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Saturday Roundup – Side Hustles Rock

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We’re busy cleaning for our party next weekend, followed by spending an evening lying in a coffin in my yard, scaring the crap out of kids and giving them candy.

The best posts of the week:

Right now, I am actively pursuing 4 separate side hustles, 3 of which are generating actual cash.  It’s about $500 a month at the moment, but each of them are growing.  My goal is to hit $1500 a month by spring and have full replacement income within 2 years.  Everybody should have some kind of side income, just as a safety net.

One of my side hustles involves training in a niche with 200 companies competing for about 10,000 one-day students each year.    I could try to compete on price, but that’s an arms race to bargain-basement pricing.  Instead, we compete on value, and as such, we’re on track to bring in several multiples of our share of students this year, with growth projected to go well beyond that next year.

Knowing how much more I enjoy my side projects over my straight job, I want to encourage my kids to develop their own lines of income that will allow them to live the lives they want to live, without being a leech on society.

If they can start to get some of their own income, they can learn the value of the things they own, instead of assuming that everything is free.  I will not spoil my kids.

Finally, a list of the carnivals I’ve participated in:

Actions Have Consequences has been included in the Festival of Frugality.

If I missed anyone, please let me know.   Thanks for including me!

Do 1 Thing

I’m lazy.

Really, I am.  When I get home from work, I want nothing more than to plop down on the couch, dial up a movie and ignore the world for a few hours.  I need some downtime to relax.

While I am keeping the couch from flying away, my wife gets home, makes dinner, does the dishes, changes the cat litter and  maybe vacuums the floor.  Once dinner is cooking, she usually throws in a load of laundry.  Three kids is a great way to guarantee a lot of laundry needs to get washed.

I have just two things to say about that:

  1. It makes me feel really lazy.
  2. I love you, honey!

I’ve never considered it a problem because I work my butt off on the weekend.  My wife isn’t happy with the arrangement because I tend to do next to nothing during the week.   I think it’s a good balance.  I’m productive on the weekend, she’s productive during the week.  Unfortunately, my habitual laziness has caused a bit of tension.  We’ve had a few “discussions” about that balance.  It’s obviously not working.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been trying something new.   When I get home from work I’ve been doing just 1 thing.  I do one thing per day.  One day, I fold laundry, another day I do the dishes.  Some days, I pick a room to organize.  It’s never very much, but it’s always something that needs to be done and, possibly most important, it looks like I’m doing more so my wife feels less abandoned to the housework.   I’m not actually doing more, but it gets spread out over the week, so it looks like more.  Slowly, surely, all of the work is getting done.

It’s not a perfect solution, but it seems to be working.  More is getting done, my wife feels like I’m helping out more and I get more time on the weekends to pursue whatever I feel like pursuing.   It’s a win for each of us.

How do you balance relaxation and a shared workload?