Is Your Side Gig Worth It?
August 16, 2017There are lots of reasons to take on a side gig, not all of them financial. Perhaps you’re looking to gain experience in a new career field or you love the type of work but couldn’t do it full time (pet sitting comes to mind, one of my former side gigs). Finding a way to bring in some extra cash with your free time definitely makes sense, especially when it helps with things like paying off that lingering credit card balance or allows you to take a vacation you couldn’t otherwise afford. But not always.
My side gig of teaching group fitness is less about the money and more about guaranteeing I get a good workout in at least once a week (although I never complain about getting paid to work out!) But there may come a time when it’s no longer serving you, or you realize that you may actually be losing value, which is what lead me to go from teaching three classes per week to just one. If you’re thinking of a side gig, how do you decide if it’s actually worth it? There are a few things to consider.
What would you be doing otherwise?
I’ve met many interesting people riding around in ride-share cars over the past couple of years, most of them just trying to pick up a few extra bucks in their spare time. I often wonder if they’ve thought about the total trade-off they’re making considering the time they spend logged in but not driving anyone, the price of gas, the wear and tear on their vehicles, etc.
One way to figure out if a side gig like that is worth it is to consider what you would be doing with that time otherwise. If you’d be parked on the couch binge-watching old episodes of Friends or flipping through social media, then it’s probably a worthy trade of your time. But if you’d be doing homework, engaging in restorative downtime that may enhance your performance at your “real job” or something else that could potentially earn you more money down the road, then maybe it’s not worth it.
Is it serving you?
Teaching fitness definitely passes the first test — I’d either be sleeping or paying to work out elsewhere if I wasn’t teaching — but I recently found myself wondering if it was worth it in other ways. Besides actually teaching the class, I also have to spend time learning each class, which can add up to a couple more hours each week. And after more than 12 years doing it, I’m getting bored and I know it’s not making a difference to my fitness. But the kicker was that two of my classes were at 6am, which meant that two nights a week I had to be in bed by 9:30 if I wanted to get a full night’s rest.
Since I work from home, I no longer have to get up at the crack of dawn in order to squeeze in a workout, so I was having to get up early only because I was teaching. I knew I was done the night the Cubs won the World Series and I couldn’t fully enjoy the celebration because it was already two hours past my bedtime. Teaching daybreak classes was no longer serving me and the lifestyle I currently live, so I gave up my early mornings earlier this year and have never looked back.
How much is your time worth?
There’s actually a way to quantify the worth of your side gig as well. Oftentimes we just think of the total dollars we earn, when we should be thinking about the true hourly wage, including all the costs involved in the job as well as the time spent indirectly related to earning that money. In the book Your Money or Your Life, the author describes it as what you’re trading your life energy for so that you can quantify purchases in terms of how many total hours of your life you’re trading for that thing.
Here’s my calculation for teaching at the gym, where my $42 hourly wage turns out to be less than $2 per hour now that I’m down to just one class per week. If I were doing this only for the money, I’d have to re-think that trade!
What’s the impact?
Ask yourself if your side gig is truly something that is making a positive impact on your life. You may find that it is, that it’s the thing that gets you through long workdays. If that’s the case, it’s worth it. On the other hand, if you find that it’s adding stress to your life or you’re finding yourself saying no to things you want to do because of your side gig, it’s worth examining whether that stress and sacrifice is worth the extra cash.
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