Pa. Dems cry foul over Republican Scott Wagner's comments on natural gas tax

State Democrats are accusing a GOP candidate for governor of conspiring with fellow lawmakers to block a tax on natural gas drilling so it hurts Gov. Tom Wolf's chances of a winning a second term next year.The Morning Call newspaper in Allentown reported Saturday that Republican gubernatorial candidate and state Sen. Scott Wagner, R-York, told a gathering of York County residents last month that he urged Rep. Stan Saylor, R-York, to fight a gas drilling tax proposal because it could [...]

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Hayes wins hotel stay in sweepstakes

Rosemary Hayes of Tobyhanna was recently named as the winner of this year's Great Summer Getaway Giveaway sweepstakes, taking home the Hotel Getaway Prize. The prize includes a three day, two night hotel stay for herself and a guest at a participating Marriott, Wyndham, Hilton or Hyatt hotel anywhere within the 48 contiguous United States. Hayes was randomly selected.

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How to Meet With a Financial Planner Who Won’t Try to Sell You a Thing

Want money advice but not ready to commit to working with a financial planner?

Feel out your top financial issues for free at an upcoming Financial Planning Day event. The event is a collaboration of the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, the Financial Planning Association, The Foundation for Financial Planning and the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

You can find Financial Planning Day events across the country in October and early November. Certified financial planners volunteer their time to offer short one-on-one financial counseling sessions. There may also be presentations on various personal finance topics you can attend.

“Best of all, there are no strings attached — volunteer financial planners will not sell products or services, give out business cards or take down names,” the program’s website explains.

You will receive a list of volunteers present when you arrive at your local Financial Planning Day event so you can connect with professionals afterward if you choose to. But the ban on volunteers selling or promoting their services takes away the intimidation factor that may prevent some people from attending at all.

How to Make the Most of Free Financial Planning Day

Check out the map to find a free Financial Planning Day event near you and register to save a spot.

The initiative offers several worksheets for attendees to check out before they hed to local events.

The recommended savings fitness worksheets, provided by the U.S. Department of Labor, ask about your financial goals, retirement savings, cash flow and debt reduction status, and provide a financial document checklist that can help you fill out those worksheets.

The Financial Planning Foundation also offers worksheets you can download and fill out before your visit

Don’t see a Financial Planning Day near you? The worksheets above may help you start thinking about your financial goals on your own. Also, check out these resources for low-cost and free financial advice.

Lisa Rowan is a writer and producer at The Penny Hoarder.

This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, one of the largest personal finance websites. We help millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. In 2016, Inc. 500 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the No. 1 fastest-growing private media company in the U.S.

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This is How to Make Extra Money When You Already Work a Full-Time Job

You just got off work.

It was a long day.

Emails. Meetings. Paperwork. Presentations. Co-workers. Coffee. More coffee.

When you work a full-time job, it’s hard to get motivated to do much after a long day. All you want to do is flip your shoes off at the door and kick your feet up on the nearest couch. Netflix doesn’t even have to be on. Let’s just be quiet for a minute.

So when finances start getting tight and bills need to be paid — or maybe you just want some extra money to invest or use toward a much-needed vacation — the mention of a part-time job or side gig probably makes your eyes roll.

No, no, you don’t have the time or energy for that.

But what if a side gig doesn’t have to be so demanding? What if you could sit on the couch and earn some extra money? Or, better yet, make extra money while you’re at work or even while you’re sleeping?

We’ve rounded up a few ways you 9-to-5 folks can make some cash on the side. Nope, it’s not necessarily going to be a ton of money, but at least you’ll be able to stick to that 8 p.m. bedtime.

1. Sit on the Couch and Watch Videos

You won’t earn thousands after your first night of watching these (not always) riveting videos, but it’s kind of fun watching those cents and dollars add up — without having to leave the couch.

Try signing up for InboxDollars. There, you’ll earn cents for views.

You can pick your station. Into sports? Go that route. What about cooking? Watch a how-to video on maple-glazed butternut squash. Yum.

Each less-than-two-minute video earns you a few cents. You’ll also get virtual scratch-off cards, which you can play and earn up to $10.

If you want the complete lowdown on InboxDollars and how to earn even more, well, dollars, we wrote up a review for you.

2. Answer Some Questions From Your Computer

Survey sites are another popular way to bank some extra cash. Again, you won’t come out rolling in dough, but you won’t have to leave your couch.

We’ve written up a list of our favorite (legitimate!) survey sites, but here’s a new one we’ll feature here: It’s called eMiles.

