It’s Your Fault You’re Poor! 5 Reasons Why You Are Poor

It’s your fault you are poor – get over it. In the UK, unless you were born into genuine poverty, there is nothing to stop you from becoming financially comfortable or even rich.

But we’re not saying that you need to beg for handouts or pay rises from your boss – It’s our mission to make all of you financially free through good money management, investing in assets, and starting businesses.

If you’re feeling poor, don’t be disheartened by this message – here’s the 5 top reasons why you are poor, and more importantly, what you can do about it.

Get your investing journey off to a flying start with the links on our Offers page, and which has £hundreds of sign-up bonuses for new users of investment platforms, that we use and love. Enjoy!

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Why It’s Your Fault You’re Poor

1. Your goal is financial security

Your goal is financial security when it should be financial freedom. You are playing it safe in a job for a fixed salary that barely covers your outgoings.

Those with financial security as their goal will only ever be underpaid by an employer relative to what they’re really worth – and financial security isn’t even that secure.

Remember – a job can be taken away from you at any time. Your stocks and property portfolios, carefully grown over many years, cannot be taken from you.

"Safe, Secure Jobs" can be taken away from you

2. You don’t know how to use debt

If you’re genuinely poor, chances are you are heavily in bad debt on credit cards, overdrafts, or unsecured loans. This type of debt is like wildfire and you should make your number 1 priority in life to pay these off quickly.

But if you are poor in the sense of being stuck in a dead-end job for the next 50 years, then maybe you need to learn how to use good debt to rocket-power your finances.

For the financially savvy, good or low interest debt like mortgages and 0% money transfer credit cards can be used to alleviate cash flow issues and buy investments now, which earn an income to help pay off the cheap good debt later.

Debt is like fire – it can burn and destroy lives, but control it and it can warm and enrichen your life.

3. You don’t invest/You don’t pay yourself first

How old are you? How many years does that make it since you started earning money? Too many, if you’ve not been using that time to buy investments.

Anyone can afford to invest – new zero fee trading apps like Trading 212 and Freetrade mean you can invest pennies into the stock market whenever you want without being charged to do so.

Trading 212 Invest is a zero fee stocks trading app that allows normal people to invest like pros

Are you telling us you can’t spare £20 a month to buy stocks? Or £5? Pay yourself first, by investing small amounts immediately after receiving your pay-check, so you don’t run out of money to invest later.

Check out the Trading 212 Invest app – you are even given a free stock when you sign up using the link on our Offers page, worth up to £100.

We’d start by buying shares in ETFs, such as the Vanguard FTSE 100 ETF which simply tracks the UK’s biggest stock index. One of the safest and most reliable investments on there in our opinion.

4. You overspend

Come on – you know it’s true. We overspend – everyone overspends, but to different degrees.

Do you smoke? Cut back. Takeaways? Eat less. Or is your thing buying expensive clothes?

Maybe wait a bit until you’ve bought some investments first, whose dividends will help you to pay for them.

Though not our preference, cutting back is one way to expand your investable free cash. The other, is:

5. Side Hustles: You Don’t Have Any

A side hustle is a business that you set up on the side of working a job. You work on it in the evenings and on weekends, and over time it becomes a significant source of cash flow for you.

Anyone can start a side hustle – we don’t want to hear from you that you have no time.

You are choosing to priorities other things – you wish you had more money but are not prepared to pay the price.

The best type of side hustle business in our opinion is one which scales with time – i.e. it gets bigger and bigger without extra effort from you. After all, you’re busy at work, am I right?

Why you need a side hustle!

A good example is starting a website that sells a product. Over time that website will grow, and you can potentially reach the whole world with your product.

An example of a side hustle that is not scalable is something like dog walking, or tutoring in the evenings.

This type of hustle is really a second job, but could be a good place to start if you need to save money fast. Scalable hustles can take a while to set up, and you could run at a loss initially.

Check out our popular video on side hustle ideas linked in the description below for ways to grow your monthly income outside of work, and to stop being poor, and start being rich instead.

Stop Begging and Self Promote

If you’re feeling underpaid and undervalued, don’t sit in your job for years working yourself into the ground to get noticed for a promotion.

Whenever we wanted a better wage, we simply changed employer, promoting ourselves to the next career level in the process.

The difference in career trajectory can be massive. Anecdotally, we know plenty of people who have patiently waited for promotions for years, while we just took what was ours. If you don’t ask, you don’t get.

Your employers’ job is to make money, they won’t give you a decent payrise just because you’re loyal.

