Top tips to Achieve Your Financial Goals with a Side Hustle

Achieve Your Goals with a Side Hustle

Today its guest post time from Francesca Mason who writes at From Pennies to Pounds.

Many of us have goals in life, whether that be short-term goals, or long term goals, and most of them tend to tie in with needing money to achieve them. When we are not managing our money to the best of our ability, or we are living month to month through no fault of our own, it can be easy to let our goals fall to the bottom of our ‘must do list’ and not achieve them.

My Goal

For example, my big goal for what feels like a very long time has been to pay off all my debt. Because I was on a low income, I felt that I would never have the additional money available to pay off more than the minimum balance each month. It’s easy to feel like this because there always seems to be extra expenses that pop up that must be paid immediately, so you are not left with much money to put towards your dreams.

I work two part time jobs (that fit around my daughter so that I don’t have to pay childcare), and I use the pay from these for two different things.

• First job = bills
• Second job = debt payment

I use the money from one job for my bills, and the money from the second job for my debt payment. I do not touch the money from my second job at all – and whilst this can be a little bit frustrating because it can feel like you are working for nothing, seeing the debt balance go down is all the motivation that I need!

My debt is due to be paid off at the end of April 2017, which means that I have been creating new goals to work on once my debt is paid off. I felt like I couldn’t do this until all my debt was gone, because that was the most important thing to do – so that I could start on a clean slate.

Create goals for yourself

As mentioned, I believe that goals are very important, and push us to being the best version of ourselves that we can be. They can be small, or big goals – whatever is important to you, is important enough to make a plan about. Examples could be:

• Pay for driving lessons
• Save up for buying a car
• Save up for a house deposit
• Book an amazing holiday
• Save for retirement
• Build a conservatory
• Wedding fund

These are of course, examples, but they are common ones that I hear often from my friends. What do you really want to achieve?

Work out how much you will need to earn to achieve your goal

This one should be straightforward, depending on what your aim is. For example, if you are saving up for a car, it could be something like £3000 that you want to save up.
Do some research, look at what price you think it would be and be realistic – I would recommend always over-budgeting so that you are not short-changed.

Start a side hustle that will pay for your goal

A side hustle is a way of earning money on the side of your usual job. There are lots of great ideas for side hustles, and please don’t dismiss the idea, because they have been life changing for me, and many others who have started side hustling.
I am a big fan of allocating different income streams to different things that you need to pay for, because it makes things much easier and less stressful. Earning extra money has enabled me to pay off lots of debt without having to dip into the money that I need for bills. Here are some ideas of things that you could do:

• Blogging!
  Blogging is one of my favourite ways to earn extra money, because it doesn’t feel like work. It’s a lot of fun, and a great creative outlet. The blogging community is very welcoming and can help push you to achieve great things. It is of course, hard work if you want to do well. Blogging has a low startup cost, and there are more and more people starting blogs.
• Dog Boarding.
  
  
  
  This is another side hustle that I do, and love. There are no startup costs involved, and it is again, something that doesn’t feel like work.
I am with a website who bring the clients to you and they also provide the insurance which is why they take a 15% cut, but in my opinion, it is worth it. I had no clue where to start when I began this, but the whole process is very simple.
You could do this full time if you are a stay at home parent (you can check all dogs are good with children before booking) or you could do on weekends only – many people go away just for a weekend and need their dog looking after.
• Re-selling.
  This is a side hustle which has started to explode this year; mainly because everyone is doing so well with it! The aim of re-selling is to purchase an item for a low price from somewhere like a car boot sale or charity shop, and then flip onto eBay or Amazon for a much higher price.
If you have a lot of money to invest in the beginning you will obviously see a profit quicker, but it is still possible to build up slowly even if you don’t have a lot of money to start out with.
• Delivery service.
  Ask in your local takeaway if they need a delivery driver – most do! This is something that you could do during the week or perhaps just on weekends. Places like Gumtree are also great for finding delivery jobs.
• Etsy Seller.
  This is another side hustle which has been booming in recent years, and I see many mum friends doing this. If you are crafty – or even if you’re not – check out Etsy. It is a great selling platform where people sell all manner of things such as jewellery, printable art, baby clothes and more.

There are tons of other side hustle ideas out there, but I do hope that you will give one of the above a try, because they are so much fun!

Do you have a goal and how much do you need to save for it? Could you dedicate an income stream to it?

Read more from Fran at her website and here are her social media links, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.