If you’re that 9-to-5 employee who simply wants to save extra money to take a vacation, this is perfect. The site rewards you in points for hotels and flights for doing simple tasks, such as taking surveys.

You can redeem your points for flights with major airlines, such as American Airlines, United and Southwest. If you’re not much of a traveler, you can also use them at Amazon or Starbucks.

By just spending an hour on eMiles, consumers can save $20 to $30 on their next trip, the site claims.

Signing up takes approximately 10 seconds. You’ll just need an email address and to be a U.S. resident. Plus, for a limited time, you can nab bonus points.

3. Rent Your Extra Space (or Couch, If You’re Not Sitting on It)

Have a spare room? Might as well list it on Airbnb and make some money.

If you’re a good host with a desirable space, you could add hundreds — even thousands — of dollars to your savings account with Airbnb.

Taking a few simple steps can make the difference between a great experience and a less-than-satisfactory one.

Here are a few tips:

1. Make your space available during high-demand times in your area. Think: concerts, conventions and sporting events in your area.
2. Be a good host, and make sure your place is stocked with the toiletries you’d expect at a hotel — toilet paper, soap and towels.
3. Be personable. A lot of travelers turn to Airbnb for the personal touch they won’t find at commercial properties.

Here’s the link to sign up as an Airbnb host.

(Hosting laws vary from city to city. Please understand the rules and regulations applicable to your city and listing.)

4. Make a Commitment to the Gym

OK, yes, we’re talking about being lazy after work and doing nothing. But do you know what could make you feel better about life? Working out.

We get it. Forcing yourself to go to the gym before or after work is a challenge. Bring money into the picture, and, well, it might get easier.

HealthyWage is an online program that allows you to place a bet on your weight loss. For example, Angie Richards bet she could lose 40 pounds in six months. She lost 52 and won $1,200.

Unfortunately, the program doesn’t come with a magical diet or sweatless workout routine; you’ll have to figure that part out on your own. But see if that extra cash might motivate you.

For an estimate of how much you could win, go to the HealthyWage Prize Calculator.

5. Extend Your Commute and Give Some Rides

My cohort, Dana Sitar, recently told the story of Paul Pruce. After losing his job, he opted to drive for Lyft and banks about $750 a week.

In some cities, that’s rent.

Signing up to drive for Lyft is super easy; it’s all online. You work when you want, keep a portion of the ride fees and bank 100% of the tips.

If you’re curious to see what you’d make, Lyft has an earnings calculator. Type in how many hours you’d want to work and your city. In my town, I could earn $300 a week for 15 hours of weekend work.

6. Spend Time With Some Good Dogs

If you work a high-stress job, dog-walking or dog-sitting could be the perfect way to decompress during your lunch break or at the end of the day.

You don’t even have to post flyers around your neighborhood. With apps like Rover or DogVacay, you can find pet-owners in your area who need a hand.

You’ll get to set your own rates and your availability. If someone’s too far away? Skip. If you find the cutest dog you’ve ever seen? Sign up!

7. Go on a Grocery Run

The best time to make a grocery run is after work. Grab what you need for dinner that night. In and out. Done.

But you could also make some money out of this weeknight habit.

You’ve got two options:

First, you could sign up to be a Shipt shopper. Folks submit their grocery orders, and you pick them up and deliver them — like Destiny Frith does.

Second, you could simply go about collecting your own groceries and earn money back on certain purchases with Ibotta. Sure, you’re spending money just to make sure money, but use these tips to make the most out of the experience.

You could earn a decent chunk of money on items already in your cart, like 25 cents back on ground beef or $3 back on Bud Light.

Plus, you’ll get a $10 sign-up bonus when you bank that first rebate.

8. Deliver Food Orders

We’re not telling you to go apply to be a Pizza Hut delivery driver. That’d require you to stick to some sort of schedule, and isn’t what you full-timers are about after 5 p.m.

Instead, try signing up to deliver food through UberEats. You pick and choose when you want to make a few runs, like after you’ve had your own dinner and you get that weird spurt of energy.

The nice part is, you don’t have to chat with people — making small talk at the water cooler is enough for one day. Just pick the food up and drop it off.

9. Write Your Heart Out

If you have a knack for writing, you could consider entering the freelancing world, taking projects here and there.

But sometimes even that kind of commitment is a lot to promise after a day of work. Try something more fun: like entering a writing contest.

There are a ton of different contests out there that accept everything from poetry and fiction to fantasy and nonfiction.

