How I Solved My Financial Problems at 21 and You Can Do the Same

What One Fool can do, Another Can- A Sumerian Proverb

I was an ordinary guy who was always broke. Fortunately, when I first heard about freelance work, I got interested in it. I made use of the freely available resources on YouTube and Internet to teach myself highly employable skills. After developing relevant skills, I started doing freelance work in my spare time. The work was part-time which enabled me to focus on my studies while earning money on the side.

For the first time in my life, I am now able to financially support myself and even help my parents. Just like me, you can also choose to use your free time to develop in-demand skills and monetize them to earn money. The Internet is full of quality resources which you can freely use to teach yourself highly employable skills and earn money doing freelance works.

Being Poor was Not Easy

My parents never gave me any spending money. It was not because they didn’t love me, they just couldn’t afford it. But, nearly all of my friends received spending money and it made me feel inferior. I loved my parents and knew they were doing the best they could in the given circumstances. But I couldn’t help feeling frustrated at my financial condition.

Growing up I often heard people saying mean things about money like how money is the root cause of all evils and things like that. Our cultural prejudice against money is so strong that even films and TV serials often caricature rich people as villains. Even now I can remember watching Bollywood films as a child and wondering why do every rich person has to be such a jerk.

However, I quickly realized all of this was a complete lie. At least in my experience, the lack of money proved a far greater evil than money itself. If you have the money you can help yourself and you can help others too.

Until high school, I didn’t mind my being poor too much and thought very little about it. Initially, the things that irritated me were quite superficial and childish. For example, my friends would often go to movies and invite me to join them and I had to refuse the offer even though I wanted to join. I did so because I felt guilty using my people’s money for watching films.

My Childhood Dream Was Shattered

As time passed the lack of money started to become a much bigger nuisance in my life. I will share with you a major incident from my life where the lack of money played a decisively negative role.

when my 10th’s result was announced, I got flying numbers on the mark sheet. It was probably 9.6 CGPA, and I had to choose any one stream among the three available streams- Science, Commerce, and Arts. At the time there was no doubt in my mind about what stream I wanted.

See, I watched 3 Idiots when I was a kid and it made a great impression on me. Ever since watching that film, I had wanted to become an engineer. So I opted for science. But there was a problem. I knew that to become a great engineer I need to crack JEE first, but I also knew that my family couldn’t afford the high coaching fees for either 10+2 or, JEE. Nevertheless, I decided to self-study for cracking the notoriously difficult JEE exam.

In retrospect, I think I grossly overestimated my abilities as the transition from 10th to 11th proved very difficult. Though I was aiming to crack JEE without any coaching, the harsh truth is that I barely managed to pass the 11th class on my own.

All of this made me feel very disillusioned. I started to think I was a failure and would never amount to much and many other similar depressing thoughts. However, I didn’t know my situation was soon going to be changed for the better.

The Lucky Reunion

When I was in 12th an old friend of mine reconnected with me. On one fateful day, he texted me on FB after not having been in contact with me for more than seven years. After the usual chit-chat, that old acquaintances usually do, he asked me if I could write some articles in English about some particular topics for him. He explained that he would give me money for it. I needed money at the time and knew how to write well in English, so I accepted his offer. 

An Opportunity

My friend was doing content writing as part-time work and had more writing projects than he could handle. So, he gave some of his writing work to me. Before talking with this friend, I didn’t know it was even possible to earn money by simply writing articles. Though my friend didn’t pay me much for my work, the whole experience had a high educational value for me. It was my first encounter with freelance content writing and set me on a wonderful journey to explore it. I started to collect as much information about content writing and freelance works as I could and in a fairly short amount of time I became familiar with the whole thing. I used the freely available quality resources on YouTube and the internet to teach myself various in-demand skills.

Things Look Fine Now 

Now I am a second-year physics major student and earn 30 thousand every month by doing freelance content writing work. And the most amazing thing about my work is that it only takes four hours, yes you read it correctly. I do content writing as part-time work which enables me to focus on my undergraduate studies.