Don’t just rely on your current employer to help you out when you’re feeling poor!

No need to beg for a pay rise!

Take Responsibility

We don’t mean to be nasty when we say it’s your fault you’re poor. Most people in the country would class themselves as just-about-managing in their own words, and they all make the 5 mistakes that we’ve just discussed.

We do want you to equip you with the tools to fix the problem, though. And the most effective way to stop being poor is to take action yourself. You can’t rely on the government or on others to do it for you.

It’s Never Too Late to Start

Going back to personal responsibility, what are you waiting for?

Draw up that budget, research how to escape from or utilise credit card debt, invest £100 into the stock market, write down side hustle ideas! Remember: tomorrow never comes.

Are you thinking of setting up more income streams? Tell us your ideas in the comments below.

Why You Need to Be Financially Free

Why do you need to be financially free? Ask any of your peers and the majority will cite financial security as their top money goal – security, not freedom. The difference is huge.

Practically all of our peers have different financial objectives to us. Where they are bothered about money at all, they inevitably fall into one of two camps – the “I want to pay my mortgage off” crowd, or the “I want to pay more into my pension” bunch.

We can’t relate to either position. Both are basically saying that they are happy plodding along in their jobs until they are aged 70, and will funnel all spare employment income into financial products that will benefit them in 30 or 40 years’ time.

We are investors because our objective is Financial Freedom – today. Forget being comfortable at age 70. You need to be Financially Free; and here’s why…

Get your investing journey off to a flying start with the links on our Offers page, and which has £hundreds of sign-up bonuses for new users to platforms that we use and love. Enjoy!

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Chasing the wrong goal – job security

We hate the phrases “a job for life” and “safe, secure job”. The people who claim to have such things are claiming to have reached financial security early on in life and are happy to stop there – they do not have ambitions beyond this.

We hate these phrases because they are dangerous. Our fast paced economy and advances in tech means that in modern times there is no such thing as a job for life – that idea should be left in the industrial age where it was born.

What is Financial Freedom

First, we are not talking about being millionaires; only being able to cover your outgoings without having to rely on a paycheck.

Financial freedom is very different, and in our opinion far preferable to, job security.

An investment portfolio can't fire you - only a "safe and secure" job can do that

People who are financially free derive their income from a wide range of assets and businesses that they own.

They laughed in the face of safety and security and took sensible and measured risks to build up huge investment portfolios during their early career years, or started businesses that grew to be self-sustaining.

This income, once established, is called Passive Income, because it comes to the investor or business owner regardless of whether they show up to work or not.

You cannot be sacked or made redundant from your passive income – that’s only something a “safe and secure” job can do to you.

Is Financial Freedom a Realistic Goal?

Absolutely. It won’t happen overnight, and is much harder to achieve than simple job security. All it takes is commitment to the goal over a number of years.

We decided in our 20s that we would be financially free in our 30s. We’re almost there now, but continue to work hard while we still have the drive in order to build our pots even bigger to support a better lifestyle.

You only get there by trying

How Did We Do It?

We each have large investment portfolios which returns enough to cover the basics, and we have our Money Unshackled business to spread the word about financial freedom and free others from their shackles, which also brings in an income.

Note that we only get income from this business because it works hard for others to help them be free –  much like how our stocks and properties work hard for their owners.

So long as the underlying asset or business is sound, it will keep paying you an income that can’t be taken away by a boss.

Why You Need to Be Financially Free

1. Start Making a Difference

When money matters are resolved and your outgoings covered, you can spend your time how you like.

For us, the most meaning we could derive from our lives would be in helping others to become financially free, but for you it could be helping your community, taking up a cause such as campaigning for a greener world, or anything you deem worthy.

You can use your time as you see fit... once you're free

Or your time could be spent building up a massive business that gives generously to charity. It’s literally your call.

2. Gain Life Satisfaction

Working for someone else on someone else’s dreams is a non-starter for us, and if you’re watching this, we bet you feel the same way.

Wouldn’t you feel better about your direction in life if you were making money for yourself, and growing your own assets and pet-projects in the process?

We know some jobs do bring life satisfaction such as policing or nursing, and more power to the fanstastic work that these professions do for the rest of us – but the guy running numbers on a bottle factory’s inventory? Does he wake up each morning loving life?

3. Your Time is Precious

Most laugh at this – absurdly in our opinion. When we say we can’t do something because our time is worth more than that, the employee-lifers scoff.