Many of these contests are free and come with cash prizes — thousands of dollars in some cases.

We’ve found some of the best writing contests at Write Jobs.

10. Partake in Detective Work to Spice Up Your Evening

Ever heard of mystery shopping?

This is a tool companies might use to secretly check in on how their businesses are running. For example, mystery-shopping company BestMark will pay you to go out and test-drive cars, which means you’ll have to listen to the sales pitch and report back on your experience.

Or there’s Secret Hopper, which says it’ll pay you to grab a drink at your local brewery and rate your experience.

11. Earn $5 By Doing a Potentially Really, Really Random Thing

We don’t love the word “thing,” but in this case, it fits.

Have you heard of Fiverr? It’s an online platform that’ll pay you $5 to complete a task. These tasks — or random things — range from providing unique gift ideas to forming telepathic messages to writing a message on your chest while playing a kazoo.

OK, so sometimes it’s more serious, like drawing a quick logo or writing up a paragraph of content.

Either way, you’ll probably find something you can do. Hey, it’s $5.

12. Capitalize on Your Favorite Creative Hobby

There’s really nothing better than coming home after work and doing what you love, whether it’s painting, woodworking, cross-stitching or jewelry-making.

At a certain point, though, your abode might become overrun with extra crafts — because you can only hang so many of your works on the walls. Why not sell the ones you’re not attached to?

Consider signing up to sell on Etsy, a creative marketplace with millions of buyers. You’ll have to pay 20 cents to list an item, then hand over a 3.5% transaction fee and a 3%-plus-25-cent payment-processing fee. But that’s only a small amount when you get to advertise to all those eyeballs.

And, hey, if you’re not creative, you could always opt to sell supplies on Etsy Studio.

13. Commit to Starting Your Own Business

Let’s count this as a bit of a bonus — a suggestion for those of you who have a ton of energy after work and love committing to big projects.

Why not just start your own freelance business?

Don’t throw yourself to the wolves. Rather, take a free introductory course.

We wrote about three online classes that’ll help you get started, including Learn to be a Bookkeeper. Once you get established, you’ll be able to dictate when, how often and where you work — just like Daniel Honan, who said he grossed about $50,000 in his first year after the program.

So what do you say, full-timers? Earning money on the side of a full-time job doesn’t have to add an extra exhausting layer to your life.

Carson Kohler (@CarsonKohler) is a junior writer at The Penny Hoarder. Currently, her side job is napping (for free), but she aims to start freelance writing soon!

This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, one of the largest personal finance websites. We help millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. In 2016, Inc. 500 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the No. 1 fastest-growing private media company in the U.S.

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Staying Ahead of Becoming Obsolete

Over the last several years of writing for The Simple Dollar, I have read literally hundreds of personal finance and investing books, coupled with many books on adjacent topics like personal growth. You would think by now that I would get the message, so why did I just spend the last few hours reading a recent personal finance book?

At my previous job, I wrote somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 lines of computer code and maintained all of it. The thing was, even in my final months there, I was vigorously rewriting things to improve efficiency and writing completely new test versions of old software using new software methodologies. I spent long afternoons reading books on software development and data mining and algorithms, too.

The reasoning is the same in both cases: I was driven by a fear of becoming obsolete. In my previous job, I didn’t want to find myself in a position where I didn’t understand the latest software development and data mining techniques, even if I didn’t actively use them at work. Similarly, these days, I make a conscious effort to stay abreast of what ideas and changes are growing in the personal finance field, even if they don’t provide a radical shift to my core message of spending less than you earn.

Let’s unpack this a bit.

Why? Many career paths, particularly those that pay well but even in many entry level jobs that don’t pay really well, change rapidly. The days where you could just go to work and do the same thing every day for thirty years is long gone. If you go into work every day with the same exact skillset and same exact set of ideas as the day before, eventually your job is going to change into something that you’re not prepared to handle, and when that happens, you become expendable.

Even worse, if you’re let go from a job and don’t have a skill set that’s relevant for current jobs in your field, you’re going to find a very hard time getting employed again. It’s because you’ve become obsolete.

Of course, you can always recover from that, but it will require a huge investment of time and energy to update your skill set and knowledge, and you’re likely doing it while in a position of unemployment or in a position where you’ve had to get another job in an unrelated area and are devoting a lot of hours in your life to your current job. Some people simply drop out of the workforce entirely at this point.

Becoming obsolete is a real risk in the modern workplace, but it’s something that you can proactively prevent. Here are six ways you can do that.

