Very few people earn large salaries in their twenties. But that doesn’t mean you have to suffer being paid meager wages and forgo your dreams. Here are some practical ways you can give your current income a much-needed boost:

Supplement Your Degree with Additional Skills

One of the hardest truths young people have to come to terms with is that their degree might not be worth much in the job market. That English, theater, or psychology degree you paid for with loans may not make enough returns to cover the debt once you graduate. Short of choosing a high-paying degree, you can still increase your employability level with additional skills.

Even if you have a “useless” degree like art history, you can supplement that with highly desirable skills like coding or a second or third language. You can earn such skills online doing free courses. Boost your resume with skills employers are looking for to land a job with a higher salary grade. More income naturally means better ability to pay down your loans and secure your future finances.

Try Trading Stocks

Your twenties are actually the best time to enter the stock market. Trading stock, in simple terms, is risky business. The market is highly volatile and even most experienced investors end up losing money over bad deals. Plus, there are scams to watch out for. But the advantage is, if you do lose money playing the market, you are still young enough to earn back the loss.

Contrast this with trading stock in your fifties. You are too close to retirement age to be burdened with a major loss or debt. Therefore, learn how to invest in stocks and start doing so before you are too close to retirement. Using simplified stock screeners like Finviz can help you eliminate all the time and effort of researching stocks through various out resources. After all, time is money!

Rent a Couch

Do you live in a rental apartment or, if you are lucky, a house? If you do, invest in it. Earn several hundred dollars of monthly passive income by renting out a portion of your home or listing your couch on an app like Airbnb. You can easily earn additional dollars that you can use to save, invest, or pay down debt. It might be slightly uncomfortable to have another tenant living nearby, but the extra money would be well worth it.

Monetize Using Your Talents

Is there a particular talent you have that you haven’t really paid attention to before? For example, can you draw, make handicrafts, play an instrument, or do card tricks? Thanks to the internet, no talent is ever useless. Put your natural skills to good use and make money online.

If you are good at making things, you can sell handmade items for great prices on specialty websites like Etsy. Your cool card tricks may not make you rich at the poker table, but you can make YouTube videos and earn revenue off ads. You can blog about your skill and make money off it as well.

Opportunities are near unlimited when it comes to making money online. So don’t let your talents go to waste. Find ways to make money with them online.

Earn extra cash using the above suggestions, but don’t spend it. Save your extra income, or better yet, invest it to firmly secure your future finances.

By Eddy

Eddy is the editorial columnist in Business Fundas, and oversees partner relationships. He posts articles of partners on various topics related to strategy, marketing, supply chain, technology management, social media, e-business, finance, economics and operations management. The articles posted are copyrighted under a Creative Commons unported license 4.0. To contact him, please direct your emails to [email protected].