When I first started focusing on my finances, my comfort zone was budgeting and cutting expenses. I stayed here for years, and I did make great progress!

Learning how to budget and stay within our budgets is necessary for building wealth. You can make a lot of money and have nothing to show for it, if you can’t stick to your budget. But once you get the budgeting down, it’s time to focus on increasing your income.

Figuring out how to increase my income was scary to me. The fear came from an insecurity that I wasn’t worth being paid more and an insecurity that I might not be able to learn the skills I needed to be paid more.

I’m not really one of those people who think you must be horribly uncomfortably your whole life to make any progress, I don’t post those Venn diagrams of “everything you want is outside your comfort zone”, I’m a Cancer sun, INFJ, HSP, blah blah blah, if being uncomfortable brought you success, I’d be racing Besos’ super yacht with my massive super yacht. Yet sometimes when it involves transformation, and creating new thought patterns, I acknowledge some discomfort is expected.

To get to my next level of income, I needed to be brave. 

To be honest, it has been a long journey to increase my income to something I’m proud of, but I got there! Below are the tips that helped me and will hopefully make your income increasing journey faster than mine. The tips are practical but also have roots in increasing confidence, which is what I truly needed to increase my income.

1. Realize your insecurity is likely a sociological problem, and not a personal failing. Taking the pressure off yourself can instantly give your confidence boost. You’re likely less confident than the star at your work because of outside forces such as socialization from your own family, society, etc. In my experience, the star at work is never the most brilliant person. In most business operations type jobs, brilliance isn’t the key to success, confidence is.

It helped that I read books on gender and money. Statistics about how infrequently women ask for raises, pay gaps, etc. made me feel less alone in my insecurity to ask for more money. It also made me want to improve the statistics.

2. Learn how the salary negotiation process works. 

I got lucky because a good friend of mine was in human resources and they explained to me that I was being underpaid and they also explained to me a little bit about how the salary negotiations process works. If you don’t have a friend in human resources, then check Salary.com or glassdoor.com to see how your salary compares to other people with similar job titles in your area.

Also, from my experience as a secretary and seeing some inner workings of negotiations, management/HR don’t think less or bad of you for asking for a raise. If you’re reasonable and polite, it can even make you look good because it shows you did your research and believe in yourself.

3. Start with where you’re at. If you like your current job, then ask for a raise. Give your current employer a chance to satisfy your salary standards. If they say no, ask what skills you need to develop to get a raise. Work at those skills for a set period, then ask for a raise again. If they still say no, consider looking elsewhere.

If you’re too afraid to ask in person, email. Just ask however you can. I’ve gotten an increase in salary from emailing my manager who sat 10 ft away.

4. Find someone at a higher level than you and ask if they’ll mentor you. If they won’t mentor you, pay attention to what skills they have that you could develop.

I don’t utilize mentors as much as I should, but the first time I sought one out was my most lucrative mentor mentee experience. I just looked for the best person in my career path and then asked her to mentor me. It transformed my skillset and gave me the confidence to apply for higher level positions.

5. Move around, even if it is a lateral move. When I took a different job at the same level at a larger work site, I had more people around me to make me realize I was actually really good at my job. It gave me confidence to apply for higher level jobs and ask for a raise.

I hope these tips help you increase your salary. Let me know if you have any other tips to add!