How I Went From $45k to a Six-Figure Income in Less Than a Year
The details on how I shifted my mindset to become a six-figure earner — and have continued growing my income, year over year
A little over a week ago, I met with my financial adviser to discuss my retirement goals and learned that I have gone above and beyond my goal of retiring early. This was a big accomplishment for me, considering I am an unmarried woman with no family wealth to fall back on. The money I have has been earned, by me, over many years of hard work, saving, and solid investing.
Finances have always been incredibly important to me but I am also a longtime writer and, contrary to what some may think, writers do not make a lot of money. I am also the daughter of a single parent — a woman who always had a dozen irons in the fire. My grandmother never had just one income source. Instead, she dabbled in a million things and at various times over the course of her life, worked in advertising at the Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta, owned an apartment complex, flipped houses, invested in the stock market, got her real estate license, owned a clothing boutique and worked as a seamstress, and owned a furniture boutique that she began out of our living room. She was also a talented artist who would buy windows from old estates about to be demolished and paint them or create decoupaged collages on them and sell them in her store.
Creativity, the pursuit of passions, and earning enough money to live a safe and exciting life were all important to her — but I imagine some of the hustle stemmed from fear.
When you are a single mom, you live in fear about losing your primary source of income. If I get laid off, what will I do? is an oft-repeated refrain in your mind. That fear took hold of me five years ago, when I began caring for my mom.
At the time, I was a magazine editor, earning a very meager salary of $45,000 per year (a salary that was cut even further when I went remote during the pandemic). I had secondary income, too, which has long been my way of life — ever since I graduated college, I have earned a salary while also having some sort of side business.
When I graduated college and got a job as a staff reporter for a legal publication, I applied for a journalism fellowship and was awarded a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. So for around two years, I did both roles and had two income streams. Eventually, the grant work became my full-time job, but I took on freelance work and began selling vintage (and later, my own art) as a way to supplement my income.
Before my mom became my responsibility, the secondary income from art and vintage sales was “fun” money. Not anything I relied on but a way for me to buy a nice handbag or take a nice trip. But in 2019, when my grandmother died, I became the only resource for my mom. And when the pandemic began just a few months later, I was nearly paralyzed with fear about how I could earn enough for the both of us.
So, I got incredibly serious about making money.
Below, I detail the shift in my mindset that greatly helped me, plus the various streams of income I have now — like affiliate links (I’ve even included a referral link for the affiliate platform I use; those who start their own accounts using my link will earn a 10% bonus on my commissions for the next six months).