Your time is precious

“Time isn’t worth anything” they say. This is coming from a mentality where a salary just pops into their bank account each month regardless of the effort they put in.

But we know that time is everything. You are worth so much more than a wage per hour.

If you spent all your time building a scalable business and investing the returns, you soon wouldn’t have to.

What You Can Do NOW to Be Financially Free

1. Learn to invest – start now, by Learning By Doing

Make your first investment in something lower risk like stock market ETFs or P2P Lending.

A couple of great platforms you could start with are Trading 212 and Ratesetter, linked with sign up bonuses in the description below, with many more on our website.

Being comfortable investing huge sums of money later starts with being comfortable investing small amounts today. Also, you’ll be earning passive income, however small at first, and that is a great feeling indeed.

If you're stuck working on someone else's dreams, you have to find time to work on your own too

2. Rethink your career

Are you sure that your 10 year plan to climb 2 levels up the corporate chain is the right plan for you?

What else could you be doing in that decade? Hint: you could start a side hustle business that grows way faster than employment income does and is taxed far less!

3. Set a plan with deadlines

How much passive income do you need before you can leave your job? How much time will be needed to establish this passive income?

Work out how much you need to be investing each month, and then plan how you’ll achieve that target.

Don’t put it off. You need to Financially Free. Start today.

When will you be financially free? Let us know in the comments below.

Why You Are Poorer Than Your Parents

Why is it that young people are poorer than their parents’ generation? It was once taken for granted that each successive generation increased in prosperity compared to the one before it, as the world became a better and more interconnected place.

But this has not happened for our generation – millennials and tail-end Gen Xers are falling behind, finding the post-recession world a difficult and expensive place within which to build a future.

Souring house prices, a soulless jobs market and an ageing population are often quoted as the blame. But is life really worse now than it was for our parents and grandparents?

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Why You Feel Poorer

1) Rubbish Pay

The jobs market has always offered insulting pay rises to hard working employees, but since the 2008 economic crash we have also seen starter salaries and pay grades stagnate and fall with inflation, and professions devalued.

Unskilled immigration has also infamously played a factor in stagnating pay rises at the bottom end of the jobs market, though Brexit may correct this. Employers are already starting to hire British workers over EU nationals in these lower paying roles to prepare for the uncertainty of labour access ahead.

It's not enough today to rely on even a professional job for financial freedom

By trade Ben is a Chartered Accountant; in our parents’ generation, being a Chartered Accountant meant you were wealthy by default; but it’s not enough today.

Even though we’re paid well relative to our peers, our investments and side hustles (business start-ups) are the vehicles by which we acquire wealth.

Most jobs, even professional ones, are now paid far less than their equivalents in the 90s in real terms. You can’t rely on a job any more for financial freedom.

2) House Prices Are Too High

Between the 20 year period 1996 and 2016, house prices rose 281% across the UK, and 501% in London. To put this into perspective, 2.5% inflation over 20 years should be only a 64% increase.

The youth of today are expected to buy far more expensive homes with their far lower salaries. It’s a recipe for trouble.

Underpaid and undervalued

3) Forced to Stay in Family Home

We were both fortunate to learn about investing and business early on and had built up income streams to subsidise our wages when we bought homes in our 20s.

But it is common for people to live at home well into their 30s to save money for a house deposit, taking away many freedoms that our parents’ generation knew when they left home aged 18, and making you feel poorer.

4) Your Pension Is A Joke

Our parents and grandparents generations enjoyed Final Salary Pensions, meaning they could look forward to retirement knowing their monthly income would be more or less similar to when they were working.

Workers in their 20s and 30s have only ever known Defined Contribution Pensions – you pay in a small amount of your salary and your employer pays a bit in too.

The young generations will be too poor to retire at 70

It is estimated that most people on these modern pension schemes will be too poor to retire on their pensions when they get to retirement age, as they are saving too little of their salaries. This is likely because their salary barely covers their rent or mortgage payments and they can’t save any higher.

Final Salary Pensions were far too generous and ultimately unsustainable, so we agree they had to go – we understand that if you want to retire wealthy, you have to invest and build passive income streams NOW.

It’s Not All Bad for Millennials Though, Surely?

Odds are you are currently looking at a smart phone, or have one in your pocket. Technological advances in the last decade have been incredible, and the improvements to our lives are taken for granted.

We can now shop online, invest in shares for free with a single click, watch TV on demand anywhere, navigate without paper maps, sell stuff on Facebook Marketplace and eBay, and run entire businesses from a laptop and mobile phone.

