Not having enough money is one of the reasons who make a person want to change their lives. This article will not focus on how to make more money but on how to be more fulfilled with the money you already have, thus not exactly changing your life but changing the way you see your financial life.

Start by making a habit of writing everything down.  What you spend and why. This will help you make a plan, cut corners and lower your expenses. Knowing where and how your money goes is no small feat but it is the only way to manage your money.

Once you know where your pennies are going you can get rid of superfluous expenditures and find coupons or discounts for those are necessary ones. It is all a case of looking at your expenses on a sheet of paper in black and white.

Please do not consider having fun and relaxing times with your family as superfluous expenses, as a person who relaxes properly and spends quality time with those who are important in their life, is a happier more fulfilled person. But do be careful how you spend your fun-and-relaxation budget, since there are always ways to stretch your pennies. For instance you can plan to go to the movies on discount days or eat out less, having a fun BBQ at home instead.

Be careful of debt, use cash or debit cards whenever possible. Live within your means and don´t compare yourself with others. Sometimes you are up and others you are down and so is everybody else.

Save 5 to 10 % of your income and invest through a retirement savings account to reduce your taxes, this means more money coming back to your come tax season, and less money going out from your weekly paycheck to go into Uncle Sam’s pockets.

If you are serious about this and would like to get more information from the experts there are several courses you can take online or at your local university called “Finances for non-finance people”.

We all know that money can’t buy you happiness and that the best things in life are free, blah blah blah. But the truth is that without money you’ll feel miserable and squashed by life. That’s why one of the best (although not the fastest) ways to change your life is by getting more money flowing into your bank account. Even if you haven’t realized it, chances are one of the reasons you don’t love yourself too much at this point is because you don’t have enough money.

I’m not going to give you a financial course here or pretend that I’m some sort of banking guru, but I’d like to point out some things that you may not have realized and that will help you improve your money to improve your life.

Get a second job

Although most of us think we don’t have enough time for a second job, the reality is that if you really want to, you can squeeze an extra 4 hours a day to work a part time job, or at least 5 or 6 hours per week to make a few extra bucks. If you hold a regular job from 9 to 5, you can work at least 4 hours a day 3 days a week. Where? How?

Depending on your skills, you can:

• teach a class at a night college
• tutor kids at their house
• bag groceries at your local supermarket
• do some freelance writing
• babysit your neighbors’ children
• take care of an elderly person
• work at a fast food chain (they’re usually until 11pm)
• work as a ticket person at a movie theater, etc.

These options won’t make you rich but they’ll certainly put more money in your pockets and allow you to do things that will make you happy, like that trip to Cancun you never took or that liposuction you’ve been dreaming of getting.

Open a business

Most businesses require some initial investment but if you take the time to think it through, you can come up with some ingenious businesses that won’t empty your bank account and will bring you an extra income. Granted, businesses require hard hours of labor initially but after the first few months, things tend to level out and you can enjoy the reward of your ingenuity without having to bust your butt too hard.

Get rid of superfluous expenses

Some times we do make enough money, but we can’t keep it in our pockets long enough to spend it on our big dreams because it’s trickling out of our checkbooks. The daily Starbucks cup of coffee, the weekly hair blow drying session, the shopping sprees with girlfriends… We all do it, and I bet if you sit down with a pen and paper to do the math on where your money is going, you can find several hundreds or even thousands of dollars being wasted each and every week.

Invest wisely

Once again, I won’t give you investment advice, but here’s a true story I love to tell:

A good friend of mine was a little strapped for cash every beginning of the month when it was time to pay her bills. After much thinking, she realized that in today’s economy, rental houses are at a premium while nobody is buying, which has brought house prices way down. So she decided to buy cheap and rent expensively. To get the down payment money, she held a garage sale and got rid of everything she didn’t need, from kids’ toys to the extra TV in her bedroom, used clothes, house decorations, and even their second car. With that money she gave a down payment on a small modest home not far from her neighborhood. After painting the new house and doing some back-breaking gardening work on it, she rented it for twice what she is paying in mortgage.

Another friend of mine emptied and tidied up her guest bedroom, paid a little over $2,000 to turn it into an independent studio and is now renting it for several hundred dollars a month.

There are many other ways to make more money and improve your financial situation, it’s just a matter of deciding to do it, and actually doing it. Initially it may be hard, but after a few weeks or months you’ll reap the benefits and will realize that having so much more money has actually changed your life for the better.