One of my goals in starting my home business nearly two years ago was that I dreamt of getting to a place where I was living without a payday. This does not mean that I do not want or need to get paid, I just wanted to create a world where I was not dependent on that payday once or twice a month. It seemed like a good goal, but I wasn’t exactly sure how I would attain it. What I have learned is that having a home business is a great way to create just the sort of world where a person can live and thrive without a set payday.
The secret to life without a payday for me has been twofold: one, I needed to diversify my income streams and two, I needed to get more control over my income. Both of these can be generated by working for oneself instead of working solely for someone else. After all, when we work for a traditional company or at a traditional job, THEY get to decide how much money we make, the hours we work, and when we get paid. When we work for ourselves, we can adjust our work and hours to generate the income we need, we can decide our own value and pricing, and we can create a cash flow that makes meeting life’s challenges easier.
It takes a leap of faith, however, and for me, it took a shift in thinking. I had to learn how to budget differently and how to take the control that was at my fingertips. I had to get outside the “payday” mindset in order to embrace a work world where I was not dependent on that one or two days a month. For me, a combination of budgeting and savings helped me to get used to living differently and now that I have almost freed myself from the payday mentality, I am feeling increasingly liberated.
See Also: How to Live without a Bank Account and the MONEY Blog