I don’t know about you but in my day most people had their last real piece of ‘career advice’ at school, just after their O-levels or A-levels, as exams were known then. I grew up in an environment where university was the logical next step after school (despite neither of my parents going to university, I’m forever grateful to them for encouraging me to go). In terms of what I wanted to pursue as a career, that was even more vague; I was practical and good at design and technology, so engineering seemed like a good bet. In reality, I’ve received very little in terms of career guidance, although a pearl of wisdom from my godfather did stick in my mind. He suggested I should always be on the lookout for my next job. Actually, his exact words were ‘You have the luxury of your current company paying you while you decide where you want to work next.’ If anything, I probably learned more from my mentoring role at Amazon and guiding the careers of others than from any advice that has ever been given to me. This chapter covers what I’ve learned.

One of my early mentees showed an aptitude for technology and, as I needed some help with modernising the IT infrastructure, I took him on after his apprentice year. He was fantastic, a quick learner with new technology, and he was soon much more technically capable than I was. We were chatting one day and he asked why he was paid less than me when he knew more about our network and how it functioned. The answer was simple: I had A-levels, a degree and more experience, while he’d left school at 16 with very few qualifications. A few weeks later we came back to the subject and he asked if he could have some time off work (an afternoon per week) to enrol at a local college, which I supported. After a year, he had his first qualification under his belt. Then the crunch discussion came – he figured there was little career progression available where he was, so he concluded that he’d have to find another job with more opportunities. I was gutted to lose him but it was the right decision. I kept in touch after he’d left and supported his bold decision a few years later to take some time out from work to undertake a residential course and acquire his Microsoft certification.

A few years later, he asked me for a reference, which I gave, saying I’d have no hesitation to hire him again if I had the opportunity. The following day I received a very excited call from him, thanking me as he’d been offered a job in the Cayman Islands. It was a fantastic opportunity, which he grasped with both hands. He spent a successful few years there, met his future wife and returned to the UK to his current position as a senior solutions architect for a large PLC. The moral of this tale is that even from a low starting point, you can still build a successful career. Of course, you have to have some good luck along the way but ultimately it’s down to you to make things happen, have the courage to address the areas you need to improve and the confidence to promote yourself.

I came across this quote recently that resonated with my approach: ‘In every job you should either be earning or learning – preferably both.’ If you’re not gaining skills or experience that will land you that next job, or if you’re not earning a wage that meets your needs, you need to find another job. I know it’s not always as simple as just saying ‘find another job’ and there have been times when I’ve been unemployed and not been able to find anything for many months – but you have to maintain a positive approach and proactively try to manage your career as opposed to sitting back and waiting for it to happen. I’m a big fan of the professional networking site LinkedIn, partly because it’s a rich hunting ground for jobs but also because it’s a free advertisement for you and your skills, which is particularly helpful to recruiters when they’re searching for candidates. I’d also suggest regularly reposting or sharing posts that are pertinent to your industry and commenting on them in a way that shows you’re knowledgeable and interested in your work.

There are also other traits that will help you stand out, which don’t need any qualifications or skills, such as being punctual, your work ethic, your body language and attitude in meetings, being open to coaching and volunteering for something when no one else wants to do it. The key here is that you’re not just a ‘face in the crowd’ or a ‘name on a page’; your management will at some point be looking to develop or promote someone and you want to be that someone they think of first. Amazon manages its hiring and promotion on ‘leadership principles’, which are used across the board, at all levels and in every department. I like this transparency and the idea that you’re looking to develop people with certain traits and attitudes over pure qualifications, levelling the playing field for your personal development. Of course, it’s not guaranteed to work all the time and not all management structures and companies are perfect – but what have you got to lose?

However, make sure to check that your good nature isn’t being taken for granted. Many professional roles run over the standard 40-hour week and every so often it’s useful to benchmark where you are in terms of ‘true salary’. Let’s say you’re earning £40k a year and working five eight-hour days with two weeks’ holiday. That’s £20 for each hour worked, before taxes and National Insurance. If you find yourself regularly staying late in the office or catching up on emails over the weekend, you’re actually doing 50 hours a week, so you’re really only on £16 for each hour worked. That means you’d be on £32,000 a year at this rate on a 40-hour week, which doesn’t sound so attractive. So if you’re disproportionally losing out on your free or family time, be wary of believing you’re on a great salary. If you’re happy with the salary and work/life balance, that’s fine, but the point is that your pay might not be reflecting what you’re truly worth and there’s an opportunity to change that by increasing your pay base or reducing your hours.

