Seven Years to Seven Figures: The Fast-Track Plan to Becoming a Millionaire

Chapter 8. MONICA DAY: Getting Started: How to Boost Your Income from $26,000 to $134,000 in Two Years

Monica Day will be the first to tell you, she never had a very clear direction in terms of career or financial goals. Like a lot of recent college grads, she knew she wanted to do something personally rewarding . . . and she wanted to make good money, too. She also craved work that offered a lot of freedom in her day–to–day life.

After college, she bounced back and forth from positions in sales and marketing to jobs with charitable organizations for causes that moved her. Her bachelor's degree was in creative writing—and that's what she really loved to do. Not much money in that, though (or so she thought). So she kept her writing on the side, as a hobby, never thinking she'd be able to earn a living with it.

By the time she was 35, she had a second child, was putting her husband through nursing school, and was supporting her family on just $26,000 a year working for a non–profit magazine. She had filed for bankruptcy after the birth of her first child when a stint on bed–rest with no income and no cushion in the bank caught up with her. Life seemed like a perpetual cycle of going under and digging out.

But the dream of being a writer one day—and of having more freedom and independence—never left her. In fact, the older she got, the stronger her desire became to do something she loved.

The desire finally became so strong that she felt she had to do something drastic. So she quit her ...