Commentary: Four tips for how to side hustle

Prior Lake American

I get paid a very fair, much-better-than-expected wage for a newspaper reporter just entering the career field.

However, I also have $110,000 in student loans. That amounts to a payment of more than $1,200 each month in order to finally be free of the devil that rhymes with Schmallie Schmae by the time I’m 38.

The cherry on top is all of the other expenses and bills needed to function in society — rent, a car loan, car insurance, a 401k, putting some aside in savings for emergencies and trying to budget for a wedding.

It would be a struggle for most anybody. And so, like many millennials, I’ve learned how to balance multiple jobs in the time I’ve got as well as make time for having a social life.

I also understand that these will not work for everyone — these work for me, a privileged individual who received a college education, doesn’t have any children, and has a fiancé who helps pick up costs.

Here are three tips for how I’ve managed my side hustles.

1. Balance

The real trick is finding jobs that work well together and don’t leave you feeling strung out. I have five jobs, the first of which is as a full-time newspaper reporter. I am capped at 40 hours, which means that if I work late on a Monday, I can get off early that same amount of time on a Thursday. The news industry is known for being fairly back breaking, so this is a major assistance to being able to balance my jobs like I do.

The other jobs play to my skills and are more flexible. I am a freelance reporter for two other newspapers in the state, which allow me to watch meetings after the fact and write up a story. For this, I’m paid per story. I also write stories for my church, but that’s for free since it’s, you know, a church.

I am also a social media manager for a furniture store, a job I got while attending the University of Missouri and have kept on doing, even through the move to Minnesota. I design and schedule social media posts to promote certain sales or products. Again, playing to what I know.

After I moved to Minnesota and got a nicer car, I became a Lyft driver. Lyft is especially nice as a side hustle because it’s really whenever you want to drive for however long you want to drive. I haven’t done it as much, but when I need some quick cash I can just hop in my car, listen to my tunes and drive some people around. As far as jobs go, it’s definitely not the worst and like the others, it’s extremely flexible.

2. Prioritize

Obviously, my full-time job is my priority. That is the job where I go to the office, I do my work, I work late if I need to and I get done what I need to get done. With the rest, it gets a little trickier.

The freelance positions have set deadlines, which make it much easier to balance. If I know I need to get something done by a certain time on a certain day, I’ll get it done by then. Generally, I also know a few days in advance what I need to get done for my social media job and I’m able to do that, too.

Lyft can be done, again, whenever it fits into the cracks of my time. If I have no time to do it, then I don’t do it. If I need to do it, then I make time.

3. Schedule

It’s helpful to invest in a quality planner that you like looking at, because you might be looking at it a lot. My planner has everything I need to do planned out by the day, which makes it that much easier to do it all.

I write down when stories are due. I write down when sales are. I write down when I need to tweet. I write down what weekend I’m visiting my family. I write down date night. I write down what events I’m going to with friends.

I write it down.

Planners are twofold — on one hand, I know when everything needs to be done by and what I can do to make sure I have free time. On the other hand, there’s an immense amount of satisfaction from being able to physically cross off an item when it’s completed. At this point, it’s so satisfying that it becomes motivation to do it.

On top of my planner, I have other ways to stay organized. Organization is of the utmost because if you are multitasking this much and don’t have everything where you need to be, things get lost in the sauce.

Like pre-planner, when something was tugging at my mind all day until I finally checked my class website and found that I had an important midterm the next day. I found that out at about 11 p.m. The test was at 8 a.m.

4. Make time for you and the things you love

This is probably the most important tip, albeit cheesy. From the above points, it might sound like I have no time at all, but I make time because having time to do the things you enjoy is equally as important as getting everything done.

For instance, I worked on Sunday. But, on Saturday, I made sure I had nothing to do so I could go to Nickelodeon Universe with my friend. On Tuesday, I’m going to a themed trivia night. On a Sunday later this month, I’m having a sushi lunch date with my fiancé.

And in reality, these days and the moments I have free are the motivation I have for doing everything else. I could do the bare minimum and skate by, financially, but I still want to be able to go out and have fun and not feel like my life is absorbed by bills and work.