we needed.
This summer, I have more dogs to sit via Rover than I know what to do with. That will go away when school starts and people travel less. I can still do well with other work, but I will shift again into a bit of conservation mode. We’re close to having the savings to get my wife retired (which we could do now, but there’s a “one more year” thing going on.
That’s true. I remember in one instance the person actually got into an accident so it was physically and literally impossible to make money. I also remember my boss talking about FIRE people as “these people don’t account for the worst case scenario”.
To an extent, she is right. Sometimes, it just isn’t. All we can do is make the most of our working years and hope that they care of everything.
That’s true. Sometimes your choice of career limits the top end of your income.
There are so many seasons in life, particularly around kids, and it absolutely makes sense to prioritize levers that align with those seasons.
As a father of 4, it is often easier to focus on the cost cutting, particularly in the earlier years.
The making money lever often has a lead time and can take weeks / months before you start to see the impact. Whereas the impact with cost cutting can be more immediate.
I have enjoyed reading your posts and seeing how they have changed as you have grown. I agree completely that our mental health regarding money is the most important thing in being able to make it to the end of our careers. In my district many women purchase disability insurance before their children are born. I often wish that we had done this instead of me rushing back to the classroom after only six weeks each time. I often look back and wonder how the heck I survived those days and why I even felt pushed to jump right back in. Thank you for the reality that you bring to your posts!
Good on you for being ready to spend your savings, that is exactly why they are there. I had this realization too that I finally would have to dip into my savings when I quit my prior job and had no other job lined up. While it was initially weird, it was liberating. That is exactly why I diligently saved all of these years and now my financial net was ready to pick up the slack in my life. Congratulations on the baby and enjoy your maternity leave!
Yup, you can’t always make more money. At one point you just have to wonder what’s enough? Plus things change in life so you gotta be adaptable. There’s nothing wrong with spending some of your savings.
This is a great point–kind of what I discovered recently when I started playing with fire in order to FIRE by funneling too much money into investments (and not leaving enough left over). I had to get a little creative as far as where the next dollar was coming from, and I ran out of options embarrassingly quickly. Time to re-appreciate the regular paycheck coming in.
This time is for you and Squish! May the nights and days go by at the pace you desire <3
“Personal finance is about operating multiple levers: sometimes you rely on making more and other times it’s about spending less.”
This is a great principle to live by. I’d add and sometimes both. Your preparations for times like this make your personal finance goals possible. Although it is unfortunate our teachers do not get the maternity coverage they deserve. Thank you for being a teacher.