Strategy #1 – Make Lifelong Learning a Part of Your Job

Part of your normal routine at work should be centered around learning, period. If you are not incorporating some form of learning in your normal routine, if you’re not absorbing new ideas and trying new techniques on a regular basis, you’re either in an extremely entry-level position or you’re on the path to becoming obsolete.

How do you do this, though? Here are some suggestions.

If you’re struggling to come up with any downtime for learning, talk to your employer and find a way to make time. Approach this conversation from the perspective that you’re spending all of your time juggling chainsaws rather than spending some of the time figuring out how to juggle those chainsaws more effectively, which will lead to greater productivity in the long term.

Think about it. If all you’re doing is keeping things barely above water, there’s no way you can ever move into a situation where it’s ever anything more than pure panic mode. The company’s products can’t develop or grow when everything is on the verge of falling apart all the time.

If a company can’t afford even a little space for an employer to improve their skill set, they’re working to make you obsolete. Staying there is going to cause you to eventually fall behind the curve and eventually be unable to easily find new work. You do not want to work there forever, but if you stay, it becomes progressively harder to find a good new position to exit into. So, if your employer isn’t on board with some level of learning, you need to exit the scene.

On the other hand, if you regularly have downtime at work, you’re set. You just need to consciously start using that time for learning new things. Spend a portion of your day devoted to learning, even if it’s just an hour a day or so. Block it off on your schedule. Shut down distractions during that time and devote yourself to reading challenging materials and trying out new techniques.

Where do you even start, though?

Read periodicals and articles related to your field, and dive deep into any regularly-mentioned topics that you don’t have mastery of. For example, let’s say you’re a software developer who does some work in Javascript. You spend some time each day reading, say, StackOverflow, to keep up on things, and you keep seeing people talking about async / await. You kinda understand what it is, but not really. There’s your warning light. It’s time to buckle down, do some reading on what async / await is, and write some test programs for yourself to see it in action.

Let’s say you’re an executive assistant and you spend your time reading general publications related to business administration and your general field so that you can understand what ideas your boss is relaying to you. You might come across an article that talks about strategic meetings, but that’s not really something you’ve done and you’re really not familiar with it. Get familiar with it. Even if it’s not something that really falls in line with what you’re doing now, you can extract ideas from that bigger concept that you can use now, and you’re prepared to handle the concept if you move on to a new position.

Apply what you’re learning. You’ve been reading. That’s good. You’ve been testing out things where you can to see how they work. That’s also good. You’ve been integrating these new ideas into your thinking. That’s great.

Now, it’s time to apply those things, and that leads right into the second and third strategies.

Strategy #2 – Take on Challenging Projects

Many people who become obsolete – or have a fear of becoming obsolete – often have a tendency (and a track record) towards avoiding challenging projects and sticking to familiar things. This tends to pigeonhole people – you become known for one thing and your skills at that one thing become very strong, but what do you do if the need for that one thing goes away at work? What if it falls out of favor in your field?

The truth is that you need to have practical experience on lots of things, and the best way to get that is to get involved with tasks that let you bridge the things you’re already good at with some of those new things. Often, this means getting on board with challenging projects. Here’s how.

Make an effort to get involved with at least some challenging projects and tasks. It’s probably a bad idea to throw yourself completely into things that are outside your current realm of expertise, but it’s a good idea to fill at least some of your plate with tasks that go somewhat beyond what you know. This forces you to translate your self-learning practices from the first strategy into real workplace results.

Your goal should be to fill some of your hours with tasks that are outside of your core skillset. Not all – you’re likely to become overwhelmed and not be able to meet expectations – and not none, because that’s the road to becoming obsolete. You’re targeting some of your work hours.

Don’t shy away just because you don’t know how to do everything right off the bat. It can be very intimidating to take on a work project that includes steps that you’re unsure how to perform. Don’t let that intimidation factor make your decision for you.

Instead, perceive the project as having a few extra steps. Those steps involve learning the skills you need to complete the next step in the project. Perhaps you need to learn a particular API, or maybe you need to understand a particular protocol, or perhaps you simply need to understand the normal procedure for stocking new items.

Whatever it is, don’t resist it. Take it on. Learn how to handle that step, then do it. The thing to remember is that people generally are very forgiving of others who are trying to learn a new task, so you’re likely to get some breathing room and leeway, especially at first. Just simply say, “I haven’t done this part before, and I’m learning. Can you help?” The vast majority of people in life will help, and many will be impressed that you’re trying to learn.