However, there have been many times in my career when I’ve had positive feedback in reviews about the fact that I was prepared to do extra work or take on something outside my remit. This brings up the subject of reviews, whether formal or informal. I was shy as a child and naturally quite passive, so I understand that being assertive with your boss can feel daunting. I don’t know what gave me the courage to ask for a pay rise to secure my first mortgage but it worked and perhaps helped to build my confidence in my later career. The result was definitely a one-off but the approach of being assertive with my personal objectives has stayed with me. Ultimately, you’re working to get paid and you want to either be paid more or get more recognition. Your company won’t have unlimited opportunities, so it’s a good idea to frame these discussions with questions that help you get where you want to be, for example:

What opportunities are there for me to improve my skills as a people manager?

What could I have done differently this year?

I really want to be promoted to the ABC team, so what should I focus on to achieve that?

These are often difficult discussions to have and if you’re not getting great answers or support, then the solution is to start looking for a role in another company where you can make progress.

On the subject of driving progress, here’s a final thought on the value of qualifications. A few years ago there were big supply chain delays across post-Brexit Europe and a shortage of HGV drivers. My European boss was talking to her son and encouraging him to revise hard for his exams so he could go to university. His response was, ‘Why? I could take the HGV test and earn €70,000 driving a lorry.’ He wasn’t wrong and if it’s right for you, that’s great – you don’t need necessarily need academic qualifications unless you want to go down a particular career path. My cousin drives HGV tankers and earns a very nice living – or used to, as he and his wife have just rented out their house for 18 months and set off on a round-the-world tour. The beauty of that is, when he returns, if he wants to, he can pick up work at the same rate. Similarly, one of our tenants is a successful landscape gardener with no formal qualifications – proof that success isn’t about whether you have a degree or not but what’s right for you and how you manage your career.

An introduction to pensions

Pensions normally go hand in hand with your career, particularly if your employer contributes. But irrespective of that, there’s one simple reason why pensions are in this section – you can earn free money via the government’s tax break. For every contribution you make, the government will add 20% (40% if you’re a higher-rate taxpayer). The only downside is that you can’t access it until you’re 55 (at the time of writing). But having a savings scheme that prevents you dipping into it is no bad thing. In essence, it ensures that your money is invested for a longer period of time, so the earlier you start, the better. A popular quote relating to investments is ‘It’s not timing the market, it’s time in the market that counts’. This means that over a long time, investments are more likely to perform better (make more money) than trying to time buying an investment at a low price and selling at a higher one.

To underline this point, I’ll use an example of twin brothers with different investment strategies. One invests £10,000 a year from the age of 25, together with matched company contributions – but stops paying when he’s 40. He has personally invested £150k. His brother starts later in life and saves the same £10,000 a year from age 35, matched by his employer all the way through to retirement at 65 – 30 years in total and a personal investment of £300k. Assuming a 6% return on investment (not taking account of inflation), the first brother’s investment would be worth £1,058,912 when he was 65. However, the second brother’s investment would be worth only £838,019 at 65. Just let that sink in for a moment; the first brother invested £150,000 less but has an investment worth £220,893 more and the only difference is that he started investing earlier.

Together with the tax benefit from the government and employer contributions, pensions are a huge lever in gaining wealth, so you should plan to start saving into a pension as soon as possible. Previously, company pensions have been ‘opt in’ (you have to specifically join a scheme if there is one) but the legislation has now changed to being ‘opt out’, where you’re automatically enrolled, which is better. You can also benefit from pension tax breaks if you’re self-employed (via a limited company); if you’re not employed, you can still invest £2,880 into a pension each year, with tax relief taking this to £3,600. This is particularly useful if you’re in a relationship and one of you doesn’t work, perhaps because of childcare. Employer contributions also vary considerably, particularly between the public and private sectors. In their 2022 report, the Institute for Fiscal Studies reported that public sector (employer) contributions were an average of 18% in 2021, against the private sector growing more slowly to just under 6% for the same period. I would have loved an 18% contribution – working in the private sector meant that typically my employer contributions were in the 3–5% range but it still helped to build a solid pension pot that has contributed to us being able to retire earlier.

