Like any sort of job, side hustles come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, potential incomes, costs, and time investments. Some are quick, low-effort, and tend to generate less money. Others can be built into real money-makers, but require some up-front investment or additional time and effort. 

In this article we’ll cover:

• What a side hustle is
• Types of side hustles
• Side hustle ideas
• How a side hustle can help you grow your wealth
• Tax implications of side hustles

What is a side hustle?

A side hustle is work that provides supplementary income in addition to the money earned through one’s main job. Essentially, a side hustle is a second (or third, or fourth) job. Side hustles can include anything from gig work, like driving for Uber or Amazon Flex, to flipping houses or furniture, to freelancing using your professional skills. 

Many people with side hustles use the internet, apps, or their professional networks to find opportunities; some go so far as to build small businesses around their side work. The amount of work and potential income earned through your side hustle will depend on what type of work you pursue and how much time you can devote to it.

What is a “legitimate” side hustle? 

A legitimate side hustle is one where you provide the product or service required and can trust that you’ll get paid what you expect. There are many scammers on the internet, though, and it isn’t surprising that they sometimes target those looking for side hustles. Keep an eye out and stay safe while looking for side hustles to protect your time, income, and personal information. If an opportunity seems too good to be true, it likely is. Here are a few tips for checking the legitimacy of a money-making opportunity:

• Screen potential freelance or contract work clients to ensure they’re legitimate businesses. Get a contract in place if possible. 
• Look at reviews and web forums for any apps or websites you’re using to find work. 
• Never pay a fee to apply to work for an individual or company.
• Beware of opportunities that require you to purchase products upfront to resell to others or require you to invest money in training materials. Multi-level marketing schemes (MLMs) often require this, and many people lose money or go into debt with these types of endeavors. 
• Guard your personal information. Review a company’s website, check the Better Business Bureau, and talk to someone directly before providing anyone with your personal information.

Types of side hustles

Side hustles aren’t one-size-fits-all. You can choose from different types that require varying levels of time and effort, upfront costs, and skill requirements. 

Here are five broad categories to consider:

• Freelance or contract work: This work requires an existing level of skill, and many people use the professional skills they rely on for their primary job to pick up freelance work in the same industry. 
• Gig economy jobs: Gigs are temporary and part-time positions in which independent contractors fulfill some services provided by a company, such as making deliveries for a food-delivery service.
• Online side hustles: Online side hustles are generally not jobs so much as tasks. Online roles are generally quick, easy, and attainable, but relatively low-paying.
• Small businesses: Some hustlers turn their side work into small businesses, whether that’s selling a skill or a product. These roles are often more time- and cost-intensive, but consist of building a brand and potentially turning their small business into their main job.
• Passive income: Passive income can come in several different forms but generally consists of investing in something or renting something out, resulting in repeating income that requires little ongoing effort. There may be a fair amount of work up-front, but the goal is to earn a regular income once set up.

Side hustles ideas for 2024

Based on the types of sides hustles we covered, here 29 hustles to consider broken into the following categories:

• Freelance/contract side hustle ideas
• Gig economy side hustle ideas
• Online side hustle ideas
• Small business side hustle ideas
• Passive income side hustle ideas

Freelance/contract side hustle ideas

Generally, these side hustles are hourly or project-based and require some level of skill or expertise. Freelance and contract work can be found through numerous apps like Fiverr, Upwork, Steady App, and many more. You might also find these opportunities through your network, family, and friends, or by building a public or industry reputation. 

Freelance and contract work require an investment in your own expertise, and your income generally depends on the amount of time you put into the work and your experience level. When pursuing these side hustles, make sure the work you do doesn’t breach a non-compete agreement you might have with your main employer. Some examples of freelance work include: 

• Handywork/landscaping
• Writing
• Graphic design
• Bookkeeping
• Editing
• Website development
• Social media
• Tutoring
• Administrative work

Gig economy side hustle ideas

Gig work is a specific type of contract work based on flexible, temporary, or freelance jobs generally managed online or through an app. In the gig economy, everyone is an independent contractor, so people generally don’t have regular schedules or get benefits from employers. Instead, you get the flexibility to work when you want to. 

