Are you tired of never having enough money for emergency savings, large purchases, or vacations?
If so, a temporary side hustle could be the means to ensure that you have money for emergencies so you don’t have to charge unexpected expenses to a credit card or harm your credit by making late payments on an already high credit card balance.
Don’t think you have it in you to add more hours to the week? You may change your mind once you see all the ways that taking on a side hustle for a while can help you get ahead in 2023.
Read on for five ways that a temporary side hustle can improve your finances and your life.
For help managing your debt, consider working with a fiduciary financial advisor. Find an advisor who serves your area today (Sponsored).
1. Save for emergencies
How many times have you charged unexpected car or home repairs, vet bills, medical bills, or other unexpected expenses to a credit card with a balance that’s already more than you can afford to make payments each month?
If you earn as little as $400 a month from a side hustle that you enjoy and work at it for a few months, depositing all earnings into an emergency savings account, you’ll quickly have $1,200. That’s enough to cover small emergencies or maybe even one big one.
If you enjoy your side hustle enough to work for several months and continue with regular deposits, you can save even more.
Find out: 8 Signs You Need to Fatten Your Emergency Savings
2. Tackle burdensome debt
If your credit card or medical debt is out of control, working a side hustle is one of the fastest ways to knock down balances and hammer away until you reach a zero balance. Once your credit cards are paid off, you’ll have more money each month to save and/or spend on things and activities you enjoy.
Work a little longer at your side hustle, maybe even a year or two, and you can apply the extra earnings to car loans, student loans, or the principal on your mortgage loan to pay them off sooner.
3. Save for vacations
I used to pet sit for my neighbors and stash my earnings in a coffee can until they amounted to enough to pay for a vacation. That way, I’d have enough to pay for a hotel, airfare, and rental car, plus extra cash to spend on dining out, sightseeing, and souvenirs.
Find out: Don’t Get Burned by These 4 Vacation Scams
4. Save for large expenses
I also used pet-sitting money to pay for the renovation of a screened porch on my home, new furniture, and occasional splurges for items to make my home cozier and more stylish. That way, I didn’t have to charge services or items on my credit card.
If you’ve got your eye on items you can’t afford right now, it’s time to get old school and take on an extra job so you can save enough to pay cash for what you want and stay out of debt.
Find out: How to Make Focus Groups Your Next Side-Hustle
5. You might even enjoy yourself
Most people don’t want to spend evenings working at a second job after grinding away all day at work. But if you choose a side hustle that you enjoy, that second job may not feel like much work at all. You could even look forward to it.
If you like animals, you could pet sit or walk dogs for pet owners in your neighborhood. Maybe you like being outside and can pick up extra cash mowing lawns or performing other types of yard work. Or if you’re highly organized, you could offer home and office organizing services.
If you have a skill to teach, you could provide consulting services for business or another profession. If you’re a good writer, you could dip your toe into freelancing, writing articles for websites and other publications.
Develop a side hustle mindset
If you’re reluctant to take on more work, don’t assume that a side hustle just isn’t for you. Look over this list of all the ways that cash from a side hustle can help you get ahead and stay out of credit card debt. Then set a short-term goal of working a side hustle for a few months or maybe even longer.
With a side hustle, you’ll also meet new people, learn new skills, and feel good about accomplishing savings goals.
Who knows? You may enjoy the extra cash and all the ways it makes your life easier so much that you keep your side hustle around long enough to save for a down payment on a house, pay off your student loans, or even sock away enough to get married and start a family.
Find out: You Can Work Side Jobs to Make Extra Money
More debt tips
If you, like many Americans, are struggling financially, you can proactive steps now to pay off your debt quickly, such as increasing your cash flow or paying more than your monthly minimums on bills.
Additionally, a financial advisor can help you navigate your debt. SmartAsset’s free tool matches you with up to three financial advisors who serve your area, and you can interview your advisor matches at no cost to decide which one is right for you. (Sponsored)
This article originally appeared on Debt.com and was syndicated by MediaFeed.org.
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Side hustles that could actually become lucrative businesses
Side hustles are the big thing for young professionals and experienced workers alike. While you can only budget so much, your earning potential is unlimited with a side hustle. Whether you’re looking to start a business or want to earn a bit more to fix up your finances, a side hustle could be the perfect way to start. If you do things right, it could lead to a full-time, self-employed income. Here are 11 side hustle businesses that are perfect to take from hustle to full-time.
Websites are the hub of online business today. You’re viewing a website at this very moment. If you have the skills to build a website, there is someone out there willing to pay you for it.
Depending on your level of skill, you can build anything from basic business websites for local businesses all the way up to advanced, functioning apps. The more advanced skills you have, the more you can charge. But you can start with a basic knowledge of WordPress and HTML and build up from there. If you love learning, a good challenge, and computers, this is a great side hustle. A great place to start is a marketplace like Upwork.