If you’re stuck, stop and learn until you can apply what you’ve learned. Sometimes we’ll take on challenging tasks and discover that we’re in over our heads. The worst move to make here is to keep charging forward, which has a good likelihood of making things worse. The other mistake people often make is to give up. Neither solution is the best one.

The best solution is to put things on pause for a moment and figure out what that next step is. Watch a Youtube video of how to fix that pipe or how to fix this wiring issue or how to diagnose the strange noise. Ask for advice on a programming conundrum on an online forum. Talk to a coworker and see if they have any advice (but don’t simply ask them to do it for you – learn how to do it for yourself).

Strategy #3 – Don’t Resist or Fear Change

Change comes to all workplaces, and people that fear becoming obsolete tend to resist that change. Change means that the skills you once had may not be as useful, and it also means that you may have to learn a few new skills and routines.

Understand that your company has to evolve in order to be successful, and that you have to evolve to keep up with that evolution. Workplace change is going to happen, or else your company is going to eventually go out of business. It is impossible to keep on doing the exact same thing with the exact same tools forever, because the competition will figure out better ways of doing it and they will use that to make lower priced or higher quality products, and customers will move on. That’s reality.

When you resist change, you’re making the case that staying put is more cost-effective in the long run than changing. That’s sometimes the case, but the argument for change is almost always that it will generate more revenue or cost less money in the long run. You have to be prepared to demonstrate that it isn’t true, and if you can’t do that, you’re arguing for something that isn’t what’s best for the organization as a whole so that you can remain comfortable. That’s not a route to a healthy career.

Embrace change, especially when the benefits are clear.

Remember that fighting change is an effective short term strategy, but a disastrous one for the long term. The thing is, many people will still fight changes because they recognize that, in the short term, slowing down change or stopping change is beneficial to them. If they can squeeze another year out of their current skill set, then why not do it?

The problem is that when change does eventually come, not only is that change going to sweep them aside pretty strongly, they’re going to find that their skills are even more outdated than the would have been had they simply embraced the changes when they were first proposed. They sacrificed long term stability for a few extra months of simplicity.

That’s a terrible exchange. Never, ever fight change because change seems harder than staying put. Embrace it now, because it’s easier to change when everyone else is.

Get ahead of change by learning about it and mastering it as soon as you see any hint of it coming. This loops back to the self-learning aspect: if you’re keeping up to date in your field, big changes will probably be part of your knowledge and even part of your skill set before they’re even seriously suggested at work.

If your company decides to switch to the hot new programming methodology, for example, but you’ve already learned about it, you’ve got a leg up. Change will be easy for you and, not only that, you can help others transition and appear to be an incredibly effective employee and even a leader.

Strategy #4 – Take Your Reviews Seriously

Many people fear becoming obsolete because they perceive themselves as already being on shaky ground at work for other reasons. Don’t let that mix of workplace challenges keep you from success. Instead, be proactive about your performance reviews, which provide a great window into your workplace status. Here’s how.

If you don’t have a regular review at work, ask for one. Many positions have a regular review process in which a person can sit down with their employer and assess whether or not that person is meeting the objectives of their job and what they can do to improve. If you don’t have a process like this at work, ask for one. Simply ask for a performance review.

If this seems scary to you, ask yourself why. What could you be doing at work so that this type of review isn’t a scary proposition? The truth is, if a review seems scary, then you’re probably running into fears of becoming obsolete or dealing with other workplace issues, and you should be proactively handling those fears.

Again, if you’re not sure how to proceed, ask your boss for guidance. Very, very few people in the professional world respond negatively if honestly and sincerely ask for help – they’re usually thrilled to help, especially if by doing so they make their workplace better. Having a better employee with a better skill set around is going to make your boss’s life easier, so they’re going to want to help you.

When you have a regular review, ask for suggestions on what you can improve and what upcoming things you can prepare for. So, you’re undergoing this review – now what? Obviously, listen for recommendations on areas that you’re weak in and use that information to improve yourself in the coming months.

However, it goes further than that. A performance review is the perfect time to directly ask what you can improve on and what you can prepare for. Even the best employees have areas of potential improvement. Even the most prepared employees have upcoming situations that they might not be ready for.

A performance review is the perfect time to figure out where you are weak and what’s coming up. That information spells out exactly what you can do to avoid becoming obsolete.

Base your learning around those upcoming objectives and those suggested improvements. Take the feedback from that review and use it to shape what you’re going to learn about next. Cycle that information right back into that first strategy and use it for input for learning.