Pet sitting or dog walking

If you’re an animal lover, you can find opportunities to take care of pets for some extra cash. The amount of time and potential income is dependent on how much work you take on, where you live, and the reputation you build. 

House sitting 

If you like to travel, house sitting might be a good fit for you. Using websites dedicated to sourcing house sitters, you can find opportunities to make some money in exchange for staying at someone’s home, watering their plants, grabbing their mail, and other domestic tasks. House sitting comes with the side benefit of helping with your travel budget since your accommodations are free. You might also find opportunities where you live if you’re interested in this kind of work but don’t want to travel.

Ridesharing

Rideshare driving is a popular side hustle these days. You’ll need to have a relatively new car in good condition, as well as a good driving record. Some people enjoy the chance to travel around the city and meet new people, as well as the chance to earn more money through tips. 

Delivering food through apps

You’ll need reliable transportation to pick up gigs delivering food; most people rely on a car, but some deliver by bike. You’ll usually earn money for each delivery in the form of payment from the company and tips from customers.

Delivering packages

Amazon and other businesses hire flex drivers in hour blocks to deliver packages. If you have three to five hours free, you can sign up for a flex block, pick up packages, and deliver them in your area. 

Online side hustle ideas

Unlike most gig work, online side hustles can usually be done from home. These jobs often require a lower time investment, with a wide range of potential incomes. 

Participating in online surveys

Market research companies often pay participants to share their thoughts, opinions, and experiences. With these websites, you’ll take surveys in exchange for a small amount of money. The more surveys you take, the higher your income. Watch out for potential scams, such as websites that require payment to join their panel of participants; check reviews before signing up to be sure the website is reputable. 

Participating in user testing

You can also test apps, websites, or platforms. Testers are often asked to click through a mockup of a website or sort cards so web developers can learn more about user behavior. These can earn more income than surveys on a per-task basis, but generally require a higher time investment. 

Transcribing videos, calls, or recordings

Some sites hire transcribers to turn audio recordings into text. Those who can transcribe quickly can earn a fair amount of money this way, as you’re often paid per audio minute or per file.

Virtual assistant

Many businesses need some help but don’t need a full-time executive assistant. That’s where a virtual assistant comes in. Often managed completely online, a virtual assistant can perform executive assistant-type tasks contractually. 

Starting a podcast, social media, or YouTube channel

Are you an expert on something, or do you have something you’re passionate about? Viral social media content comes in many forms, and if you can build an audience and you’re good at it, you may be able to generate income from a podcast or social media. It can take time to build a large enough audience to monetize your endeavor, but the effort can also be fun and rewarding in its own right. 

Selling used clothes or items

Those who are good at thrifting or garage sales can often find items at a relatively low price and resell them for a higher price via online marketplaces. The amount of income you can earn varies widely, but you could do well if you’re knowledgeable about niche items that have a high value on the secondary market. It’s possible to get started without investing too much money upfront if you can find good deals on used items; you could even start by selling items you own but no longer want. 

Small business side hustle ideas

A small business is your opportunity to create a brand and sell something you’re good at, whether that’s a product or a service. These are often high-effort, higher-potential income opportunities. 

Selling crafts or art

Do you draw, paint, work with wood, or otherwise create a physical product? These products can be sold at fairs, markets, shows, and through online marketplaces to make some money. Work like this requires some up-front budgeting for materials, websites, booths, or other business investments, as well as the time required to create things to sell. But building a brand can turn your side hustle into your full-time hustle. 

Refurbishing furniture

Another small business opportunity is refurbishing and reselling furniture. With the right supplies, you can update or fix up old or damaged furniture found online, through garage sales, or even on the street for some extra income. This takes an investment in skills and supplies, as well as the time to dig up good finds you can restore. 

