The NoCo Financial Freedom Journal

Some of the things that we can learn from doing a financial needs analysis (FNA) are what your budget looks like, developing a budget (if you don't have one), debt amounts and monthly payments, and money coming in versus money going out to pay living expenses.  If the money coming in doesn't cover all of these expenses, then there are basically two remedies: reduce expenses and/or increase income.   Part-time jobs (working as a W-2 employee) and working for yourself as a "freelancer" (1099 contractor) offer some pretty good alternatives.  Part-time jobs, such as working at your local store or delivering pizzas for an established company give you the simplicity of earning income as a W-2 employee where the company takes care of all the tax deductions and paperwork.   There are many types of 1099 contractor "side gigs" out there to help with earning more part-time income as well.  Driving services, such as Uber and Lyft, delivering food, such as Doordash, and

Much of this past year has been spent pondering retirement or at least exploring new opportunities that involve giving up the full-time rat-race.  With all the reorganizations at work, plus the potential new opportunities with financial coaching, I decided to go ahead and pull the plug and call it quits.  So with the new year, having just retired from my job, and waiting for those retirement checks to kick in, my wife and I have had some time to really take stock of our new income sources and our new lifestyle.  My wife will still babysit our grandkids, and I will enter the uncertain world of freelancing.  All of this has really caused us to take a good hard look at our monthly expenses and get more control of that which we are certain in order to accommodate our new lifestyle.   When it comes to making ends meet, you basically have two choices - increase income or reduce expenses.  Having chosen to retire, it's a given that the income will actually be reduced, for a while, anyway,