As most of you know, I have had many side jobs (they are all a part of my business now and I am self-employed). I didn’t think my side jobs would eventually become my full-time job.
But these side jobs did become my full-time job, and I’ve never been happier.
My side hustles completely changed my life and when I think about how everything turned out, I can’t help but think about how lucky I am.
My life is completely different from what I thought it would be like just a few years ago.
In the beginning, I really wanted a side job after I received my undergraduate degrees (I had a break of around 8 months, I believe, before I started my MBA), and I also even thought about getting a side job while I was working full-time and taking MBA classes full-time. W did not think me starting a side job was the best idea though, because he thought that I really needed a break from everything.
He was right. I think taking a part-time offline job would have been too stressful.
So, instead of looking for a more “real” part-time job where I would physically go in every single day, I eventually expanded what I was doing online and looked for positions online. I knew that writing and offering other online services was something that I really enjoyed, so it felt more like a fun hobby.
I found many online jobs and everything just happened from there!
Even though I always had many side jobs, most of my friends do not make any sort of money on the side. It must be a personal finance blogger/reader thing! I’m not sure why this is. There are plenty of positives for having a side job.
1. I had a lot of student loans.
I knew that if I only had my day job, then paying off my student loans would take a very long time. I can’t remember exactly (I try to push all student loan memories out of my mind!), but I believe my monthly payments would have been around $500 per month if I would have paid them just “normally.”
Paying $500 a month for like 10 years?
Hmmm… That was not something that I wanted.
I had and still have friends who pay the minimum payments (some are over $1,000 each month!) and don’t really try any harder to make any extra money to pay them off quicker. I didn’t want that to be me. I knew I could pay them off more quickly than the schedule.
I made a student loan payoff plan and paid off all of my student loans within one year after I graduated with my Finance MBA. Without my side jobs, I really do not think this would have been possible.
Yes, I could have paid extra each month, but not at the same magnitude.
2. We were struggling.
Yes, we always had shelter and we never went without food, but we weren’t doing the greatest. We weren’t saving money and I was racking up student loans even though we were both working full-time.
3. We wanted to travel.
With the amount of money that we were making and the level of expenses that we had, traveling just didn’t really seem possible. With side income, we were able to apply this extra money towards traveling. This was great because we didn’t feel horrible going on a vacation!
It was paid for by extra bonus money.
4. We wanted to save money.
Making side income allowed us to save a good amount of money. We were able to be less reliant on each form of income because we were able to save over 50% of our income each month.
We were able to save a large emergency fund, save for repairs, save for retirement, save for vacation and so on.
5. We didn’t want to feel stuck.
One very large positive of having side income is that if something came up, we had a fairly large buffer in our cash flow each month so it didn’t seem like the end of the world.
This is significantly different to how it was before we made any amount in side income. If something broke, we definitely freaked out.
6. We were fairly frugal but didn’t want to cut any of our expenses.
The only other way was to earn more.
Yes, we probably could have cut our expenses a little more, but not enough to where it would have really mattered. We’ve always been kind of frugal.
So, we knew that we had to make more money in order to actually make a change in our lives.
Why do you make extra money? Why do you not?
Would extra money change your life? How would an extra $500 each month change your life?
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