If today is the day you decide to earn more — here are the eight options, ranked honestly
It's a good question and it deserves a serious answer rather than an inspiring one. I've ranked the options by speed, reliability and capital required. Trading is on the list, but not where you'd expect — and I'll explain why.
Most people asking this question are asking it on a specific day, for a specific reason. A bill that arrived. A conversation at home. A moment when you saw someone's salary and made a comparison.
That moment is useful, because it produces action. It also produces one characteristic mistake: the urgency in the feeling gets transferred onto the choice of solution. Someone who feels squeezed today picks the option promising the most, fastest — and that option is almost always the worst one.
So I won't be inspiring you. I'll lay out the real possibilities the way I'd lay them out for a friend who called me on a day like that.
First — one question that changes the whole answer
By when do you need the money?
It's the only question that matters, and almost nobody asks it before starting to look for a solution.
- If the answer is 'within a month or two' — there are four options, and trading isn't among them.
- If it's 'within a year' — there are more, they require work, and they're reliable.
- If it's 'no deadline, I want to change my trajectory' — only here does the list open up fully.
Everything below is ordered on that principle.
The options, from fastest to slowest
1. Cut costs — results in days, zero risk
I start here because it's the most underrated option and the only one with a one hundred percent success rate.
A hundred euro saved monthly equals a hundred euro earned, except without tax, without risk, and without taking your time. Subscriptions you don't use, insurance you haven't renegotiated in years, bank fees, credit card interest — most households find between €50 and €200 a month on one careful review.
Nobody calls this 'making money', which is exactly why almost nobody does it first.
2. Ask for a raise — results in weeks, no capital
The highest return on effort in the entire list, and the most avoided.
A 10% rise on a €2,000 salary is €200 a month, €2,400 a year, repeating every year and compounding into every subsequent raise. To earn the same from trading on €5,000 of capital, you'd need a 48% annual return.
Read that sentence again. People who find asking for a raise uncomfortable often consider 48% a year from trading realistic.
3. Extra hours or shifts — results immediately, predictable
Unglamorous, but honest. A limited ceiling, zero uncertainty, and money that arrives in exact proportion to the work you put in.
For someone with a short-term need this is the most rational choice, and it's usually dismissed because it doesn't look like a solution — it looks like more work.
4. Sell a skill you already have — results in weeks to months
Whatever you do at work, someone wants it by the piece. Accounting, design, translation, repairs, programming, photography, teaching.
The advantage is that the learning period has already been paid for — by your previous employer. You're selling something finished rather than investing in acquiring something new.
5. Change jobs — results in two to six months
Statistically, the largest single jump in income for most people comes from changing employer, not from a promotion at the current one.
It takes time and effort and carries the risk of a poor choice, but it's entirely predictable compared with everything further down this list.
6. A new qualification — results in six to eighteen months
A course, a certificate, retraining. Paid for up front, returned later, but the increase is usually permanent and carries through the rest of your career.
7. Your own venture or business — one to three years, high uncertainty
The highest ceiling on the list and the highest price. It requires capital, time, and an acceptance that the first year probably returns nothing.
8. Trading — twelve to twenty-four months, high uncertainty, requires capital AND income
And there it is, last by speed.
I won't dress it up, because that would be useless to you. Trading:
- requires capital to work with and separate income to support you while you learn;
- has the longest period to a first reliable result of anything on this list;
- is the only option where you can work diligently for a year and finish with less money than you started;
- has a public failure statistic — between 74% and 89% of retail client accounts lose money trading CFDs.
If today is the day you need more money by December, trading is the wrong answer. I'm saying that as someone who teaches exactly this.
Why urgency makes trading worse, not better
Here's the mechanism worth understanding, because it explains why so many people fail in precisely this scenario.
Trading requires position size proportional to the account — typically 1-2% risk per trade. Someone with €2,000 risking 2% risks €40 a trade. If they need €500 by month's end, €40 a trade solves nothing.
So they risk 20%. And at that moment the outcome is predetermined — not by the market, but by arithmetic. Five consecutive losing trades at 20% risk leave roughly €655 of the original €2,000. And five losers in a row happen to everyone, every year, even on a method that works perfectly well.
Needing a fast result forces a size that makes the result impossible. It's a trap with no way out through effort, persistence or a better strategy — only through removing the need itself.
Which is why the answer to the headline question, if the urgency is real, is option 1, 2, 3 or 4. Not because they're more exciting, but because they work to a deadline.
When trading is the right answer
Now the other side, because it's also true.
Trading becomes a sensible choice when four conditions hold at once:
- You have no deadline. You're prepared to give it twelve to twenty-four months expecting nothing.
- You have income independent of the result. A salary, a business, something that pays the bills regardless of the week you've had.
- You have capital whose total loss changes nothing. Not 'I'd rather not lose it,' but 'if it vanishes, nothing in my life changes.'
- The subject interests you on its own terms. If you're indifferent to it and doing it only for the money, you won't survive the boring months — and they're the majority.
Notice that under those four conditions, the headline question reads differently. Someone who meets them isn't looking for a way to earn more today. They're building a second income source for two years from now — which is an entirely different decision, made in an entirely different state.
And that's precisely why the same person does better. Not because they're smarter, but because they can afford to follow their own rules.
The combination I recommend most often
In practice the best answer is rarely one option. It's usually a sequence.
- This month: review your costs and prepare for a conversation about a raise. Fast, certain money.
- The next three months: sell an existing skill on the side, or look for a better position. Raise the base.
- In parallel, without rushing: start learning to trade at minimum size, with money you don't need.
That sequence does three things at once. It solves the short-term problem with tools that actually work short term. It raises your income buffer. And it creates exactly the conditions in which trading has a chance of working — because by the time you get to it, you'll no longer need it to work.
If today is the day you decided to change something, that's a good day. Just start with the option that matches your deadline, rather than the one that sounds best.
Risk warning: This content is educational and does not constitute investment, tax, financial or career advice, nor a personal recommendation. Trading financial instruments carries a high risk of capital loss and is not suitable for everyone. A significant proportion of retail traders lose money. Trading is not a reliable way to meet short-term financial needs and does not guarantee income. Never trade with funds you cannot afford to lose.