Creating and selling art

Art doesn’t have to be physical to sell. If you have skills with platforms like Photoshop, you can create original digital art you can sell online. Because it doesn’t require physical supplies, this can be less expensive than physical art. Many people take commissions to increase opportunities to make money.   

Coaching or teaching classes

If you have expertise in something, you can share your expertise by offering online classes, either through your own website or an online platform. This avenue can also provide repeatable income if you sell the same recorded course many times.

Passive income side hustle ideas

Passive income is different than active income. Broadly, this is income that you can generate without requiring daily participation. While passive income usually requires an initial investment, you may be able to earn dividends for years from that investment. Check out our full breakdown of passive income opportunities. 

Renting

Whether you’re renting a spare room in your home or you’ve invested in a rental property, you can generate regular and predictable extra income monthly. Investing in rental properties will often require a hefty investment, so spend time researching options and budgeting before making such a significant decision. 

Renting out your car

All this requires is having a car and not needing it while it’s being rented out. There are platforms dedicated to these types of rentals and a significant time investment isn’t usually involved. 

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing requires an audience, but once you have one, you can promote content through blogs, videos, or social media and collect ongoing income from your audience’s purchases.

Investing in bonds

While this isn’t exactly a side hustle, it’s an opportunity for passive income that some people overlook. Investing in bonds is a relatively low-risk way to use the savings you have to get a guaranteed return, and there are long and short-term bonds available to fit your timeline. 

Opening a high-yield savings account or CD

While they also aren’t side hustles, both high-yield savings accounts and CDs are ways you can use your existing savings to make more money. Both of these accounts offer short-term opportunities to earn interest for storing your cash.

How side hustles can help your financial health

What you do with the money you make from your side hustle is dependent on your unique financial journey. It can help you balance your budget, put money aside toward retirement, or save up to buy something you really want. Relying on side hustles to pay your monthly bills can be risky because they often don’t guarantee consistent income, but a side hustle can help you: 

• Build an emergency fund
• Save more toward your goals
• Pay down debt
• Invest in the stock market
• Build your retirement account
• Treat yourself

Tax implications of side hustles

Remember, any income you make has implications for your taxes. Many first-time contractors and side hustlers find themselves shocked when they realize at the end of the year that they have to pay taxes on that income. Unlike money from your regular paycheck, taxes aren’t withheld from the money you make through a side hustle. You’ll have to pay state and federal income tax, and may also be responsible for self-employment taxes.  It’s important to research what your taxes are expected to look like and be prepared. You may be able to defer taxes on self-employment income with an IRA. 

How to choose the best side hustle for you

Here are some questions to consider when selecting the best side hustle for your unique situation.  

• What existing skills and experience do you have?
• How much time can you put into this work?
• How much income do you need to make from a side hustle? 
• What resources do you already have available?
• What opportunities would bring you the most joy?

Remember that side hustles don’t have to be huge commitments. You can try something to see if you like it before investing a lot of money or time.

Investing made easy.

Start today with any dollar amount.

Get Started

The post 29 Side Hustles To Consider in 2024 appeared first on Stash Learn.

That may mean you have a main source of income where taxes are deducted by an employer, and you also work on the side, producing income from a freelance gig such as driving a car, walking dogs, writing a blog, or doing handiwork. 

And while that extra income can help you make ends meet, and pay your bills, and hopefully increase your savings and investments, that money unfortunately doesn’t come free. You’re likely to owe federal income tax on it, and just about any money you make. And since you’re most likely earning your side income as a freelancer, or self-employed contractor the chances are no one is taking money out for taxes. That means it’s on you to put money aside and send your payments to you have to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). 

Here’s a quick explainer of what to expect from taxes if you work in the gig economy.

1-1099-MISC. Each entity you work for as a freelancer should send you a form 1099-MISC by January 31, if you earned $600 or more.

