6 Ways to Bring in Extra Money
How To Create Income Streams To Give You Peace of Mind
Tax advisor and founder of accountancy firm Fuse Accountants, Faye Watts has these suggestions for building alternative streams of income that will take the pressure off finding your next day job.
1. Invest in property
If you’re sitting on a large chunk of equity, you may be able to leverage this and release some to purchase one or more buy to let properties and build up a property portfolio that can bring you rental income. Do get professional advice, and think of this as a long term investment, but if you’re not currently working and are good with your hands, this could be a project that will help set you up for the future.
2. Start a Freelance or Consultancy Side-line
Can you do what you did in your day job, but offer it on a freelance or consultancy basis? It’s an easy process to set up a company, or even register as a sole trader with HMRC, and you can choose your own hours to suit. If you think this might be an option for you, consider a period of overlap where you create a website and build up some clients while you continue to look for work. You can then decide which direction you want to, or, take the job offer and keep your freelancing/consultancy as a side hustle. Find out the going rate and start putting feelers out for who might need your services, and check out what business expenses you can put against tax.
3. Go Digital
Do you have some knowledge you can sell? This could be putting together an ebook on photography for bird watchers and selling this via Amazon, or creating a video course on conversational Hindi and selling via your own website or even a site like Groupon. The beauty of digital content is that once written, your content can keep bringing in cash year after year.
4. Rent a room
You can now potentially earn up to £7.5k tax free from renting out a room in your home. This doesn’t have to be a full time lodger either. You can rent a room out to someone who lives there in the week but travels home on weekends, or vice versa. Other options are AirBnB or language students who only need the room for a set amount of time.
5. Be Playful
There are many playful and creative options for earning more cash. They may not pay as well, but if your aim is to get out and about, meet people and do interesting things, they may be up your street. Ways to earn extra cash I’ve recently come across are: renting out a period house to a film company, working as an extra on a TV show, filling in opinion polls and getting paid to attend focus groups, becoming a mystery shopper or working as a guardian for young foreign students studying in the UK.
6 Become a self-trader
If learning the stock market appeals, you can learn in your own time with online self-taught courses. Look into using your ISA allowance if possible and have fun practising with a fantasy portfolio before you start using your own money. It’s important to use your common sense and remember that you can make losses as well as gains, so this is a good option if you do have some spare money that you can afford to lose, although hopefully it won’t come to that.
Working 3 nights a week plus weekends by the age of 13, and running a hair salon at the age of 16, Faye Watts believes in absolute graft. It’s this quality that got her started her on her career as a tax advisor and business consultant, and it has stood her well in her early years with The London College of Fashion, the fitness industry and now as one of the founding partners at Fuse Accountants.
As well as her work in tax consultancy and business planning, Faye sites on the boards of a number of companies, including Funny Women, and is keen to further this side of her work.
