Side hustles are freakin’ awesome.
A side hustle is just a little way of making money on the side of your regular job. That’s it. Whether it’s a hobby that brings in an extra £20 a month or a potential future job, that’s some sweet extra investment cash right there.
Here’s all the reasons why I love a good side hustle!
Reason 1: Side hustles aren’t your day job
I’ve heard lots of (mainly older) FIRE community members belittling the humble side hustle.
“Focus on your main job” is a familiar refrain.
I think that the best part of a side hustle is that it isn’t your day job. Even just for the novelty, having your extra investment cash coming from a different place to the rest of your cash is a pretty sweet feeling.
My experience of trying out a few side hustles is that they keep you energised and enthusiastic. Sure, they are technically work – and often lower-paid – but they feel like hobbies. A change is often as good as a rest!
Reason 2: it’s all about being self-reliant
Most side hustles are self-employed, self-started little numbers that only exist because you get off your arse and do them.
If you’re self-employed, this isn’t much of an attraction: you’re doing this anyway.
I’m a desk-bound wage slave most of the time. Doing side hustles is my way of doing something off my own back and seeing rewards for my own efforts.
I appreciate the money earned from side hustles more than the money I earn from my day job!
Reason 3: Side Hustles can use the trading allowance
When I work at my job, I have to pay tax, national insurance and student loans contributions.
However, little side hustles can take advantage of the trading allowance. This is a £1,000 tax-exempt limit for self-employed, casual work or hiring of personal equipment that you don’t need to declare to the tax man.
Which means that your £1,000 of tax-free side hustle money is the same as earning £1250 for a basic-rate taxpayer – and that’s excluding NI or student loans deductions.
Nice.
Reason 4: Side hustles build transferable skills
In terms of a quick return, getting new qualifications in your existing career field is likely to be more effective than trying to build a side hustle up.
Likely.
My experience of trying out side hustles is a little different!
I did a bit of Uber Eats for a while, which taught me all about efficiency from marginal gains. You learn really quickly how little things like setting up your bag cuts down on waste time in between pick-ups, which is actually a rehearsal in applying kaizen techniques, just on a small scale.
I’ve written and published short stories on Amazon, which taught me the difference between writing for fun and writing for an audience. This is a skill I use weekly in my main job.
Blogging isn’t really a money-maker for me. Despite all the “make $X,000 a day blogging!” posts around the web, I have yet to make a penny on any of the blogs I’ve started. However, I did learn about SEO (ish), which I used to improve the articles we wrote for my law firm’s professional blog.
Reason 5: Side hustles make good stories
Sorry kiddo, no-one wants to hear about that bitchin’ Excel Spreadsheet you wrote for your boss at work. Bo-ring!
Now, if you talk about that time you narrated an audiobook, became a film extra, or got into renovating vintage musical instruments – suddenly I want to know a bit more.
I once knew a guy whose side hustle was buying, refurbishing and selling antique lamps. Specifically lamps, no common chandeliers for this chap! I didn’t even know that there was a specific market for lamps, but he sure did. He’d learned how to spot a bargain, how to repair early 20th Century electrics, and how to target these specific customers. To this day, I don’t know much else about his life outside of work, other than this weird fact.
One of my partner’s friends had a weird side hustle while doing her postgraduate degree: she chaperoned VIPs at big gigs and events. She met up with us at a Metallica gig in London one time, working her hustle and getting to see the same gig we did!
Side hustles aren’t just an urban thing, either. I remember being offered the chance to go beating game out of the bushes for a rough shooting club once. Sadly, I was busy that weekend, but it’s shows that there’s the odd side hustle everywhere.
Where side hustles fit into my campaign plan
If you check out my FIRE campaign plan for this year, you’ll see that my investments rate is only 20-30%.
That’s not enough to be coast FI in 10 years.
By adding in a little extra cash from my side hustles, I get more to invest. This is a bigger payoff that it appears. If I can usually only pay £100 a month into my ISA, then adding an extra £20 means that over the year I’ll have paid in £1440 instead of the £1200 I would have paid in. It’s like having gained 2 months of extra savings over the year.
That’s right: that little bit extra now can advance your FIRE plan by months.
Logically, if I can bring in an extra £20 for my ISA each month (assuming my wage stays the same), then at the 6 year point I’ll have added a whole year of savings in at this rate. A whole year ahead.
In reality, I’m also hoping to increase my income and keep my expenses low, which will probably do more. However, my expenses are currently at rock bottom lows and I can’t increase my income this year as I’m in a trainee job, at least for 18 months. But with a small side hustle, I can keep pushing forward!
That’s why side hustles are freakin’ awesome.
So, how might one go about picking a good side hustle? If only someone had written a post about it – like this post on choosing an awesome side hustle!
