Personal Success and Failures With Side Hustles
The good and the not so good
Initially, me and my wife starting side hustling as we were in debt. It was a way to boost both our incomes and eat into the debt. Today, we do it to increase our wealth. Here’s our journey over the past three years…
Little disclaimer — we both work full time in education so all side hustles are outside of these hours.
Firstly, the successes…
Part time work — my wife took on a cleaning role to increase her income. This isn’t the best paid but gives us another form of income and more money going into the account. I help my wife and we regularly listen to podcasts so we are learning whilst on the job.
My wife also has a love for walking and picked up a twice a week side job of walking a woman with dementia in the community for two hours. This was win win as it was exercise as well as extra cash. Unfortunately, this side hustle was temporary as the woman’s condition deterioriated.
Fostering — bit of a taboo one as people judge getting extra income from having foster children but both me and my wife are vastly experienced in looking after children that are in the care setting. Side benefit of this as well is that fun days are organised where we can take the whole family and obviously you are helping a child desperately in need. Definitely, not for everybody but we have found it whilst highly challenging, high rewarding.
Mystery shopping — very haphazard in terms of how often I got invited to participate but I made around $300 in a year. Really enjoyable to do as you get to speak to people and investigate products you may not necessarily have an interest in. I also luckily did a lottery mystery shop and ended up winning $60 (as you can keep the winnings). You do feel a bit of an actor, one recent scenario involved me completely making up a business in order to feign interest in a work van.
Usertesting — my experience has been it’s pretty difficult to get accepted for a survey but I’ve still made quite a bit from these surveys. It’s difficult to weigh up if the time spent searching for surveys is worth the reward though and I’m definitely on it less than I used to be.
Facebook marketplace- this is my wife’s domain and she has made heaps of money selling stuff we no longer use. Our future plans are to travel a lot so getting rid of possessions helps with this. She does experience the occasion person muck her about and time waste but the vast majority of times it goes smoothly.
Extra reponsibility at work- I work in the education space and opportunities to lead in areas carrying one year financial rewards are available each year. I always put my hand up for these and it helps boost income.
The not so successful
Online surveys — these have been very stop start and seem a lot of effort to not really pay very well. Apart from usertesting (menitoned above) I’ve not really had much joy with these.
Youtube — I tried to get into this space and whilst the experience taught me a lot about video editing etc, I was only really getting a few views from friends and I didn’t really persevere.
The so-so
International students — not an easy one to do at the moment due to COVID but we have hosted international students up until July this year. The money isn’t great but the experience is amazing. We’ve hosted students from Hong Kong, Japan, Germany and China. An allowance is paid but for us it was only slightly more than the increase in food, utilities, etc.
For the future…I enjoy writing so I’m hoping Medium ends up being a space I can add to the list of side hustles. I may return to Youtube and I’ve just started on Prolific (another survey site).
Side hustles and passive income (e.g. money made off stocks, housing) will always be in mine and wife’s plans.
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