Читать книгу Sort Your Money Out - Glen James - Страница 32

This is a bit of a buzz phrase which has increased in popularity in recent years. Side hustling is when you work on the side to your regular or main job and ‘hustle’ to make additional money or to advance your career. I am not a fan of pursuing a side hustle for the sake of it. I value your time and you should too. I believe there are only four reasons you should do a side hustle and they are:

 to earn extra money to get out of debt (that's you!)

 to earn extra money to save for a short-term goal (e.g. you wish to save up $2000 for a new mountain bike, stand-up paddleboard or something that you really want but don't have money for in your day-to-day life)

 to organically start to build a business on the side: you can do this after hours or on weekends and as time passes, the goal would be to grow the business so much that you need to quit your main job to pursue your own business 100 per cent of the time

 to allocate the income to investments only. This might be the only reason to side hustle long term (so it's not in vain). You will then ensure that your human capital (I'll talk about this in the next chapter) will be committed to growth assets so your sacrifice of time and effort spent working now will be worth much more in the future as your investments grow and compound over the longer term.

It is important to understand that if you're doing a side hustle to pay for food, rent and other day-to-day expenses, it's really just a second job. This could be a sign that your expenses are higher than your income, which means you may need to consider reducing your expenses or that you're being underpaid.

Don't waste your time working extra hours to then just consume that money. Put it to use! And if you aren't planning to do something longer term with your hustle money, only commit to the hustle for as long as you're paying off your debt to ensure you're not overcooking yourself.

You might say, ‘Glen, I love doing photography/graphic design/catering on the side and I'm happy to have it as my side hustle long term’. Awesome. Do that. It sounds like a great hobby that you'll get paid for. I just want you to have your own wellbeing in mind. Because if you are on the grind for a long period of time, your finances might be looking pretty, but it might be costing you in other areas of your life (mental health, relationships).

I don't want to treat you, my dear reader, like you can't think for yourself. This is why I will give examples to prompt you and to point you in the right direction. You know how the four examples above will best fit into your personal situation. I want you to be the best version of you. If this means you will be hitting the pub — to pour beer, that is, after hours for a short stint to clean up your debt — awesome.

If you're going to side hustle and are contracting through an ABN, it might be worth setting aside a modest amount of what you earn, say 25 per cent, in a separate online bank account for tax. You can review this as time goes by, but I would rather you have the money sitting in an account ready to pay the Australian Tax Office (ATO) than not having any money to pay a bill come tax time!

Just on side hustles, please remember that you don't need to start a side hustle out of guilt — because ‘everyone is doing it’ — or boredom. People often waste time and money on pursuing side hustles when these finite resources could be used towards other effective goals or investments, such as further study or professional development in order to increase income at your main source of employment.