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Has There Ever Been An Easier Time To Start A Side Hustle?

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We live in the golden age of side hustling. If you’re looking to make some extra money in order to pay off debt, save more, or even to buy that shiny new toy, there’s really no excuse for why you can’t do it.

Compare the nature of a part time gig today, as compared to just a few years ago. There wasn’t a sharing economy or on-demand economy. Things like Uber and Airbnb didn’t exist. When I was in college, making extra money meant either finding a part time job or figuring out a way to make your own job.

Finding a part time job meant working when your boss told you to work. That’s a problem for people who want flexibility. And creating your own job meant figuring out a skill you had and finding customers, not to mention you probably needed to spend some money in order to get your hustle started…

Do You Have The Strength And Stamina To Survive A Trump Presidency?

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By now, you’re all probably aware that Donald Trump is officially going to be the next president of the United States. This isn’t a politics blog, so I’m not sharing my thoughts on the matter (plus, I’m no politics expert). Nor is this a blog about the economy, so I’m not going to talk about that either. Heck, I have no idea where the economy will go. Things go up, things go down. Jobs are created, jobs are lost. I don’t really know why it happens.

What I do know is that the doomsday prophecies are out there. Trump is going to cause a recession! Stocks will crash! The rich won’t pay any more taxes! I have no idea if these are true or not. All I can do is stay calm and stick to my game plan.

October 2016 Side Hustle Report

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Welcome to another side hustle report! Each month, I document what I earned doing various side hustles outside of my day job. I’m a firm believer that anyone can find a way to make some extra money on the side. Even just a few years ago, starting up a side hustle required a bit of work and might have required some upfront capital costs. And picking up a second job meant you’d have to go to work whenever your boss scheduled you. But not anymore. Today, with the advance of technology, anyone can find a way to make some extra money on their own time, whenever they want!

Remember, your side hustle is worth a lot more than you think. Even making a few thousand dollars a year can add up to a ton of money over time. That’s because every dollar you earn in your side hustle is another dollar you can save. If you’re living fine on your regular income, then you don’t need to spend your side hustle income at all!

Why I Prefer To Pay Off Debt Aggressively

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Anyone with debt and a decent cash flow will eventually find themselves with a choice. What should be done with all of that excess money? Assuming your goal isn’t to spend it all on buying things, you’re basically left with two choices. Pay off your debt aggressively. Or invest the surplus.

The pure mathematical answer is to play the interest rate arbitrage game. Excess money should go into assets that provide a rate of return higher than whatever interest rate your debt is at. It’s a pretty simple calculation from that vantage point…

Do You Know How Much Your Debt Costs You Per Day?

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One of the things that surprised me when I began my student loan payback journey was how much interest I had to pay when I started making my payments. What was even more surprising to me was how much interest my loans had accrued while I was in school (and making no money). In fact, when I graduated and made my first student loan payment, it didn’t even reduce my student loan balance at all. All of it went directly towards the interest!

Interest is one of those things that we all sort of understand in theory. Most of us basically know that when we borrow money, we agree to pay it back at some point, with a little extra on top. But I don’t think we’re very good at really understanding what interest looks like on a daily basis. Maybe that’s why we sometimes let debt linger in our lives…

Why Bike Share Systems Are The Best Form Of Public Transit

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Every personal finance nerd knows that biking is one of the best modes of transportation out there. In addition to just being fun to do, you also get three things from biking that you really can’t get from any other mode of transportation – speed in getting from place to place, huge cost savings, and, of course, health benefits from actually using your own body power to propel yourself forward. And I didn’t even mention the awesome feeling you get when you zoom past a bunch of cars that are stuck in traffic!

One of the best pieces of technology in the past few years has been the emergence of the bikeshare system…

My Postmates Review 2024: Getting Paid To Bike Around Town

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I remember when my brother first told me about a new app he’d found called Postmates. He’d just returned home to the US after living overseas for a few years and didn’t have a job. So, in order to make a bit of cash while he was job hunting, he picked up a side gig as a Postmates courier, delivering food for people around the city.

Here was my brother, a college educated, smart, hard working millennial…working as a delivery man. He was really putting that college degree to use…

The Only Secret To Paying Off Debt Is To Be A Weirdo

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One of the things I always tell people about debt is that there isn’t any secret to paying it off quickly. There’s no magic method that will make your debt disappear. No secret tricks that will crush your loans any faster. And you probably shouldn’t count on someone else paying your debt off for you.

In the end, paying off debt really just comes down to a single basic principle. Live on less than you earn and use what’s left over to pay off your debt. The more you have left over to pay towards your debt, the faster it’ll be gone. It’s basically that simple…

A Breakdown Of How I Paid Off $87,000 Worth Of Student Loans In 2.5 Years

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One of the best things I did coming out of law school was to pay off my student loans as fast as I could. Doing this gave me a ton of flexibility in the type of money I had to earn. With my loans gone, I didn’t need to work in a job earning a certain amount of money, all so that a portion of it could go out the door to some student loan company. And I could rest easy at night knowing that I didn’t have to keep paying for a piece of paper that I had earned years ago!

Interestingly, even though I knew how much in student loans I had paid off, I had never actually looked at what I had paid over those 2.5 years.

I thought it might be an interesting trip down memory lane to see this information. So a few weeks ago, I requested my payment history from my student loan servicing companies and took a look.

Pay Off Debt By Rejecting The “It Isn’t Possible” Mentality

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One of the interesting things I find when people share their debt free stories with the mainstream media are the comments that result. Some commenters praise these articles and talk about how they’ve been inspired.

But more often, you notice the negative comments. These are the people who say that the story being shared isn’t possible or that what they’re reading isn’t helpful because most people can’t do the same thing…

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