The freedom and time saving power that the internet and tech has given us was not there for our parents growing up, making life that little bit harder for them.

Also, a large part of why young people are poorer is because we tend to be looser with our cash – how often do you go out for meals or to the cinema?

For our parents’ generation this was a rare treat, and for our grandparents it was only on special family occasions like a silver wedding anniversary.

Because the economy is so vibrant now compared to then, we are constantly tempted by brands, gadgets and leisure activities – and we think our generation is guilty of overspend.

No such thing as a job-for-life anymore

A Job For Life

There is no longer such a concept as a job for life. People our age spend 2 or 3 years in a post before moving on to the next role out of career necessity.

There’s plenty of criticisms to say about David Cameron, but he at least got the jobs market moving again after the recession. The jobs market is so fluid and full of opportunity following the reforms of the coalition government of 2010 that people can climb the career ladder more quicker by changing employer than they can staying within one company. 

The jobs market at least is full of opportunity

Employers know this, and as such make little effort to retain and develop staff – far easier to hire someone new who already has those skills.

In the place of a job for life, we have the gig economy. More and more millennials are moving towards a multiple incomes approach, working several jobs and side hustles.

The gig economy is a harsh place to be if forced into it due to lack of money, but for those who choose this lifestyle, there is far greater freedom and life is rarely boring.

A job for life offered security. But the gig economy offers freedom.

What Can Be Done?

First, let’s look at what the government can do for you. Then we’ll look at what others can do for you, and finally, what you can do for yourself.

 The government could decide overnight to slash tax rates on entrepreneurs, recognising the many young people in the gig economy who are also our greatest innovators.

And the government could and should abolish stamp duty on houses, or at least slash it to a nominal 1%.

Many older people can't afford to leave their big homes, due to stamp duty

Old people can’t afford to downsize their homes as they are hit with thousands of pounds of stamp duty tax, meaning young families cannot access this limited housing stock of 3 and 4 bedroom houses.

We believe that tax cuts generally benefit everyone in an economy, so the fact that both the old and the young would benefit from this tax cut is a good thing – it doesn’t have to be zero-sum.

One popular idea that was widely reported on recently is the idea that your relatives could decide to skip a generation in inheritance, or hand money down years before their deaths.

The logic is that with people living far longer now, their descendants tend to inherit in their 60s or 70s when they are already financially comfortable, rather than what used to be the case, in their 30s or 40s when household income is tight.

We don’t agree with this though – we believe it is up to YOU to get your finances in order, and not to rely on a future windfall from a tragic life event.

Anyone relying on inheritance for their financial freedom is a) not managing their money right, and b) a little morbid!

The Twin Pillars of Business start-ups and Investing

Take Back Control – The Twin Pillars of Business Start-Ups and Investing

Finally, what can YOU do for yourself? We encourage everyone to take back control of their finances, and not let the modern world push you around.

If you are feeling poor, build yourself new income streams – check out our very popular video on side hustle ideas linked in the description below.

And make sure to invest any surplus cash you make from it. The twin pillars of investing and starting businesses will set you financially free.

Middle Class and Broke – Earn Multiple Income Streams

No matter your financial situation, people almost always end up with just enough money to get by. Why is it that middle class people with good careers end up worrying about money? And is their belief that financial security is equal to job security well placed? Let’s check it out…

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The Middle-Class Mindset

We have worked alongside so many professionals in our time who honestly believe that they have made it.

They have embedded themselves successfully in a well-paid career at a young age and now all they must do is show up to work 5 days a week for the next 50 years until they retire, at which point their company pension will pay for several years of pottering, and then finally, their nursing home.

Lifecycle 5.4
Lifecycle

We do joke, but honestly, we don’t understand why people think this is a successful life strategy.

Unless you’re one of the lucky few who have a truly fulfilling job, you’re going to realise by the time you’re in your thirties that you’ve wasted your best years and are looking likely to waste the rest.

Surely a better life plan is to escape the fear of job dependency early on, by changing your life goals to those of pursuing multiple passive income streams.

Unable to Save

We believe that almost anyone can save enough money aside each week to invest and build up a portfolio of assets and side hustles to allow them to retire early, and the middle classes are especially well placed to do this.

A middle-class household earning £60,000+ a year shouldn’t struggle to set aside many thousands into an investment pot, and yet they find themselves unable to save anything.

Money Flying Away
Money flying away

Money flies out of their bank accounts as fast as it goes in. Credit card payments, car financing of Audis, huge mortgages on huge houses inhabited by 1 couple, multiple exotic holidays, the latest iPhone at £60 a month, £10 monthly subscriptions to everything going, and of course avocados on toast!

