Inflation is up, prices are rising rapidly, and people are being furloughed from their jobs, resulting in lower salaries. How do you make ends meet when you are earning less and everything costs more? One suggestion might be to find a source of additional income to help balance your budget. Several possibilities follow:

Pet sitting and pet walking can pay well and take up very little of your time. If your neighbors are working full time and the family pet is home alone all day, they might well be happy to compensate you for taking their pet for a walk mid-day. Others may be going away and need someone to care for their animals. Many pet owners today much prefer to leave pets in their own homes, as opposed to bringing them to kennels. Frequently, kennels cost even more than you would charge. For the cost of an ad in the local paper, you may be able to start-up a business and add additional funds to your budget.

If you have a specific skill, consider teaching a course or running a workshop to share with others. Many places such as YMCAs, local churches, and adult-education programs offer courses and would be willing to compensate you.

Run errands for local people who are short on time. Charge by the hour and you can do their grocery shopping, pick-up dry cleaning, water plants, etc. Whatever needs to be done, you can be available.

Get paid for your opinion. Market research firms will often compensate you for providing feedback on a variety of subjects such as buying habits and reporting to a group to discuss product reliability.

Selling from home (yours or a friend’s) is another option. This would be the equivalent of selling Avon, Southern Living At Home products, or Tastefully Simple food products. All of these can be financially rewarding and can often be done in additional to your current job.

Selling your belongings online or at consignment shops will help you to eliminate clutter and add funds to your bank account. If you find that you really enjoy this, you may want to purchase items for resale as a means of increasing your income.

These are just a few of the ways you can supplement your income while not committing too much of your time. There are others such as tutoring children, part time jobs, and renting out a room or rooms in your home.

In today’s economy, it is almost impossible to even think of requesting a raise in salary as more and more of your co-workers are being laid off. There is, however, a possibility that this raise may actually be available if you request it.

In times such as these, a trusted, extremely productive employee is very valuable to a company. Frequently, your workload has doubled due to layoffs and your employer can appreciate this fact. This is not an unreasonable time to ask for an increase but, first, you must do your research.

Research the web to find out what comparable employees are paid at other companies. Check sites such as salaryexpert.com and salary.com to determine equivalent jobs in your area of the country.

Be prepared to document all of your achievements. It is important that you have won awards and participated in mentoring young employees, but focus on what you have done to improve the bottom line. Employers today consider the “bottom line” to be the ultimate improvement. Prepare yourself to document what you have done to improve this number or to cut expenses. Either of these accomplishments are the way to an increase.

Sit down with your manager and discuss what he feels you need to do to get a higher salary. Then set a future date for discussing your accomplishments leading towards this goal. This date should be set at three to six months away.

The current economic crisis demands that all large companies review their costs and find ways to cut them as much as possible. One of the areas being targeted by large corporations today is absenteeism. JC Penney is working diligently with their employees in an effort to cut employee absences and the expenses they entail.

Hundreds of our country’s largest employers have estimated that unscheduled absences cost them over $750,000 a year in payroll. Costs are much greater, however, when you take into account lost revenue and lower productivity. Excessive absenteeism also results in lower employee morale, which eventually also affects the bottom line.

JC Penney is trying to resolve their absenteeism problem through a new program they’ve set up. The program is called Power Line and is made up of a team of employees. Any employee who will be out of work for three or more days will contact the Power Line group and the group will determine the type of benefit the employee is entitled to. If forms are necessary, these will be provided to the employee. The team then notifies the employee’s store directly. The Power Line employee follows-up with the absent employee and continues to do so until this person returns to work. Although this new system has only been in use for the past 90 days, the store believes that they are already seeing positive results.

This is just one of the many areas being investigated today to determine how else corporate expenses can be lowered. If major companies want to survive in these troubling times, they will have to make every effort to cut costs while still providing exceptional customer service.