At first, a side hustle can sound like the perfect solution to your financial problems. Especially around the holidays. You need an influx of extra cash, and you need it now. Therefore, a side hustle should provide you with an easy way to achieve that.
Key word? Should.
The issue is that not only can a side hustle not provide the cash you hope for, it can cost you money. Even with no start-up costs. Here’s how, and some better options to consider.
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Costing you time
The biggest issue I have with side hustles is that even if you’re doing this in the evenings and weekends, that’s time that could be spent doing something actually beneficial to your bottom line. Time really is money. So if you’re using all that extra time working on a side hustle like drop-shipping or answering surveys or transcribing, you’re not using that time to your advantage.
In fact, if you have a regular day-to-day job, this can certainly be costing you money. By working all day, every day, you’re going to burn out. That alone is going to cut into your production at work. Plus, you may end up responding to emails, questions, and other issues with your products from your side hustle during work hours. That will not look good.
So not only is your side hustle going to be costing you money from potentially getting a promotion through work, it could cost you your job. That’s why there’s a far easier way to make money.
Work!
Alright, here me out. I understand. You’ve been working for years and could feel that perhaps you haven’t received that promotion you want. There haven’t been enough salary increases. Really there just isn’t enough money coming in from the job you have today.
The solution though isn’t a side hustle. It’s a new job.
In fact, side hustles aren’t likely to bring in thousands of dollars in income every year. But a new job certainly could. A study in the United Kingdom saw that those that changed their job every two to three years were able to get an average salary increase of 9% every time they changed jobs.
So if your employer isn’t paying what you’re worth? Find someone who is. Meanwhile, work hard to prove that worth to your current and new employer in any way possible.
While you wait
Now if you really want to make some extra cash and don’t have time to be looking for a new job during the holidays, investing is your best option. Canadians usually have at least some cash set aside, so if you’re looking for passive income to create some extra cash flow, definitely seek out strong dividend stocks.
An excellent option right now is Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (TSX:CM). CIBC stock is perfect because it’s already showing signs of improvement after a solid fourth-quarter earnings report. Further, shares remain undervalued, showing signs of strong returns in the future.
The company also increased its dividend recently! Even so, you can bring in a dividend yield of 6.42% as of writing, coming in at $3.60 annually. And trading at just 10.8 times earnings, it’s certainly a deal on the TSX today.