If your boss indicates that you’re weak in an area, study that area. Become strong in that area. If your boss says something is coming in the future, study that something. Become strong in that something. That way, rather than becoming obsolete, you’re becoming stronger and more useful.

Remember that in most situations, your supervisor is telling you the truth, as you both benefit if a review is honest and taken seriously by the employee. As I noted earlier, in a normal employment situation, it is in the best interest of your boss to give you an honest review and to give you good advice on how to improve yourself and your work situation. If they have better employees, then it’s likely to reflect better on them to their supervisor.

Take advantage of that. Take your supervisor at his or her word and move forward based on their advice. They’re not going to suggest things to you that are going to put you in a worse place in terms of professional growth, because that doesn’t help them, either.

Strategy #5 – Be Involved in Professional Groups

Another powerful way to stay in touch with changes in your profession, to have a lot of opportunities for learning, and to build a ton of professional relationships at the same time is to join professional groups, particularly face-to-face ones, and go to professional meetings. Such groups are prime opportunities to meet people in your field and learn about the latest innovations in your career directly from them.

Here’s how to take advantage of this route for professional improvement.

Find professional groups online and in your area. Many professions have local groups that you can get involved with. You can find them online through professional associations in your career path or, lacking that, through services like Meetup. Look for any and all groups that may have something to do with your career and professional interests.

If you’re having difficulty finding professional face-to-face groups in your area, look for tight online communities focused on your field where you can share ideas. LinkedIn is a good place to start here.

Going to professional conferences and conventions is another great step along these lines. It allows you to compress many of the benefits of a professional group into just a few days that are jam packed with face-to-face interactions and learning. Many conventions often facilitate online groups as well.

Get actively involved with the discussions in those groups, both in terms of helping others as well as seeking out people who have knowledge you’re seeking. You’ve found a group or two – online or face-to-face. Now, get involved. If you see someone asking a question that you can answer well, answer it – do it with no questions asked and no thanks or benefit required. If you have a relevant question, ask it – many people will answer it as well as they can.

It’s that active exchange of knowledge that makes a community valuable, not only for you, but for everyone else involved. The more you participate, particularly in being helpful, the more others are drawn to participate and the more of a draw the group becomes.

Use learning as a tool for building relationships. Not only are such communities useful in terms of adding new knowledge and skills to your repertoire, it’s good for building professional relationships.

Those relationships come in handy. They can help you take the next step in your career by opening doors and opportunities. They can provide help when you’re trying to learn something new or add a new skill. They also can provide social fun and entertainment.

Get involved! You won’t regret it!

Strategy #6 – Use New Skills Outside of Work

If you’re struggling to find ways to apply some of your skills in the workplace, look outside of the workplace. There are almost always great opportunities for using skills in situations outside of our primary employer.

Here are some avenues to apply what you’re learning in real projects if they’re not available at work.

Look for projects in the community or within your passion areas to apply skills you’re learning but perhaps not applying at work. See if there are any community organizations or nonprofit groups or charities within your community that could use the skills that you’e trying to hone. Does an organization need some IT support? Could you set up a bit of custom software for some group? Could a local community group use some design help? Offer it up.

Remember, the goal here is to hone and master a skill that you want to practice while helping out a deserving group in your community. You most likely won’t make money from such an endeavor, but you will likely make some great connections in your local community.

Don’t be afraid to freelance outside of work, especially if it pulls you in new directions. Another option, of course, is to simply hang out your shingle for freelance work. This involves some self-promotion to find that work, but there are few things that will really put new skills to the test like a paid contract.

The thing to remember with freelancing and consulting is that, especially at first, you have to dig up the work. It doesn’t come to you. Don’t be afraid to seek out opportunities, even low income ones at first. This isn’t about making money, at least not at first. It’s about stretching your wings.

Intentionally choose extra projects that force you to stretch your skills a little. It can be tempting to just go back to the skills that you’ve honed over the years and just ply them again and again, but doing that really doesn’t help you to grow. It doesn’t do anything to keep becoming obsolete at bay.

When you’re looking for extra projects to work on, make an effort to choose ones that are likely to push you to use skills that you don’t normally use at work. Using those skills on a real-world project will really help your skill set to avoid becoming rusty and outmoded.

Final Thoughts

Obsolescence is a real fear in many professional careers. The skills that once carried you can slowly – or quickly – become skills that are no longer valued in your field, and at that point, you become expendable and it becomes difficult to find more work.

Don’t let that happen to yourself. Be proactive. Take steps to protect your career. In doing so, you give yourself more professional options than ever before.

Good luck!

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