Buying and renting property

Property is the third big-ticket lever that will help to increase your wealth. While not ignoring the fact that getting onto the property ladder is a significant challenge for many these days, particularly in the recent climate where interest rates (and therefore mortgage repayments) are significantly higher than they have been for the past ten or so years, buying a property will likely be your single biggest investment and therefore it’s always going to be hard. However, it’s a lesson that interest rates can go up and a potential increase needs to be considered when you take out any mortgage deal. As I referenced earlier, I can remember talking to my dad in the late 1980s when interest rates were at 14% and Lou and I were hit with rates rising to more than 8% on our mortgage in the late 1990s. It’s likely to be one of your biggest monthly outgoings and that’s why I believe so strongly in it being a top priority. Putting this to one side, you can leverage money from property in other ways too.

In a similar vein to the cost of frequent remortgaging mentioned in an earlier chapter, physically moving is also expensive. Costs such as solicitors, removals, redecorating or buying new furniture can amount to several thousand pounds, so it makes sense to try to minimise how often you move. I appreciate that there are many reasons to move (for example, a growing family or a change of job) but aiming to buy a house for the longer term is a smart move.

I had many conversations with my parents about my first house as I was more than a little nervous about the size of the investment. My dad’s advice was that buying into property was always a good idea as people will always need houses. Yes, property can go up and down in value but that only matters if you’re put in a position where you have to move when your house is worth less than you paid for it and particularly if it’s worth less than what you owe on the mortgage (known as negative equity). Like pension investments, the value of housing generally increases more over the long term.

Research by property developer Stripe Property Group (see Lontayao 2022) has revealed how much a property in the UK cost 50 years ago and compared it with today’s prices. When I was born, the average UK property was valued at £5,158. Adjusted for inflation, this still equates to an affordable £49,333 by today’s standards. In 2022, the average UK homebuyer was paying £278,436 for the average property. That’s a total increase of 464%, with house prices climbing by an average of 9.3%, or £4,582, every single year over the past 50 years. So it seems my dad’s hunch was right – property is a good investment. It has some other advantages too, such as being exempt from inheritance tax if passed down to your direct family, and also gives you options to either downsize or take equity release in later life.

Rental is a secondary way to earn money from property and is generally thought of as buying and renting out a separate property. It’s less common but if you live in a house or large flat, why not think about renting out part of it to a lodger? This might sound slightly unnerving at first but having done it for more than ten years, we’ve found it to be safe, providing you take some common sense precautions in selecting your lodger and are clear on ground rules. It started when we were renovating our current house and Lou literally stumbled on one of her colleagues sleeping under a desk when she went into work early one morning. He’d been sleeping on his brother’s sofa when a chip pan fire had gutted the flat and the insurance would only rehome the legal tenants. Our house was a bit of a building site but Lou offered him a mattress in the spare bedroom and before long he became an unofficial lodger, paying a nominal rent. A year or so later, when I was relocated for a stint of work up in Scotland, we decided to look for a formal lodger on a Monday to Friday basis so that Lou had the security of not living alone in a fairly rural area during the week.

We found that there’s a good demand for such rentals, particularly among professionals who are working away from home on a contract but feel a hotel is too impersonal. There’s also the advantage that they’re not a permanent resident in your property; we always ensure that they have a registered family address elsewhere. A further benefit is a tax break (the ‘rent a room’ scheme), which allows you to earn up to a threshold of £7,500 per year tax free from letting out furnished accommodation in your home. When we started doing this, many friends said they couldn’t possibly handle the intrusion of a lodger in their own home. Our view was that the lodger’s rent and the additional tax benefit meant that they were paying our mortgage and contributed significantly to us being able to pay it off in our late forties. As with much of the advice in this book, it might not be for everyone but it demonstrates that you can achieve greater financial stability if you work hard at it and accept that sometimes you have to compromise.

On a similar theme, if you have a parking space, renting it out via one of the many available apps is also a great little earner, although sadly without any tax breaks. You might be lucky enough to live near a railway station or football stadium and that can give you a regular rental income.

The more common method of earning rental income is ‘buy to let’ (BTL) or buying another property to rent out. In general terms the concept here is twofold – earn a rental income that’s higher than your mortgage and let the capital value of the house increase over time. BTL has been popular over the past 20 years, with some bold investors building large property portfolios. However, I’m not a complete convert. This comes down to the recurring theme of paying off your mortgage early or, to put it another way, are you borrowing to invest? This has led to a fundamental difference of opinion among financial commentators and many disagree with my view. If you borrow (on your mortgage) at 8% but your rental yield gives you 10%, you’re 2% up. However, this only works in a steady state economy; if your mortgage goes up, you can’t immediately increase your tenant’s rent. And if you do have to remortgage, fees (often more than £1,000 for a good, market-leading rate) could wipe out that year’s profit. If you’re hit with a period without tenants (and it will happen, if only for a few months) you still have to pay the mortgage. You also need to factor in selling the properties at some point, and while their value is likely to have gone up, capital gains tax (CGT) will be due on any profit, and the allowances are much less generous than they used to be.

