The internet is full of investing advice to grow wealth or budget better. Most of this advice comes from financial advisors (who earn commissions from the corpus you generate), financial influencers (who prey on your vulnerability to earn lakhs from brands), and your neighbourhood insurance advisor (who is desperately upselling to pay their own EMIs).
About the author: Ayushi Mona Singh is a marketing leader who has worked across banking, logistics, pharma and venture capital. She runs ShelfChat, a community of book lovers. Recognised by Business World in their 30 Under 30 list, Ayushi also teaches marketing programs at Kraftshala, writes online and creates playbooks. This is how her interest in side-gigs developed. She has helped several freelancers and worked with 60+ brands.
In the last few years, ‘passive income’ or ‘moonlighting’ has become another hot topic. With layoffs, poor rental yields and inflation, everyone desperately wants to find a secondary income.
Admittedly, two things that matter in wealth generation:
High income: The higher your income, the higher percentage or absolute savings rate (what you keep after expenses) you can maintain. You can thus build that corpus of your dreams. It’s not just about earning more, but also about keeping more.
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Long time horizon: Compounding works best over time, which is why Warren Buffett is richer than peers who outperform him; he just had an incredible head start early on!
Different people start at different points in time (some are aware and begin in their teens, some after an insurance claim gets rejected, some after a layoff and so on…)
However, it is in everyone’s power to earn more. When one stream dips (job loss, market downturn), others provide stability.
So, how do you make more money? Let’s dive in!
Choosing where money can be made:
A popular hotelier once said that the only thing that matters is ‘Location, location, location.’
With money too, demographics can become destiny. Being close to sources of wealth matters. This doesn’t always mean that you need to pack your bags and move to Silicon Valley. You can become reasonably wealthy running a few guesthouses in a small tourist town.
Supply your skills where demand exists not where life put you!
If you are stuck in a low-paying job, consider shifting locations, even if it means personal inconvenience. Your children can get used to a new school. Often, the improvement in quality of life with higher income offsets the heartburn of living far away.
Not possible? The world is a big place – find remote opportunities with aggressive networking! I’ve a friend who teaches Carnatic Music remotely and another friend who’s a virtual assistant to startup founders worldwide!
Choosing what you want to make money in:
Indian parents often push their children into traditional engineering and medicine professions, hoping they’ll get stable careers. Now, while the approach is misguided, the mindset is absolutely correct.
What people often benefit from is doing to themselves by choice, what their parents did to them by force. Find the gap where money can be made and move towards it.
For example, in marketing, digital marketers tend to earn higher salaries. For HR professionals, compensation and quantitative roles tend to pay higher salaries. For a dentist, being an orthodontist is very lucrative because people pay premiums to improve their appearance.
Get absolutely brilliant at what you do:
Throughout my corporate career, I have seen people spend the day sneakily on trading sites. I have seen people never take project work, citing work-life balance, and I have seen people spend lakhs on weddings but not even hundreds on upskilling. The easiest way to make money is to be simply the best at what you do.
The best Momo seller in your city earns in a day what you do in a month.
Your CEO earns in a week what you make in a year.
The only true investment we make is in ourselves. Today, many people feel reluctant to spend money or time on their jobs because there is a state of pessimism around employment.
But transferable skills and the ability to be a master of your subject are a true moat for financial security.
How should you do this? Build a personal roadmap around career skills, areas of improvement, and industry demand. Spend time and money on this!
Map where you are in the scheme of things:
The reason many people feel disgruntled about their income is simply because of their lack of honesty with themselves.
Many people know they are in the bottom 30% of their profession, but will stick around feeling like victims.
Many people will wait for ‘one more year’ instead of quickly changing toxic jobs.
Many people will not stretch at work, thinking that they’re doing enough anyway.
The first step to making money is simply admitting where you stand. If you are a bottom-feeder in the corporate hierarchy whose name only their manager knows, tough luck.
If you are a teacher at a no-name school, also tough luck.
Once you know where you are and where you want to go. You can take realistic steps to see how you can get there.
Many people are a surgery away from poverty but will never care till it’s too late.
Once you understand you don’t have the talent or drive to be the top 1% or 10% of your profession, you can divert your frustration into other things (like buying flats and renting them out!). If you do have the potential to be 1% in specialist fields and 10% in generalist fields, your core income and demand for your talent will keep you sheltered!
Top dogs always get taken care of.
Do things that make money
I know you are probably annoyed, reading this headline. You’re probably doing things already that make money. But are you?