2-Schedule C. You’ll need to file your side-gig income on a Schedule C form, filed annually with your 1040. The form is essentially a statement  of income or loss from a business that you operate independently. You’ll be filing as a sole proprietor.

3-Estimated taxes. Generally speaking, if you owe more than $1,000 in federal income tax from side-gig income, after all of your withholdings and deductions have been accounted for, you’ll also have to file estimated taxes on a quarterly basis, according to the IRS. (If your withholding for other income during the year will cover at least 90% of your total taxes for the current year, or you paid 100% of the prior year’s taxes, however, you may not have to pay estimated taxes.) 

So what are estimated taxes? As their name implies, estimated taxes are an estimate of what you’ll pay in income taxes for the year each quarter.

In addition to income tax, estimated taxes also include self-employment tax. As a general rule, no one is taking money out of your gig income for Social Security, Medicare and disability. It’s up to you to do that. This is generally about 15% of your income from your gigs. 

• You can make an educated guess of what your estimated taxes will be, based on what you expect your total income and tax rate to look like–i.e. Your income from a full-time job, plus any freelance income–and then dividing that amount of taxes by four.  Similarly, if you worked a side-gig last year, you can use the prior year’s income as starting point. 
• The IRS also provides something called the 1040-ES worksheet to help you determine the correct amount of quarterly taxes. 
• There are also estimated tax calculators that can help you figure it all out. 

Good to know: Aim to put aside at least 30% of your income from side gigs to pay Uncle Sam, as a general rule of thumb.

4-Penalties. You can take the easy route and continue to file all at once, at the end of the tax year. But bear in mind, that If you owe quarterly taxes and don’t pay them, you’ll likely owe an underpayment penalty at the end of the year.

5-What are the estimated tax payment dates?*

• 1st payment—April 15, 2021          
• 2nd payment—June 15, 2021           
• 3rd payment—September 15, 2021  
• 4th payment—January 18, 2022**  

You can find vouchers for your quarterly payments here, as well as options for electronic payments. 

*Source: IRS

**You don’t have to make the payment due January 18, 2022 if you file your 2021 tax return by January 31, 2022 and pay the entire balance due with your return.

The post Yes, You Have to Pay Taxes on Your Side Gig appeared first on Stash Learn.

Whatever your retirement dream is, retirement itself is a pretty straightforward concept. For most people, it’s simply the age when you stop working. 

But in order to stop working, you need income. And generally speaking, for most people, income in retirement will be limited to your savings, pension (if you have access to one), and Social Security.

Passive income could add to your income once you’ve retired. 

What is passive income? 

As its name suggests, passive income is generated without active, daily participation from you. It could be money you make by owning an apartment and collecting rent from your tenants. It could also be earnings or dividends from your investments in the stock market.  Or it could even include royalties you make from selling a book or acting in a commercial. 

What kinds of passive income can you earn in retirement?

Here are some ideas:

• Investing in stocks that pay out dividends, or distributions of a company’s earnings, is one way to earn money on the side. When you get a dividend, you get a certain amount of the profit the company distributes to its shareholders. That amount is determined by how many shares you have. Dividends are usually paid out in cash (occasionally additional shares of stock are issued). And these payments usually occur four times a year, at the end of every quarter. 
• Retirement accounts, such as Individual Retirement Account (IRA) and 401(k), can help you develop passive income through earnings and dividends from investments held inside the accounts. 
• In 2019, 65% of consumers owned a home in the United States. Renting out property to tenants or travelers can be a source of income. There are a few things to consider before you invest in property, however. Unless you can purchase the property with cash, you should have some savings as you’ll have to put a down payment on the house if you get a mortgage.  Typically, you can expect to pay around 20% of the purchase price of the house as a down payment. Then you’ll have to pay off the mortgage on the house, assuming you don’t plan to purchase it outright.
• Maybe you’ve been sitting on the next great novel. If you have a manuscript, you may want to attempt to get your book published as either an ebook or as a print edition. 
• You can earn royalties, or a percentage of sales, on a book. While the percentage of sales will depend on the book deal you have, you can estimate what you might earn from royalties. You can also earn extra income by appearing in commercials, or movies, or tv shows.