Their issues are twofold – they cannot save what they earn, and everything they do earn comes from one source – their job, where they trade vast swatches of their time for money.

Changing the One-Source Mindset

We remember what it felt like to have one income stream. Powerless, dependant on an employer, unable to challenge.

How secure is a job when it can be taken away on the whim of one boss?

Starting in our twenties, we both ploughed our spare cash not into car finance schemes nor the back pocket of a bank manager, but into cash flow generating investments – stocks and funds, property, P2P lending and business ventures. No matter how small, we started, and you should too.

As a result, we are no longer totally dependent on an employer’s handouts to survive financially. And each passing day that dependency gets smaller.

Job Security?

Income from assets can’t be taken away from you by a boss – it’s why we believe that household finances based on passive income is more secure than just having a job.

Now that we’re in our thirties, we have income from multiple sources. We each have healthy investment portfolios, we make a bit from Money Unshackled, and yes, we still have employment income. But this is always becoming a smaller piece of the pie as we focus on the things that matter.

We are not reliant on that employment income – we use it to build our portfolios faster, or to buy the things that others would take out crippling financing deals to acquire.

We tell you this not to brag but to demonstrate what a little proactivity around your finances can do to your life.

Multiple Sources
Growing passive income seeds

Multiple Sources of Income

Don’t mistake multiple income sources with working multiple jobs. That isn’t what we mean. Really, people only have the time to work one job – anything else is asking for mental overload.

No; your non-job income streams must be either passive (requiring little or no effort on your part), or a side hustle business.

This will hopefully be something you enjoy and can do in your spare time, which hopefully frees up time in the future.

There’s no reason that the middle classes couldn’t divert huge amounts of money and effort into setting up investment portfolios and side hustles – but they choose not to. They are choosing short term pleasure over long term success.

Killer of Ideas

We hear it all the time from career employees – “if I only had an idea, I’d love to start a business” or “if only I had the time to look into it, I’d love to learn how to invest”.

The fact is, when you give the best hours of your day to working on someone else’s dreams, all your creativity goes to the benefit of your employer and their shareholders. You are too tired in the evenings to let ideas bloom.

How many years have you dreamed about having that one idea that would set you free financially?

Shifting the Balance – Time vs Job Income

If you want to set up multiple income streams, at some point you’re going to need more time on your hands to work on what you love.

Time vs Cost
Time vs Cost vs Quality

If you can get to the point where you can afford to work part time, maybe a 4-day week, you will free up precious time to invest into yourself. But for now, you will have to sacrifice evenings and weekends to set yourself free.

Remember – you don’t work for someone else – you work for you!

Have you managed to avoid being Middle Class and Broke? Tell us about your multiple income stream ambitions in the comments section below.

Work Once Get Paid Forever

Work once, get paid forever. These are the words of millionaire’s the world over, and by following this simple mantra we can all be in with a shot of the big time.

A mix of passive income philosophy and good old hard graft, there is no simpler route to becoming wealthy than those 5, simple words – Work once, get paid forever.

So how is it done? Let’s check it out…

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The Problem with Pure Passive Income

The purest form of passive income is earning interest from a bank savings account. It requires the least amount of work on your part, and consequently gives a pathetic return.

On this channel, we Money Unshackled boys advocate passive income in the form of high cash returns on investments, but these sweet returns are not 100% passive. We say that you need to put some effort in to get the best mix of returns and lifestyle.

Share portfolios need to be regularly rebalanced; rental property needs to be found, renovated, and managed even if you let your agent do the heavy lifting; and you should always invest time into understanding an investment before it is made.

Portfolios Need To Be Rebalanced Regularly

But investments don’t require you to get up at 7am each morning and put in a 9 hour session in someone else’s office working on someone else’s dreams – so are infinitely more passive than the alternative – trading time for money.

Targeted Work – An Example

Instead of spending your efforts working hard and getting paid once for that time, what if you only invested your time into efforts that paid off forever?

In 2017, Ben worked hard for 5 weeks in his spare time doing up a large city Victorian townhouse, transforming it from a run-down family home into a 5 bedroom multi-let HMO.

With his business partner and some builders, his hard work resulted in a second bathroom, fire-doors throughout, and a high standard of finish in each room – in essence, an amazing investment asset.

Work like that pays nothing while you’re doing it but promises to pay handsomely forever.

Transform Your Assets Into Better Assets!

