Never has there been a better time than today to gain wealth while helping the US economic recovery and those unemployed.

I have much to cover in this article, I’ll try to keep it short, but this article is more like three or articles in one, so I’m going to section the information into topics below based on your perspective: Working and Investing Opportunity, Small Business in my community help, and lastly helping Unemployed but Paid workers in my community.

Working and Investing Opportunity

I’ve never seen so many businesses desperate for workers as I do now in my community! So I’m going to help my community keep these small businesses “in business” by offering to work on a part-time basis for them, in addition to my regular full-time job.

All the money I make working at a 2nd job, I’m planning on investing! After I’ve accumulated $5,000 in a regular brokerage account, I’m going to move those $5,000 dollars into a Roth IRA account. Once the money is in a Roth IRA, I plan to split the money three ways:

• 50% of the money will go into a less risky investment, and will probably be an ETF modeled after the S&P 500 index (like Schwab’s SWPPX or Vanguard’s VOO).
• 40% percent of the money I’ll invest in more risky investments like small to mid-cap companies that I hope will appreciate over the next decade.
• The remaining 10% will sit in cash for “emergency fund” purposes since you can withdraw your Roth IRA “contributions” tax and penalty-free (but not the earnings!). It’s really the perfect instrument for critical emergencies.

After Fully funding my Roth IRA, I’m planning on investing in my regular brokerage account, and probably in dividend stocks (The idea is to create Multiple Purpose Stock Dividend Investment Funds)… but also I’m going to buy some crypto for the thrill of it!

Oh, that reminds me, check to make sure you are permitted to invest in a Roth IRA. Key considerations are that you need earned income (this should be covered since you are investing the money from a 2nd job) and cumulatively, your adjusted gross income is less than certain income amount thresholds. Click here for the Roth IRA income thresholds in 2021.

Working a 2nd job means you have power! Economics 101 – “supply and demand”, I can ask for more because labor (workers) are in limited supply. So whatever wage rate being offered, I can negotiate more (just a little above though, don’t go crazy). So just to be clear, “demand” means that employers need more labor. Today, “demand” might not be the best word, but basically, it means “want or needs more of”.

I can also set a maximum amount of hours I’m willing to work a week (maybe 16 to 24 in my case, but the sky is the limit), and I don’t have to take any drama since the money is just for investing purposes… If my manager tells me to do something I adamantly disagree with, I’ll say “No” and if the manager pushed me on it, I’ll literally take the high road and say, “Well, this is not working out for me, so regretfully, I’m putting in my notice and that I will be leaving in 2 weeks” (or whatever timeframe works for you). I wouldn’t recommend burning bridges because you still might want to go to that small business or may want to work there in the future.

Remember, the goals are three-pronged… 1.) investing money, 2.) help your community’s small businesses, and 3.) enables the small business to stay in business so those that are currently not seeking employment have jobs waiting for them eventually.

Okay, I explained my basic investment strategy above, let’s talk about how it benefits small businesses in my community!

Small Businesses in my Community Help

In my community, there are small businesses that are hurting because unemployment benefits are artificially high since the government is added extra money in addition to the regular state unemployment benefits. Talking to some of the small restaurant owners that I go to, they say that people literally are not even applying to the want ads they have in the windows or wherever they advertise.

When I say small businesses are hurting, I mean that they could potentially go out of business which depresses the community you live in because of the loss of business and loss of local jobs.

So I realize that eventually, the government benefits will end so that’s why I decided to help out both the small companies in my community and the workers that will need jobs when the government stops paying them to stay home.

A small part... okay a large part of my desire to help small businesses in my community is because I enjoy using there product or services, especially local restaurants. If you have a great local restaurant that you really enjoy, why would you not want them to remain in business?

Helping Unemployed but Paid workers in my community

On the surface, all that I mentioned above might seem like it’s a negative for the “unemployed but paid workers” in my community, but not really.

My goal is to keep the employer alive so that once these smart “unemployed, but paid” workers lose their unemployment benefits, they will have the employer that I’m working at as an employment option. All of the three benefits (investing income, saving small community businesses, and saving jobs for unemployed workers that aren’t currently looking) I mentioned are required for me to work a 2nd job.

Okay, so now onto the smart, “unemployed but paid” people that are getting money from the various government for not working (I’m sure I might do the same if I were younger). This is what I recommend for this incredible opportunity!

1. Accumulate cash (personally, I would invest a small portion of the cash in investments).
2. Start a side business. Don’t draw a salary and reinvest any money you get into building the business so that it’s rock solid.
3. Learn, research and call to discover future opportunities. Even read bloggers like me, I have some great ideas that hopefully in the future I’ll be communicating.
4. I would do hiking and bodybuilding to get into shape. Such activity would make you look better and enables you to be healthier.

Closing thoughts!

The pandemic cost us all, now it’s time to draw outside of the lines and even the book, to get things moving along again so that it benefits the world.

You know what I’m planning on doing, hopefully, you’ll do the same or something even better!

Thanks,

MR