5 Reasons Why You Should Start A Side Hustle If You Are Employed
Everyone Should Have A Side Hustle.
I am a student and I have worked many jobs for over a decade. While money has never been an issue for me, it has always been my goal to have enough money for when I leave home and have to pay for everything I own.
I started to get into the world of side-hustles and I think that everyone should have one. There are so many hidden benefits that could help you in the future. Here are 5 reasons why you should start a side hustle if you are working a job!
1. You Learn Valuable Skills
When you start a side-hustle you will most likely need to learn different things about it and how it all operates. A lot of the skills you will learn will transfer over to things that you may need within your job or if you wanted to start a full-time business later down the road.
One of the biggest skills that you will learn when starting a side-hustle is managing money. You will also learn about paying taxes as you won’t have an employer that will pay those taxes for you. All of these skills can be used in the side-hustle that you want to start or later on in life if you are wanting to start a business.
I have learned so many skills from my side-hustle and they have really helped me now. Money management and the value of money was always something I struggled with but once you start having to do everything yourself you realise how hard it can be. With that, I learned how to properly manage my business income and how to pay taxes on that money.
2. You Will Have An Income If you Lose Your Job
One of the biggest fears when being employed is that you could lose your job at any time and then be left without any income. This obviously a problem because if you have no money then you can’t pay the bills or feed your family until you can find a new job.
If you have a side-hustle, you can be making money even if you don’t have a job. If the company you work for shuts down and you are left jobless then you can rely on your side-hustle to continue making money.
While I have never lost my job, I have gone between multiple and I have had a gap year in school so there have been times in my life where I have had no income. My side-hustle has always been there for me and it allowed me to do what I wanted to even though I had no job and I wasn’t in school.
3. Live Life More Comfortably
The average American makes $56,516 and while this could be classed as a lot of money for some, there may be more expensive things that you would want to buy. Maybe you are wanting to buy a Tesla but you just can’t afford it, a side-hustle has the potential to make you $3000 per month on top of your normal income. This could give you that extra money that you need to by something that you really want.
Everything seems to be getting more expensive these days and one of the things a lot of people wish they could do is buy the new iPhone each year but it just keeps getting more expensive. If you are wanting to buy it each year then you will probably need a side-hustle because you don’t want to have to spend a large portion of your salary each year on a new phone.
You may go on vacation once or twice a year to another place within your country or maybe even overseas if you can afford that. If you can’t afford a nice luxurious vacation overseas then a side-hustle could allow you to do that. There have been many case studies that show this, starting a side-hustle could give you the opportunity to travel that you never had before.
A few years ago I went on holiday myself with 2 friends, they both also have a side-hustle. Because of the extra income that we had, we were able to go to Majorca (An island in Spain) and stay in a 5-star hotel that cost $6,000 per person for 2 weeks. We had an amazing time and that just would not have been possible if it wasn’t for our side-hustles.
4. It Can Develop Into A Future Full-Time Income
If you are currently working a 9–5 then I can bet that you do not enjoy it and you would rather be working a job that you preferred. If you stick with your side-hustle for long enough, it could turn into a full-blown business that makes you double or triple what you currently make.
This can then give you the time flexibility that you need because there is no minimum vacation time an employer has to give you. If you are self-employed then you can go on vacation whenever you feel like it. There are many other advantages to turning your side-hustle into a business and I think that if you hate your job and you already have a successful side-hustle then you can stop it when you want.
I am still a student and I am studying at University but I also no longer have a job. The store that I was working at shut down and I was left with no job. But because I had my side-hustle I took that opportunity to turn it into a full business that now provides with a full income. I also run another side hustle that is writing for Medium that I do for fun so that also boosts my income.
5. You Can Re-invest The Money
The extra money that can be made from a side-hustle could go towards other things through re-investments. There are 2 main types for this and they are investing in a business or investing in the market.
Investing In Business
Investing in a business is when you want to start your own business that could potentially become your full-time income and give you flexibility in life. When starting a business you almost always have to have some starting income and a side-hustle is where you can get that from.
That money that you re-invest into a business is money well spent because you can take that couple of thousand that you make each month and turn it into tens of thousands each month. The more money that you can invest the more money that you can potentially make and the easier things will be for you.
Investing In The Market
There are many ways that you can invest in the market like trading stocks and real estate. I would recommend that if you want a safe trade to invest in something like an index fund because then you are investing in hundreds of companies at once.
This means that if one of those companies was to fail, you would lose a lot less money. You can invest as much as you want each year and there is an average rate of 7% gain each year so there is no reason not to do it.
You could also invest in something like real estate, this is when you buy houses and rent them out to people. You become the landlord and you get paid each month for each person that lives in those houses or apartments that you have made.
I have invested in the stock market and right now I have a portfolio of around $10,000. I have only invested around $7,000 which means my investment has gained over $3,000 in stock gains and dividends. I invest usually about $500 per month and I would like to add more in the future.
Conclusion
There are many great benefits to starting a side-hustle and some of these advantages could become life-changing. There's basically no downside to starting a side-hustle and I think anyone who can start one should start one.