I have a soft spot for freelance writing, as writing is at the core of my side hustle to self-employment story. I started writing about personal finance online in October 2008, and in April 2016 I left my job to take my online writing side hustle full-time. It has since turned into a six-figure business for me and allows me to support my family comfortably.
Writing is not as easy as some might think. You always have to be selling, bringing on new clients, and delivering high-quality content on a regular basis consistently over time. To succeed in writing, it’s best to pick a niche where you have a strong background and deep knowledge. If you have knowledge of an in-demand topic and elite writing skills, freelance writing is a great side hustle — and I’m living proof that you can take it full-time. You can find jobs at various job boards and online marketplaces to get started.
I know Photoshop about as well as I know my way around a car engine, but if you know how to create art and graphics on a computer, you have a prime skill set with wide demand today.
Everyone from big businesses to small app developers needs high-quality images to draw in and keep visitors to their websites and digital products. If you have the right skillset, there are plenty of gigs out there on various marketplaces like Fiverr and 99 Designs.
While the internet offers amazing opportunities to earn from the comfort of your home, sometimes you have to get out to put your best skills to use. If you’e handy around the house, you can put those skills to use in other people’s houses, and get paid for it.
Like website design, this is a great way to learn new skills as you work. I’m not all that handy, but I’ve changed toilets, shower heads, locks, installed a ceiling fan, and done quite a bit more around the house. If you have at least above-average skills, you can fix and build for hire. Start advertising on local public notice boards at coffee shops, community centers, religious centers, Craigslist, Yelp, and Google Places.
If you’re handy with a rake, lawn mower, and a shovel, you know everything you need to start a landscaping, lawn, and garden care side hustle. During warm weather months, you can mow the lawn, rake the leaves, prune the roses, and keep the yard in tip-top shape. In the winter, you can shovel driveways and keep the yard looking nice.
In my neighborhood, nearly everyone has a gardener because the weather is warm year-round. Keeping up with the fruit trees, flowers, and mowing the lawn is a ton of work. I’ve been doing it myself so far, but I’m close to hiring it out. Someone with this side hustle would be at the top of my hire list.
If you’re good at math or have a business school background, you likely know enough to handle basic bookkeeping and tax preparation for small businesses. If you’re going to help with tax prep, make sure you’re compliant with local and state regulations and licensing requirements.
Overall, this is a great hustle. It gives you the human interaction with business owners, insight into how other businesses work, and a skill that you can always fall back on. Bookkeeping and accounting go hand in hand, so if you have any accounting experience or experience with QuickBooks, you should be able to get up and running quickly.
I’m good enough around the kitchen to feed my family without any big complaints, but if you get constant praise from friends and family for your cooking and baking skills, you might be on track for a food-based side hustle. Get practicing on making your best recipes easily replicable at scale.
If you plan to sell food to the general public, make sure you’re compliant with local health codes and laws. You might find the best success in renting commercial kitchen space from a local provider. Think of it like co-working, but for cooking.
If building an IKEA dresser sounds like fun, you might be well-suited for a furniture building business. There are multiple real businesses operating today where the owner goes and picks up furniture from big-box retailers, delivers it, and builds it. In some cases, they just build and don’t handle delivery.
If you have woodworking skills like Ron Swanson from Parks and Recreation, you can build your own custom furniture to sell at local markets or online. It’s a great hobby, and it’s even better when you can turn a profit along the way.
Kids and adults alike look to instructors to learn piano, guitar, drums, and any instrument played in middle school band or orchestra. If you’re a talented musician and enjoy teaching, marry the two skills with your own music teaching and tutoring program.
Start charging a lower base rate, and raise your rates as you get more experience and demand for your services. Once you match your day job income for a few months, you might feel much more confident quitting and going full-time on your own.
We’re in an era with an aging population, and as people grow older, they need a little more help around the house. Medical care generally requires a licensed nurse, but anyone can help with basic home care tasks and earn a good income from it.
Things like cooking, laundry, and moving from bed to the bathroom can be challenging for older individuals. Keep them company and help them with basic living needs as a home care specialist. If you love it, you can find enough clients to turn it into a full-time income.
Weddings, corporate events, bar-mitzvahs … There are events virtually every day of the year. If you have strong organization and communication skills, you might have what it takes to start an event planning business.
I’ve seen several women start event planning side hustles after their own weddings, as they had the skills and contacts ready to help someone else put together their dream wedding day. But don’t limit yourself to weddings. Corporate clients tend to have much deeper pockets. As long as you pay attention to every detail, events can be a fun business to be in.
Side hustles are a low-risk, high-fun way to get started with entrepreneurship. If you want even more side hustle ideas, check out this list of 137 side hustle ideas to get you started.
You don’t have to dive into the deep end head first when starting a business. Instead, you can start small with a side hustle and see where it goes. If you have the same results as me, you’ll be self-employed before you know it.
This article first appeared on Nav.com and was syndicated by MediaFeed.org.
Featured Image Credit: DepositPhotos.com.
