In today’s video I talk about what inspires me to make money from Side Hustles. This video was filmed back in December 2017 (so please excuse the Christmas decorations!)
If you’d rather read what I’m talking about (or perhaps you’re at work or somewhere you can’t easily watch), here’s a brief synopsis:
Back in early 2016 I was working on a contract in London. This required me to commute from my hometown in the Midlands which took me about 1.5 hours each way. The days were long and tiring. When I finally got home from work I’d only have a couple of hours rest before I had to head to bed to do it all again the next day. I was basically living for weekends.
One evening I took my computer and searched online for “How to retire early”. I’d reached a breaking point, and wanted a way out! Over the next couple of months I delved into an underground movement of people who were seeking FIRE. That stands for Financial Independence / Retiring Early.
To my delight there was an online community of like minded individuals who were all seeking the same thing as me - to be able to quit the rat race, to get out of the 9-5. I found many fantastic blogs, from all around the globe, particularly from the US and UK. I discovered that it is entirely possible to achieve early retirement within as few as 10 years, by concentrating efforts on getting your savings rate (that’s the % of your income you’re able to save each month) as high as possible. The higher the savings rate, the sooner you can retire.
I also uncovered calculations which I could use to determine how long it would take me to achieve my own financial independence date. For those “in the know”, being able to achieve the 4% safe withdrawal rate is the widely accepted goal. The premise being that if you can save and invest enough money to build up a nest egg, there will come a point where you can in theory live off this indefinitely by only withdrawing 4% of its value each year. This assumes that your fund is invested where it will achieve at least 4% interest each year.
Back in 2016 I worked out that if I saved really (REALLY) hard, that I could feasibly achieve financial independence by the time I’m 50 (ahem…still a few years off!) However, this would require a great deal of saving and frugality on my part.
Around the same time I read Tim Ferris’s book The 4 Hour Work Week (affiliate link). This opened my eyes to the fact that there are many ways to be able to earn extra income, and better still there are some things you can set in motion to allow you to continue to earn money with very little ongoing effort from yourself. Passive income is what we’re talking about!
So as well as pursuing my financial independence goal by saving, I decided to boost my chances of hitting my FIRE date with some extra income from Side Hustles. I read about Kindle book publishing on one of the blogs Financially Free By 40 that I’d been following and decided to give it a go. I found a quick, free online course on youtube and plunged right in!
It took me some time to start earning any decent money for my first book (I took some coaching to learn faster how to make a success of it in the end), but once I started seeing the £’s rollng in I was hooked. I’ve published more books since then not just on kindle, but in paperback and audiobook formats too.
As I began my fledgling book publishing business, the thought struck me that I was entirely dependent on Amazon for my additional income. This worried me a bit.
I’ve made it part of my personal mission statement for the past 2 years to help others with their search for freedom. This got me thinking, perhaps I could combine my mission to help others with my desire to de-risk my side-line business and diversify a bit.
This is when the idea for this website inspiringlifedesign.com was born!
It’s still early days for the site, I have a lot of ideas that I want to share and different ways to help people. For now I’m just starting to let people know that I’m here and ready to help. So if you’re interested in joining me and starting your own journey to Financial Independence, please follow along!
Any thoughts on this post? Please leave a comment below, I’d love to hear from you!
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