Lou and I haven’t ignored BTL investments but we’ve gone about it in a slightly different way, which has provided a healthy property income. Twenty years ago, we bought an old farmhouse with a couple of acres and an attached ‘granny annexe’, as we wanted to futureproof an option to care for our parents. They were getting older and increasingly frail, plus they were living on the other side of the country. Prior to my in-laws moving in a few years ago, we rented it out but because it was technically part of the main property, it was included in our deeds and mortgage and not on a separate loan. We also had an old barn, which we were able to convert into a two-bed cottage. We strove not to increase the mortgage to build it (although being on an interest-only mortgage on the main house, we had some flexibility). In effect it has allowed us to have three rentals from one property – a lodger, plus the annexe and the cottage, both now mortgage free.

While this might sound idyllic, it’s not been without some hardship. When we were looking for a property with an annexe and land, we had to accept that we’d have to compromise on location. We simply couldn’t afford such a property near a large town or close to a motorway, so we’re in quite a rural area on the edge of a small market town. We also had to buy somewhere that needed ‘a bit of work’, again down to cost, so we’ve spent a lot of time and effort on renovating the place. Being more rural has a knock-on impact on the availability of jobs and increased travel times but it was a conscious decision that worked out well in the end.

I appreciate that this won’t be an option open to everyone, but it still supports the point of having rental income without the associated mortgage debt. We have rental income every month and the only outgoing is insurance and a bit of maintenance. This significantly reduces the risk to the rest of our finances and is why, when interest rates were increasing, it didn’t affect us, allowing us to maintain rent at below market value. For us, happy, long-term tenants are preferable to pushing for a higher rent and potentially having a higher turnover of tenants.

Selling unwanted items

Consider selling your unwanted or unloved items. You’ve no doubt heard of eBay, where you take some photos, list an item for a low asking price and wait for the bids to flow in, with eBay taking a cut of the final sale price. There’s a trade-off in starting with a low asking price to tempt buyers, the risk being that there will only be one person interested and they can buy it on the cheap. My preference is to look at similar items and price accordingly or list at a higher price, see if it’s getting many hits and, if necessary, reduce the price. While I love eBay and have been a seller for many years, it requires a bit of effort and there are some new alternatives that I think are easier to use. One is Thrift, which was supported via an investment from the BBC’s Dragon’s Den. If you have a lot of clothes, particularly designer labels, and don’t have much free time, this is a great option. You’re sent a Freepost bag, which you fill with clothes and send off. Thrift sorts, photographs and lists the clothes, then you wait. When an item sells, Thrift takes a cut, a slice goes to charity and you get the rest in the form of a credit. I’ve used it on several occasions but have also bought clothes from the site. It’s an efficient process and gives some money to charity, which is a bonus.

As I’ve mentioned previously, my current favourite site is Vinted. It’s similar to eBay but I find it much easier to use. It’s simple to upload photos and although the categorisation can be a little clunky, it’s quick. The difference between eBay and Thrift is that with the latter the price you sell for is the price you get. With Vinted, the price you sell for is the price you get; the buyer pays the uplift for shipping, insurance and the site’s margin, so it’s clearer to see what you’re earning. It also seems to be gaining traction as a popular selling platform, not least when things go wrong (such as a damaged parcel). Vinted takes care of it rather than you having to sort it out, as you would with eBay. The other advantage is that once listed, an item remains live until sold, so you don’t have to keep relisting. Again, to avoid the risk of selling something too cheaply, you can always list at a higher price and then reduce it if it’s not attracting much interest.

There are other local options such as Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist or Gumtree and you might have your own favourites but I find the ones I’ve mentioned above to be the least hassle. This flips back to the point about valuing your time accurately; if you list an item for £8 and it takes about an hour to photograph, list, relist, deal with seller communications, pack and you end up with £6.50 (less eBay commission) in the bank, you’re earning less than the minimum wage. Amazon have an amusing acronym for similar situations where they just can’t make a selling margin – CRAP: can’t realise a profit. Sometimes you have to accept it’s just not worth the effort.