Scheduling meetings and emailing spreadsheets run operations and supports how money is made. It actually doesn’t make money itself!
Many people today want to generate returns from 5,10,50 lakhs but don’t want to work for it. They think they can passively do it the way they do their corporate jobs.
Or, they spend all their time on chai-sutta breaks with other people instead of actually working.
Do ‘real’ things to make ‘real money’, such as talking to customers if you want to start a side business, automating a digital product or course and finding actual footfall for a commercial opportunity.
Make money from your primary work
Many people under-exploit their core skills. A software engineer wants to be a trader, and a supply chain manager wants to be a real estate investor. Whoever you are, you under-estimate what you can do around your core business:
- Teaching opportunities (dime a dozen for corporate employees)
- Selling courses and specialist advice (once you’ve built a reputation)
- Backward integration (eg, re-packaging HORECA supplies into retail goods in a restaurant)
- Hobbies (candle-making classes, yoga classes, food tours). Every passion you have can safely become a side gig that generates income.
Chartered accountants who are corporate slaves have been filing ITRs, consulting startups, and writing blogs are a good example of this kind of work.
This will only be a challenge if you hate what you do. So either change paths or accept your fate and diversify within your zone.
Making money from secondary/peripheral/adjacent work
You’ll always see some people doing work that has nothing to do with their core job but uses some skills from it. Many marketing people are online content creators (like me). Many data scientists teach maths classes for fun. Many homemakers start doing dabba businesses.
The challenge with peripheral incomes is that they take up disproportionate time and energy. You have to be careful to hire support (eg, a video editor for your reels or help to package your cakes) or you can burn out before generating meaningful income.
The easier part of peripheral income is that, unlike your core skills, you can be bad at this. People pay you for consulting and teaching when you have a brilliant reputation. But people are okay to pay for run-of-the-mill cupcakes if you are a weekend home baker.
Making money from tertiary/unrelated work
In India, living off rental income is a fairly standard practice due to our traditional love of both buying homes and fighting with relatives over their custody.
Rental income is as good a source of passive income as many. But, unless you are a full-time broker or insider, it is a tertiary expertise.
Ditto for trading income.
These two are the most common things people jump into. After all, you can start trading with very little money. You also get quick feedback from the market.
Homes can be bought on an EMI easily and then rented out.
Both of these or any other investment, like leading farmlands or fractional ownership, come with their own risks. Remember, income generation, just like investing, can have upsides and downsides.
The downside to salary income is a small corpus, but the downside to risky trading is wiping off your entire financial fortune. Similarly, real estate deals can go badly, tying up almost your entire net worth in a concrete coffin.
Invisible Money
This is the money that everyone aspires to. Be it dividend, interest income etc. This is a steady trickle and obviously the most desirable due to the least hassle. However, too many people get too greedy for comfort money early on. At times, a business investment or a learning investment is better than locking in a corpus to earn passive income.
Another form of invisible money that people ignore is the latent opportunities around them.
Do you drive to work every day? Can you carpool for a little income?
Do you live away from the city? Can you partner with a farm to sell produce in your society?
Do you have one car you’ve stopped driving? Can you sell it off and rent out the additional space?
Many people don’t earn enough because they are lazy (why should I work on weekends), entitled (my company should pay for my course), conscious (what will people think if they see my wife cooking for money) or simply delusional (I will rotate under-construction real estate inventory to make a quick buck).
Remember – Money grows fastest when you build a strong foundation (core income), protect it (savings and discipline), and let it branch out (diversified income streams). Happy Earning!
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Dr M. Pattabiraman(PhD) is the founder, managing editor and primary author of freefincal. He is an associate professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. He has over 13 years of experience publishing news analysis, research and financial product development. Connect with him via Twitter(X), Linkedin, or YouTube. Pattabiraman has co-authored three print books: (1) You can be rich too with goal-based investing (CNBC TV18) for DIY investors. (2) Gamechanger for young earners. (3) Chinchu Gets a Superpower! for kids. He has also written seven other free e-books on various money management topics. He is a patron and co-founder of “Fee-only India,” an organisation promoting unbiased, commission-free aum independent investment advice.Our flagship course! Learn to manage your portfolio like a pro to achieve your goals regardless of market conditions! ⇐ More than 3,500 investors and advisors are part of our exclusive community! Get clarity on how to plan for your goals and achieve the necessary corpus no matter the market condition is!! Watch the first lecture for free! One-time payment! No recurring fees! Life-long access to videos! Reduce fear, uncertainty and doubt while investing! Learn how to plan for your goals before and after retirement with confidence.
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