Enhancing a property from a standard house to a pay-by-the-room model can double your future monthly income.

This was a result of a small extra upfront investment, and a few weeks of targeted work. Should he have paid professionals to do all the work for him?

He would now, but the first time you do something it’s usually good to get involved yourself, so that you have the knowledge to manage future similar projects.

Time spent – 5 weeks of weekends and evenings. Increase to future monthly income – about £300 extra per month per business partner. Work once, get paid forever.

The 70:20:10 Rule

Charles Jennings, a workplace performance guru, told businesses to live by the 70:20:10 rule to power growth.

It is a rule that we all can and should be applying to our personal finances as well.

The philosophy, translated into home finance terms, tells us that 70% of our time should be given to what makes us the most money currently.

For most this will be your job.

Then 20% of your time should be spent on building up your next great income stream (a side hustle business that has the potential to be passive) – leaving 10% of your time to research and think about future, as yet undeveloped projects.

The idea is that you ditch working on your primary income stream as soon as your second stream is large enough to benefit from extra effort and once your first stream is passive.

Unfortunately, if your first stream is a job, it can never be passive, so if passive income is important to you, it would have to be ditched entirely.

You’d want to end up in a position where you work hard on a side hustle business idea until it can run itself and pay you money forever with minimal further input; thereby allowing you to upgrade the time spent on Project 2 from 20% to 70%.

Over the years you’d want to end up with multiple established income streams for which you worked on in the past but get paid in perpetuity. If you can make even a few hundred pounds a month from each stream, you’re going to end up being very rich once a few are established.

Good Marketing Is Essential To Getting Paid Forever

Marketing and Working Smart

We both recently went to a SUM41 gig in Manchester which got us thinking about passive income.

We thought that the support act that played before SUM41 was great; they worked really hard on stage to put on a performance and they were playing to the right audience for their genre. But their marketing was terrible.

We never learned their name. There were no banners on stage. The tickets didn’t mention them as the support band, nor did an internet search.

As audience members, we should have had the name of this band shoved down our throats so we could find them later on Spotify and potentially generate them royalties forever. They were working hard but not working smart – they were missing an obvious opportunity to build a passive income stream.

Marketing is an essential part of Work Once Get Paid Forever. Once you’ve put in the hard work of building your asset, whether that’s a music album, website, book or whatever; tell people about it.

Work Hard - But Work Smart

Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?

Very few people become millionaires through a salary. That is, by trading time directly for money.

By far and away the easiest way to become wealthy is by building up multiple passive or semi passive income streams, which build up and can be reinvested into the markets or other business ventures.

Most entrepreneurs work hard, but only on tasks that grow their income streams and that they enjoy – rarely to be paid directly for their time.

We can’t relate to those corporate CEOs who get paid 6 figure salaries, who are obviously millionaires, but continue to trade 70 or 80 hours a week of their time directly for money. Just invest your salary and retire already!

Investing For Success - It's In Your Control

What Can You Do? – Investing for Success

If you don’t have a side hustle idea or aren’t confident to start a business, you can still stick to the Work Once Get Paid Forever mantra by investing as much of your salary as possible into the stock market or other investments.

By building up a substantial investment portfolio from your slave wages, you are getting paid an income forever in the form of dividends, rent, interest and royalties.

By reinvesting everything you earn from your investments, your income will grow. Soon, your efforts will pay off and you’ll be getting paid forever for work that you did in the past. That’s Work Once, Get Paid Forever!

Are you stuck trading your time directly for money? What are you doing about it? Tell us about your side hustles and investments in the comments below.

Side Hustle Ideas UK

Do you want to start a side hustle, but need some ideas to get started? Millennials are turning in their droves to the gig economy and side hustles, with 1 in 4 people now taking on multiple money-making activities at the same time. Gone are the days of a high paying job for life.

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Beyond the necessity to supplement stagnant wages, young people now demand the flexibility of a work life balance on THEIR terms.

Having a side hustle business outside of your normal job is a fantastic way to have fun doing a hobby you enjoy; and get paid to support your lifestyle at the same time.

So what makes a good side hustle? And what are some good side hustle ideas?

woman thinking
Time To Think Of An Idea

Thinking of an idea is challenging, but before that we need to be thinking of the right type of side hustle.

What Makes a Good Side Hustle?

We say that there are 3 types of side hustle. These are:

1) Pay By The Hour/Event

This is the “Trade Time for Money” type of side hustle, and the most common. It is also what most people think of when they think about side hustles.

