ABC Good Money Week 1 Earning More Mail Bag

I'm here with Ramit Sethi, ABC's personal finance contributor, as well as author of I will teach you to be rich. In this block, Ramit is going to answer some viewer questions from our good money mailbag. All right, let's dive right in, Ramit. The first question comes from Carla S. She writes, I am an extremely frugal person by nature. One thing I struggle with is I'll get a business idea, but then realize that while I think it is worthwhile and valuable, I personally would not spend money on it. That makes it hard for me to consider selling it to others. Any suggestions for overcoming that mindset?

Yes. You are not your market, you are not your customer. So I bet you that Carla still spends money on things. And if. Let me give you a couple examples. Frozen food. Does she ever eat out at a restaurant? She could cook for herself, but she prefers to have someone sometimes, occasionally make her dinner. I bet she goes to an engineer or mechanic for car repair. So you don't have to focus on just yourself. Remember that there are plenty of other people out there in the world who are really busy and would rather pay with money than with time.

But if you would not personally pay for it, how do you determine whether others might?

Great question. You have to go out, you have to get off your chair, you have to get out of your room and you have to go ask. People say, you know what, I have this idea. You are someone that I think might be interested in it. Are you actually interested in this or am I crazy? And when you find 4, 5, 10 people in a row that say, yeah, that would be amazing. I would pay anything for that, then you know you have a great idea.

Alright, great advice for Carla there. Good luck. And here is a question from Andrew. He writes in saying, the challenge I'm facing now is I can't decide which path to take to start bringing in the extra dollars. I have more than one passion in life and I find myself drawn in many different directions. How would you tackle this challenge of whittling down my options? Good question. What questions should Andrew be asking himself to figure out which one of his talents he should pursue?

Well, we call this analysis paralysis. And this is where you have so many options. You just don't know what to do and you kind of just shut down mentally. The best way to do it is to find five people for each of those ideas and go out and say, hey, is this something valid? Do you already pay for something like this? Would you pay? And what's gonna happen? And this is Beautiful. Half of those ide are going to go right out the door because people are like, no, I'd never pay for that. It's not really a problem for me. And then what I would suggest is just pick one and execute on it because you will learn far more from doing it than from wondering.

Great, great advice there for Andrew. Now Kim wants to know, how do I narrow down which work to pursue? Teaching music privately, counseling or babysitting? Or should I try to pursue all and see which one sticks? Now, here's another way of approaching it. What do you think of that, Ramit?

Definitely do not try to do all you will succeed at none. Instead, ask yourself two questions. First of all, what am I really passionate about? I bet you one of those makes you feel great about yourself whenever you think about doing it. So that's one. And the second thing is, remember that framework. Do my potential customers have the ability and willingness to pay? Remember, you don't want to spend nine months with an idea and never make a dollar. You want to be systematically working your way up to earning more money so that you can improve your financial situation.

All right, Ramit. And then Megan writes in with a question. My question would be that of so many. That would be that of so many. What am I qualified to do outside of my job? I'm a librarian with a background as a veterinary assistant. Groomer. What do you think?

Well, I mean, Tanya, didn't you hear? She just has two amazing skills right there in her two sentence description. She's a librarian, which means she's probably really organized, which means that there are plenty of people who have totally disorganized houses, systems, businesses that she would probably be great for. And she's a veterinarian assistant. Well, guess what? People spend billions of dollars a year on their pets. I bet you she knows a lot about pet owners and their particular problems. And if she could figure out what their one of their biggest problems is, she could charge a very handsome rate. I would be willing to bet over $100 an hour.

Ooh. So which one of those two would you say she should pursue first based on your knowledge of the market?

Well, people are really weird and irrational about their pets, so I would totally go for the veterinarian.

All right. I love it. And Pat's. Yes, it is. All right, Good luck, Megan, with the animals. And lastly, Dia writes in asking, how can somebody who is currently a grad student living off a stipend and spending most of her time on research and teaching earn more? Great question, but you know I want to. I have a suggestion. Tell me what you think, Rami. What about tutoring?

Love it. It's so great you said that. I've got a student who's actually an accounting student. He's turning around and earning hundreds of dollars a month teaching other accounting students below him how to master their classes. So if you're a grad student, you already know how to get into grad school or students, and their parents will pay anything for that. So you have a plethora of options ahead of you.

And you know what? They actually will pay a lot for tutoring of this quality. She's in grad school, so she's got at least one, if not almost 2 degrees. So how much. How much do tutors make?

Oh, they can make quite a bit. I mean, some of them will start off at $20 an hour, but there are tutors who make between 50 and $80 an hour.

Now, she does have a little bit of issue with time. She says that she's doing a lot of research. Do you have any suggestions on how she can b that?

Yeah. I mean, first of all, when we start doing more and more things, we tend to get more efficient. It's why new parents are really efficient with their time. But also, I would say she's in control. If she wants to spend only two hours a week doing it, she could do that. If she wants to spend 20 hours and make a lot more money, that's it. That's her choice. So it's really up to you. And that's the beauty of earning more money. It's all in your control.

Do you have any suggestions on how she can get the word out? How can she advertise herself as a tutor?

Okay, so what she wants to do is first pick a very specific area that she wants to tutor in. Let's say that she is a grad student in chemistry. Perfect. Because chemistry is really hard and there's a lot of students that are going to be struggling. So she could let the professors know. She could offer up a free ebook or some kind of flyer that says, here are seven tips to pass your class with flying colors. And all these things are going to get people coming to her and saying, I'm really struggling. I'd love some help. And money becomes just not. It becomes a trivial part of the.

Transaction starts flowing in. All right, Ramit, thank you so much for answering all these questions from our viewers today.

Thank you.

And if you have a question for Ramit or any of our other personal finance experts, you can go to our website@abcnews.com and click on the Money page to ask your question. We'll do our very best to answer them right here on Good Money.