Over the past year, we’ve listed and sold around 250 items and earned (or more accurately, ‘recouped’) about £2,000. It really is a random selection, from an umbrella, keyrings, hats, teaspoons and a ladder right through to a 1953 fly-fishing catalogue – anything that we no longer use or want and is relatively easy to ship; otherwise it’s gifted to the charity shop. This ‘easy to ship’ point relates to the effort involved; like many others, we regularly shop on Amazon and they’re kind enough to provide many boxes and packages, which I keep in our utility room. When I sell something, I recycle an Amazon box. My internal metric is that it shouldn’t take me longer than five minutes to list, update, transact and ship an item, unless it’s going for a reasonable price – then I might allow ten minutes!

I’ll add two quick side notes on selling. First, if you’re selling, 99% of the time you’re going to get much (much) less than the retail price, so while it’s nice to make £30 on a designer shirt, if you hadn’t bought it in the first place for £80, you’d be £80 better off rather than £50 down. That said, we all tend to accumulate a lot of possessions and selling them on (or gifting them) is better than throwing them into landfill. The second point relates to our friends at the Inland Revenue (HMRC). My annual figure of about £2,000 is genuine but you need to be aware that there are tax laws regarding whether this is judged as income. If you’re selling your own possessions (normally at a loss), you don’t need to tell HMRC. There’s one exception, though – if you sell something for more than £6,000 you might be liable for capital gains tax (excluding selling a car) but if you sell items you’ve made or have bought to sell on, and if you make more than £1,000 in sales, you might be deemed a trader and therefore have to declare it as additional income. Don’t be tempted to ignore this, as HMRC does monitor these sites for evidence of trading.

Selling unwanted stuff is a good way to reduce clutter and gives someone else a chance to secure a bargain. If you have kids, it’s a great way to teach them about the value of money. If they want a new toy, game or phone, sell some of their old items first and save for it. To ensure you’re actually making some money and not just spending time selling things, it’s a good idea to set up a separate bank account to channel sales into and also to use this money to buy related items for those sales, such as packing tape, labels, postage, etc. This way, you can see the balance build up and perhaps treat yourself to something once you’ve hit a certain target.

The gig economy

Whether you’re in full or part-time employment, if you’re in the right location some of the jobs in the gig economy are worth checking out – but they do tend to be more feasible in higher density residential areas. While at Amazon, I worked on the UK launch of Amazon Flex, which is designed to offer ‘take it or leave it’ blocks of work to delivery drivers. The concept behind this and similar platforms is great but there are some frustrations. To reduce management effort, there are some big algorithms sitting behind the technology, so if you have a problem, it’s sometimes difficult to talk to a human and work it out, but overall the idea works. Many also use a surge pricing model, so during times of high demand such as Christmas, you can earn more than double for a ‘block of work’ – but you’re also fighting against many others and it can be difficult to get accepted when it’s convenient to you. Properly done, this new way of working is very flexible and without any commitments. I believe we’ll see this type of work increase as technology expands into other markets, giving further options for earning extra income.

Cash savings

If you do have cash savings, make sure you have an account that pays reasonable interest. Many high street banks have a terrible reputation for not paying fair interest rates, so don’t reward them with your loyalty – find a bank that does. Many offer attractive rates for a year then revert to a poor one, so unless you want to keep switching around for the best rate, pick one that’s consistently near the top of the best buy tables and stick with it. As more financial institutions increase their security and multi-factor authentication, it’s becoming more of an effort to keep switching and can also have an adverse effect on your credit rating. It’s also worth sense-checking what the difference in rates means in real money terms. On an average balance of £5,000, 0.5% difference in interest is £25 – so ask yourself, is it worth it?

On a similar theme, many banks offer cashback if you switch your current account. This can be quite attractive, considering it’s free money – up to £200 in some cases. The trick is to open a basic account, put a couple of direct debit payments through it and then use this ‘donor account’ to switch every year to another bank. Of the many hoops to jump through, there’s normally a minimum amount to pay in. The banks don’t seem to have clocked on to the fact that you can set up a standing order to transfer £1,000 each month (or whatever the minimum figure is) and then withdraw £900 the following day back into your main account, leaving a small balance for the direct debits.

Linked and affiliate spending

My last option to make some passive earnings is what I’d call linked or affiliate spending. Linked (or introductory) spending has taken over from what used to be cashback credit cards that gave you a percentage (in cash) against any spending. With more choice from online retailers and many more comparison websites, the cashback is paid if you shop through their site/portal. The reason they do this is to capture data about your spending habits (this is a growing trend often referred to as ‘big data’ – where technology now allows more complex analysis of larger data sets). Either way, they generally work well but there are a few golden rules to be aware of. There can be a long delay between a purchase and the cashback payment and the risk is that you lose track and don’t claim – but if you select one and check it regularly, they can generate a reasonable return of a few hundred pounds with no real effort. As with any promotion, only use it for things you were going to buy anyway and never be tempted to buy something just on the basis of the cashback, as it’s not guaranteed.

