If you find yourself struggling to keep up with your living expenses and debt repayments, you really only have two main options: reduce your expenses or increase your income.  Ideally, you'll find ways to do both in order to get your finances under control, since reducing expenses alone is rarely enough to get out of debt once you've found yourself in too deep!

You have a few options for increasing your income:

Get a second job.When many people decide they need to increase their income they automatically start looking for a second job.  A part-time job is not overly difficult to find most of the times, as fast food establishments and retailers seem to be hiring regardless of the economic climate.

While a second job might give you a little extra money each week, chances are you lose valuable family time and personal time.  Traveling from one job to the next can add commuting costs to your expenses, which can eat some of your additional income and cause you to earn less than you think at first glance.

Get a promotion or raise.  Easier said than done, another option for increasing your income is to get a raise from your current job or promote to a higher paid position within your company.  If this is possible, work hard and put in the extra effort to get noticed for the position or improve your chances of getting a raise.

Do contract work.One of the preferred methods of increasing your income is to take skills you have and take on freelance jobs.  For computer related work, you can work from your home which eliminates commuting and unnecessary expenses of having a second “job”.  As a freelancer, you will be responsible for paying taxes on all income you earn, but your overhead is minimal and the potential of increasing your income by a sizable amount of money is possible.

Start a small business.Similar to freelance and contract work, you could also start a business in the evenings and/or on weekends around the hours of your regular job.  Try to start a business that doesn't require much startup capital in order to turn a profit faster.  Some ideas might be to provide an errand-running service, or start an office cleaning business.

Whatever methods you use to increase your income, you need the discipline to apply all of your additional income to your debt.  The point of increasing your income is to have more money available to pay debt off faster.  Be very careful not to increase your expenses along with your increase of income, or you will have defeated the purpose of working more!