Here’s some ideas for this type of side hustle:

  • Host murder mystery evenings at your home
  • Manage social media accounts for small businesses
  • Mystery shopping
  • Grow and sell plants
  • eBay clear-out
  • Dog walking / babysitting
  • Private tutor / music lessons
  • Londoner? Offer free tours – tourists expect to pay a decent tip each of £10 – £20

What’s good about the Pay-by-Event type of side hustle is that they are often simple to set up, you know roughly how much extra cash you’ll get each month, and there are plenty of ideas out there.

Whatever you are good at, you can spend your spare time doing it and getting paid for it.

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Your Hustle May Take Time To Grow

The downside to this type of side hustle is that there is limited room for growth. You only have so much time in the day, especially if you are working alongside a full-time job.

2)100% passive side hustle

We’re not sure that these technically fit the definition of side hustle, but they are a way of making money outside of work – so we include them here.

Examples of 100% passive side hustles include:

  • Rent out a room to a lodger / become an Airbnb provider
  • Let a commuter park on your drive or garden
  • Rent your garage out for storage
  • Hire out the use of another asset you own e.g. a classic car or an expensive camera

These are much better types of side hustle as they take the time element out of it – if you can, set up one of these moneytrees first, and once they are ticking along without your input, you can turn your attention to a side hustle that requires your time.

This type of side hustle requires you to own assets, and to make them work hard for you while you do nothing.

lodger
Lodgers Can Bring In Hundreds A Month - Each!

Obviously not everyone can do this, but if you are lucky enough to have a foot on the housing ladder, getting a lodger is a simple and significant step you can take to make hundreds of extra pounds each month, tax free.

3) Business with Growth Potential

Finally, this type of side hustle is a true business start-up – you might expect to have an initial cash outlay, no profits for the first year or two, but thereafter could have unlimited growth – to the point where it’s making enough money for you that you can quit your day job.

This type of side hustle differs from something like a dog walking business, in that it has scalability in terms of the number of people it can reach.

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Dog Walking Pays Only So Much - Where's The Scalability?

A dog-walker can only walk so many dogs; a tour guide can only put on so many tours.

Examples of side hustle businesses that have scalability are:

  • Start a YouTube channel, website or blog that offers value and helps people
  • Write a book
  • Graphic designer / Photographer / Music Samples creator – sell on sites such as AudioJungle
  • Produce and sell an online course e.g. website development, car mechanic, cookery – whatever you’re good at, make a course to show others how to do it, and charge big bucks
  • Investment Property business

Note that most of these are internet based. The reason so many people are able to make a living from the internet is that it is the purest and simplest tool to achieve scale.

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The Internet Means We're All Connected

We’re All Interconnected

Everyone in the world is connected the internet, meaning that your product or service has the potential to reach over 6 billion people.

Come up with a product that helps people or that entertains them, and a way of making sales passive, and you are onto a winner.

The web-based tutorials site Udemy is a place where you can upload a series of videos that you have filmed and packaged together as a course, which people can download and buy.

You create the course ONCE, then forget about it – an unlimited volume of the product can be downloaded without any further input from you, and a worldwide audience can see your product.

You have scalability of production and of audience reach.

What We’re Doing

This website is another example of a side hustle that can reach an unlimited number of people, and crucially we believe provides value.

In our YouTube videos, we aim to provide as much information on investment and finance topics as we can in as short a space of time, to educate, entertain, and help you become financially free.

In return, we hope our channel and website will grow over the years to reach a global audience, and act as another source of cash flow for us alongside our investment portfolios.

The key is that we are first and foremost doing something we enjoy and doing it for the right reasons – to help people. If you can genuinely help the masses, your business will grow.

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Building A Property Portfolio In Your Spare Time Can Make You Rich

Investment Property as a Side Hustle?

We include in that final list an Investment Property business.This lacks the scalability of an internet business but can grow from a handful of rental properties into a portfolio 50 strong, by reinvesting all profits.

We include it because it doesn’t require your time to manage (you should be using a property agent to manage your portfolio for you). Unlike an internet business however, it costs a lot more to set up.

Consider Your Schedule and Flexibility

When choosing a side hustle, you should ask yourself how much time do you have available, and what is your time worth to you? Are you willing/able to give more time as your side hustle grows?

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How Much Time Can You Really Commit?

Setting up a business will take a lot of time and commitment before you start to make serious money, while a Time-For-Money side hustle might be better suited for someone who needs an extra income now.

Conclusion

As you know, at MU we both love and crave passive income, but if we must give up some of our time, it should be for scalable income.