Retirement accounts and passive income

Anyone earning income may be able to put money into either a traditional or Roth individual retirement account (IRA). Saving money in an IRA could potentially help you develop passive income in retirement.

You can contribute up to $6,000 a year to any type of IRA. (That amount jumps to $7,000 if you are 50 and older.) And you can actually split your contribution between both types of account, as long as you don’t go beyond the annual contribution limits. 

With a traditional IRA, you’re taxed on money you withdraw from the account. However, you may not have to pay income tax on the money you contribute to a Traditional IRA and any earnings your investments generate aren’t taxed until you withdraw the money.

With a Roth IRA, taxes work the other way around. You pay tax on any income you contribute to the account. After that point you don’t have to pay any tax on that money or on any of its investment gains—You’ll be able to withdraw your contributions (not your earnings) at any time tax and penalty free as long as you stick to some basic rules. And there is no RMD age, meaning you don’t have to pull money out of the account, and earnings can continue to accumulate. 

You can find out more about IRAs here. 

Some things to keep in mind

Retirement can be challenging, and most people haven’t saved enough to make it a reality. In fact, nearly half of all people in the U.S. have saved less than $100,000 for retirement, according to reports. Many estimates say you may need more than $1 million in savings to live comfortably once you’ve stopped working.

Increasing monthly income with passive income, even by a little bit, could potentially help you in retirement.

The sooner you start saving for retirement, the more time can help you. And your retirement savings, which could include dividends and earnings, can be part of your passive income strategy.

The post Planning to Retire? Here’s How Passive Income Can Help appeared first on Stash Learn.

Guillebeau, the author of the best-selling book $100 Startup took on countless gigs in order to reach his goal of visiting every country in the world by age 35.

His new daily podcast is all about the side hustle—something you do for love because it has the potential to make you money while you’re doing something else. (A book on the same subject is out in September.)

While Guillebeau says that he has a pretty typical approach to investing today, that wasn’t always the case.

We asked for his best tips on how to put your money to work while forging your own path.

Pay to play

“I’m a big believer in having a ‘slush fund’—a separate account that’s either for fun or for something that you’re saving toward,” he says.

“I’m a big believer in having a ‘slush fund’

That’s especially important if you have a passion but not necessarily a high income—as was the case when Chris was doing a lot of traveling.

“At the end of the year, when I’m doing my finances and figuring out what to contribute to my SEP IRA, I also set aside money for next year’s travel,” he says. “When you have a project that’s not a huge money-maker, it helps to have the money, going into it.”  

Invest in your education

Chris taught himself about investing back in college—not in a class, but in the school computer lab, day trading with the cash he received from a student loan.

“I don’t know if I ever made a lot of money, but I didn’t lose a lot of money,” he says. He guesses that he broke about even with the $15,000 he was working with throughout the year.

“I was hardly an expert, but I read everything I could—the library got the Wall Street Journal and Barron’s,” he says. “I walked away feeling like I had this unique experience that could help me later.”

Retire like Chris Guillebeau

Chris now contributes annually to a Simplified Employee Pension Individual Retirement Fund (or the much simpler-to-say “SEP-IRA”).

It’s a relatively common choice for people who are self-employed or who own their own businesses (in other words, people who can’t benefit from a company’s 401(k)), in part because you can contribute more to a SEP-IRA than you can to a traditional or Roth IRA.

Chris’s account is invested mostly in index funds—usually in a standard split of 60 percent stocks and 40 percent bonds.

“That’s pretty basic,” he says, “but it’s good advice for most people.”

The post Talk Money to Me: Chris Guillebeau’s Side Hustle Strategy appeared first on Stash Learn.