Multi-Income Streams
Why 1 job doesn't cut it for a lot of people any more.
Ever wondered why everyone has a side hustle these days? For some the 9-5 isn't paying the bills any more. Others use the multi-hyphenate approach to increase flexibility or income. This can also reduce risk because it's less of a direct blow if you're laid off from your job. Many never had a stable full-time gig to begin with and have always made do with a hodge-podge of side jobs and freelance opportunities to keep money coming in. Others have turned to monetising the side hustle in attempt to free themselves from the grind permanently.
I said in my first post I had figured out I needed 3 income streams to work towards my personal financial goals. I had broken up each hypothetical income stream towards supporting one area of my life - one for retirement, one for a property purchase, one for general investing. But when I really analysed these it felt like even that was the just the tip of the iceberg.
Before I marched myself right into a doom spiral of never obtaining my financial goals, I turned instead to what a multi-income stream setup might actually look like in practice.
The 9-to-5 comes with its own set of pros and cons. A full-time job offers the stability of steady pay but it is very time consuming.
Eight hours every day go towards ‘the office’. Working from home was the great eye opener for many that when you’re not surrounded by office chit-chat and coffee breaks you can actually get a lot done in a shorter amount of time.
Does a full-time job really need to take 40 hours a week or can I get the work done in 15 and do something else with my time? Except I’m contractually obligated not to, because no matter how long it takes me to actually complete the tasks of my role, I’m in essence on call for the rest of the time to field slack messages and emails or jump on a quick call.
Passive income streams are famous for making us money while we sleep. Your investment portfolio counts as a passive income steam, however as you need money to make money in that scenario, it works a lot better after you’ve already cashed in from perhaps a more active stream.
My scenario was that I was saving 45% of my monthly earnings but as I learned from my breakdown of lifetime earnings, 45% of not a lot isn’t much. So I couldn’t rely on solely putting the remainder of my paycheque into an index fund and hope to retire early and have a home in the city.
So the purpose of my investigation was finding ways to earn more money in multiple ways. Here I entered the world of everyone tying to sell you a course on how to make courses.
The internet is full of everyone and their brother trying to sell you the dream that you can be a quick millionaire with a drop-shipping company or an instagram following. And many people have had success with that however it was now at the point of over-saturation.
Many an internet personality champions using what makes you unique to create an email list or sell a product, but if you look around there are a million and a half options per niche so finding a way to make your voice heard could become a full time job in itself. I had a full time job and I didn’t want to lose one income stream in search of another.
Overall I had two main takeaways from on how to earn more money for myself- I could create a product or service business on the side and have the flexibility to work around my job, but be competing with many in this space. Working for yourself however gives the greatest financial returns.
Or I could find a second employer, be that in a cafe or another tech company and juggle my time commitments and take in two salaries. Working for others though always means less flexibility and only a fraction of the total pie though.
My own aspirations felt capped even with a second job so I began with the side business option. As I didn’t want to jeopardise my current employment I sought to find ways to take on extra projects in my spare time. I spent time learning social media algorithms, facebook advertising, and what I could reasonably charge for freelance services. It’s an ongoing trial and error process that can be very exciting at times and just as disappointing in others.
I see more and more people around me turning to side-hustles, whether that is for a chance to explore their creativity or increase their earnings. I applaud you if you’ve struck out and tried to expand your options (for whatever reason) beyond the standard day-job.
Have you thought of taking on a side hustle before? What were your motivations to get started?