Therefore, we would always go for the second and third types of side hustle.

The 100% passive such as lodgers and renting out assets and setting up Businesses with Scalability, like what we’re doing with Money Unshackled.

We hope we’ve opened your mind to what a side hustle can be – it needn’t be just another time-for-money trade off like your day job. If done right, it could set you free.

What’s your side hustle idea? Let us know in the comments below.

FIRE Financial Freedom – Financial Independence Retire Early

The Financial Independence, Retire Early Movement, or FIRE movement for short is a lifestyle choice to retire early by gaining financial independence at a relatively young age – usually aiming to retire in their thirties or forties at the latest.

In one way it’s something we’ve been teaching on our channel from the very beginning but never referred to it by its name.

YouTube Video > > >

When we talk to people about early retirement, we generally get 1 of 3 responses:

  1. Complete and utter disbelief that it’s even possible – often accompanied by the sentence, “I can’t retire for another 40 or 50 years.” This really grinds our gears as these people have given in at life before they’ve even started, accepting a state dictated retirement date.
  1. Criticism for some reason for wanting to live your life to the full. Often accompanied by the sentence, “I wouldn’t know what to do” or “I’d be bored”. Honestly, we don’t get this one at all. Why on earth would these people not want to be masters of their own destiny.
  1. And a response that finally makes sense – general excitement and a desire to know how.

So, what is the FIRE lifestyle? How is it done? Do we agree with it? And can it really be achieved?

Your Money Or Your Life
Your Money Or Your Life

Although we think the concept of Financial Independence, Retire Early must have been around since the beginning of time, many of the main ideas have been credited to the best-selling book Your Money or Your Life, linked here, so make sure to get yourself a copy. If you learn anything from this book, then it’s been worth the price.

What is FIRE?

FIRE‘s formula is very simple: spend less than you earn and invest the surplus. FIRE is achieved through aggressive saving – and we’re not just talking about a bog standard 10-15%.

The objective is to accumulate assets until the resulting passive income provides enough money to cover living expenses in perpetuity.

If you can only save 10%, then it will take 9 years to save for 1 year of living expenses.

However, if you can pump those up to a 50% saving rate, then that is just 1 year of work to save for 1 year of living expenses.

Some people are able to go even further to 75% and beyond. Also factor in some investment growth and you’ll be financially independent in no time.

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We're not talking bull... honest

We can sense some people will think that’s impossible and that we, and all those that preach this stuff, are chatting complete bull.

So, How is it done?

Those seeking to attain FIRE intentionally maximize their savings rate by finding ways to increase income or decrease expenses.

The extent of how much you decrease expenses is up to you. If you can live off and are happy to live off rice, live in a tent and do nothing else, then you can probably save quite a high percentage of your income.

But most people, including us are unwilling to go to such extremes.

You can of course cut out all the unnecessary spending, and if you follow the teachings in Your Money or Your Life you will identify every single penny that comes into and out of your life.

This way you’ll finally see where you spend and potentially waste money.

We prefer to increase earnings, whilst being semi frugal.

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Do you really need this?

Some ways we each maximise our savings rates is by increasing our earnings through multiple streams of passive income.

This includes ad revenue, which you may have seen on our YouTube videos and affiliate marketing.

We are also now live with the MoneyUnshackled.com website, which will bring more helpful information to you and hopefully an even wider audience.

Supporters of FIRE suggest the use of 4% as a safe withdrawal rate, meaning you would need an investment pot of 25 times your annual living expenses.

Of course, the 4% rule may be too high, but it could also be argued that you need far less if your investments perform far better than the stock market average.

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The most liked video on YouTube - this could make some serious passive ad revenue

A few investment properties could return 20%+. We’ve done a video on how this is possible, here.

Do we agree with it and can it really be achieved?

Absolutely. Personally, neither of us would want to scrimp and save to the point life was no fun but FIRE is not much different to what wealthy people have done for generations – living off their wealth.

Achieving it is not easy otherwise everyone would do it. But if you can build your income and keep lifestyle inflation to a minimum you can definitely achieve it.

We’re both already on the path to Financial Freedom and would love for you to join us.

“But I don’t want to retire”

Upon reaching financial independence, paid work becomes optional – you don’t have to retire.

For some reason, many people get confused with what freedom is.

You are free to do what you want. If that is work, in whatever form, then so be it.

Are you or will you be living a FIRE lifestyle? If so, we want to hear how you are doing this. Let us know in the comments section.