The final challenge is knowing whether or not you’re actually getting a good deal. With the growing volume of data and more complex algorithms managing offers and pricing strategies, it can be confusing. I recently received an email from a seed catalogue with a link to an offer on some bedding plants, but since I knew they were in my preferred cashback site, I logged in through there, only to see a different price. Going direct to the retailer’s website, I found yet another price! An even more complex challenge is when there are multiple layers. For example, through work I enrolled in the IHG loyalty scheme (Holiday Inn hotels group). I receive various benefits for being a ‘loyal customer’ (such as free nights) but I could also book a room at Holiday Inn through Hotels.com and receive a loyalty bonus from them as well. Finally, I could access Hotels.com via TopCashBack, which would give me cashback on my booking on top. Factoring this in against the variable pricing means you can tie yourself up in knots figuring out the best deal. It can become complicated to track the best price but it’s worth looking at alternatives when you book online. My guidance would be to use one and stick with it but only for purchases you make regularly. Again, don’t bank on it but you can get a nice bonus when the algorithms kick in and pay out. I booked some rooms for a summer break in Tenerife and hit a ‘snap offer’ of 11% cashback instead of the usual 1–2%. I was happy with the final price too, as I’d previously booked the same hotel for the same cost per night last year. Just to be clear, these are not recommendations, just my informal findings after using several of these sites. There are others, such as Quidco, Jam Doughnut or Airtime Rewards, to name a few – but the advice is the same as for a savings account. Don’t chase them all, pick one you’re comfortable with, don’t overcomplicate it and, depending on your spending profile, you could end up with a nice bonus. Although we’re now spending more on travel than others might, we have a pending cashback balance of £800 this year, which is worth having.

Loyalty and affinity cards

There’s a crossover here with a section in Chapter 4 on saving money with loyalty cards. Depending on their structure, they can fit in both camps – creating savings and discounts on things you’d ordinarily buy, or earning rewards (that have financial value) that you can effectively bank. The credit card versions were originally ‘cashback’ cards, hence mentioning them in this chapter. They’re becoming less common and the trend appears to be more software oriented or app based (such as the cashback sites mentioned above) where transactions are tracked in return for credits rather than being specifically tied to a single physical card. If you do have a credit card, it’s definitely worth having one that gives you something back; just be sure that if it’s a branded ‘reward’ you’re able to convert it into a financial saving.

Tax tweaks

Finally, there are some tax tweaks you can use to make your earnings go further but this is a large and complex subject best dealt with by an independent financial advisor. It could include transferring some of your non-taxpaying spouse’s allowance over to you to reduce your tax; entering a salary sacrifice scheme with your employer, where you reduce your salary (and therefore tax) in return for (typically) increased pension benefits; changing the beneficial ownership of jointly owned rental property; and not forgetting to use your annual ISA allowance for tax-free investments.

Side hustles

What exactly is a side hustle? There are several definitions of the word hustle, from a heightened state of activity or a sense of pace (as in ‘hustle and bustle’ or ‘hustle along’) but also slang interpretations suggesting an illicit activity or a swindle, both of which imply something quick, and possibly a bit dodgy. In the context of this book, I’m taking ‘side hustle’ to mean an easy, risk-free way to make additional money. My view is that this implies looking for a quick win in building wealth and I honestly don’t believe there is such a thing. Yes, some people can and will make money out of the following ideas but I don’t recommend them as I believe they have a high risk of not making much money, if any. While you could argue some of the subjects below are investments (and should be included in a later chapter), I’m including them here as I don’t believe they’re reliable enough for the regular person to have in their strategy. They do, however, often appear in media articles claiming to be a simple fast track to wealth – I find such posts tend to be a little light on the detail, usually focusing on a clickbait headline such as ‘I made a million from XYZ in my spare time’. Similarly, every once in a while I see an article about investing in fine art, whisky or supercars quoting sensational returns but again, I wouldn’t suggest these niche ideas for the average investor. In short, I don’t believe there are such things as guaranteed short-term wins; investments should be over the long term and demonstrate a reliable growth trend.

Vlogs and influencing