Week 3 of achieving FIRE – The Side Hustle(s)

As discussed in my first post, there are 2 ways to achieve FIRE – one is save, save, save your money! The other is make, make, make more money! And then, invest the difference. My first few posts have focused only on saving money since I’ve become totally addicted to my new budgeting tool, YNAB. If you don’t know what YNAB is, FEAR NOT. Just read my post about it here. Today, I’d like to talk about my starting point on getting going with a side hustle.

A bit more on saving for FIRE…

I started using YNAB around mid-September based on the recommendation of a trusty friend (Yes I called you trusty, friend who is reading this!). Fortunately they have a free trial period of 34 days to allow you a full month of YNAB-ey-ness in your life before you decide to buy. WELL GUESS WHAT! I decided I am enjoying it so much that I subscribed 7 days early. Which is crazy, since in the past I was anti-pay-for-budgeting-software (“I can just do it myself in Excel and Mint!”).  I now believe YNAB adds so much value that I’m willing to pay $84 USD (approx. $5,000 Canadian…well almost) EARLY, before the end of my trial period. I mean, to be honest it’s worth it for the hilarious loading screen alone.

Although I have a lot more work to do in the saving realm (Still haven’t had the budget meeting with Hubs…it’s always getting pushed out for one thing or another) I’ve decided to start putting at least a bit of effort into increasing our income.

Making extra income – Side Hustles to help achieve FIRE

This week my focus is to identify and take steps to achieve a “side hustle” or two. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of the side hustle, these are activities you do outside of your full time gig (assuming you have one) to make extra cash to save to help your FIRE burn big and bright. This is pretty much a foreign concept to me, considering that for the first 42.11 years of my life, I did nothing outside of my full time job that wasn’t watching Netflix, surfing the net, gallivanting with the Hubs, or parenting a wild child (only the last 5 years. Can’t really use this as an excuse.)

There are plenty of side hustle options out there…I decided to start small. I made a challenge with another trusty friend to make $100 in 2 months. Sounds easy enough, right? My teeny tiny side hustle #1 involved selling things I no longer need.

What have I sold so far? A necklace I never wore – $18. Baby clothes – $10. A stroller we no longer use – $100. A board game that the Hubs wanted to unload – $85. A car seat – $30! Turns out my house full of junk is a freakin’ gold mine. Anyway, I will eventually run out of stuff to sell, but it feels good that I blew through the $100 goal in about 2 weeks. HURRAY! We’ve decided to set a new, slightly more challenging goal. I’ll update you on that in a future post.

I also started another small side hustle which I’ll review in a future post.

So, if anyone out there has ideas or experiences to share in terms of saving or making money through side hustles, please share! Hopefully you found my post inspiring. If not inspiring, slightly interesting. Maybe comment even if you found it boring. Peace!