Forget Side Gigs: The Path to Financial Freedom Is Investing

Most of the time when people talk about side gigs, what they are talking about is creating more money to spend. Sure, in their mind they may be thinking this will get them ahead. But spending can never do that, and spending—at least at first—should not be the goal.

You need to invest your money if you ever want to create wealth and actually get ahead financially.

Even carrying a simple savings account is typically not enough since most regular savings accounts don't offer much in the way of interest. You should have savings, though. It is always important to have money that is easily and readily available if you have an emergency expense that needs to be paid like a furnace going out or a major car repair.

Typically, one should have at least six months' worth of salary in a savings account for emergency expenses which, by the way, also serves as a cushion if you lose your job.

One savings account I like that gives me a fair amount of access to my cash is from Ally. Because of the Fed interest rate hikes, they are now paying 4% interest, although it has fluctuated mostly between 0.50% and 2.5% over the years I have had the account.

Even when it paid only 0.50%, that was far above the typical interest offered on a regular bank savings account.

But even when it comes to investing, you can't just blindly enter the markets. That's a sure way to lose your hard earned, and even harder saved money. Learning about how to manage your money and invest it may just be one of the most important things in life you will learn.

Why?

Because while money can never buy happiness, what it can buy is freedom. And that's a big deal. Freedom is what gets you ahead and allows you to make decisions you want to, that are in your best interests rather than be forced to make decisions because you have little choice in the process.

Investing also accomplishes something else. It reduces your need to incur debt, which saves you tons of money in the long run. It allows you to better deal with things like inflation, that we are having to deal with now. It gives you room to breathe. It also gives you more time to do the things you want to do, rather than have to constantly chase more money—using your time to do it.

Those side gigs.

We hear all about them. Working in a retail store part time or delivering food through Doordash, walking dogs, renting out unused rooms in your house or your entire house on sites like VRBO. 

These things will create extra new money. But unless you are going to invest what you earn, ultimately these things are worthless, and all they will serve to do is eat up valuable time you could be enjoying doing other more fun things.

Things that can ultimately be paid for via the proceeds from your investments. Which brings me to just one more thing that investing offers. More spending money.

Granted, it's all calculated, right? You can't just spend willy-nilly. But certainly, if your investments are producing additional income, at least some of that additional income can be used to spend on the things you want. To treat yourself. To splurge a bit every once in a while.

Take a recent example from my own situation. I bought a camper to enjoy some time with my wife on weekends and when we can take extended weekends. I didn't pay for the camper. My investments paid for it. And my investments also pay for the trips we take.

My investments pay for dinners out or having dinner delivered when we want to do it. Having saved on the things we need we now have the ability to afford the things we want. We can do more. We have more free time. And it is likely we will retire rather early. We are in our 50's and seriously considering it.

We wouldn't be able to that had we not invested. We certainly couldn't do that if we had to spend our time doing side gigs. Especially if those side gigs were only to pay for things. To spend the money earned from them.

Overall, when you think of making more money, the aim—initially—should never be to spend more money. It should be to save more money. To reap the rewards down the line rather than upfront. 

Many people claim saving requires sacrificing living. It's actually the opposite of that. When you don't save, you sacrifice your life to constantly chasing new money the hard way to replace old money you spent.

Money makes money. And the more money you have, the less work you have to do get more of it.

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Most People Want More Money But Don't Actually Want More Money

The title, I will admit, seems a bit strange, doesn't it? I mean, one either wants more money or they don't. Doesn't everyone naturally want more money? It would seem like a no-brainer to say, most people want more money.

The thing is, that's just what most people say. The reality is quite a different thing. The reality is that most people don't have more money, and there is actually a simple answer to why they don't.

They don't actually do anything to go after it.

Part of the problem lies in how people think about money. To a lot of people, it's magic. Or it's luck. Or they think that only rich people can actually be rich and get richer because they are already rich.

The fact is that most of the rich people in this world did not start off that way. Many started off quite poor and became rich. And the reason that happened for them is that they did want more money and actually wanted more money.

Perhaps the title is making a bit more sense?

Let's go back to what I said about how people think about money. Beyond magic and luck, people think of money in terms of mainly income. Money that is created through a job, or a second or third job, through side gigs, using certain apps and taking surveys. Perhaps they write online and that's a source of income. Or they decide to sell crafts or something else on eBay or some other similar selling site.

All good things, mind you. And there is nothing wrong with doing any of these things to create more income and have more money. But really, the new money is rarely tied to getting ahead. It's tied to simply continuing to get by.

In other words, the objective for getting more income is to spend all of it. And here's another reality. You cannot spend your way to riches.

When I say more money, I am not just talking about earning more. I am talking about all the ways that are out there to actually grow what you have already made. And that's the part most people overlook. Thus, they don't actually want the real money that's available to them.

Because, that part is not a secret. It's not magic or luck. It's simply knowing where the money is and taking the time to learn how to get it.

It's not the easy way. Not necessarily. I mean, to me it is. But I have been doing it a long time and know my way around. That learning process didn't happen overnight. Nor did growing my stash. And that is also the reason a lot of people avoid it.

The stock market. 

People think of it as a private organization. An exclusive club. A place for the rich to play high stakes games, sometimes at the expense of the little guy with pockets less full.

That can't be farther from the truth. But of course, I will repeat what I said before. You just have to know what you are doing. The question is, if the stock market is one of the best sources of money and one of the best opportunities to actually become rich, why don't more people do it?

Because again, it's no secret. In fact, when you look at the Forbe's Richest list published every year, a good many of the people on that list made their money through investments. Yeah, a lot of them own businesses. Sure. Of course. But owning a business and making a lot of money doesn't necessarily mean running it or even having started it.

Many of the people on the Forbe's list are simply investors.

The stock market can be complicated. I want to be clear about that. I mean, it is not always complicated. Take a guy like Warren Buffet. He takes the easiest approach there is to investing. He simply buys low—and in his case rarely ever sells. He rides on the waves of successful companies and collects dividends as they continue to grow and operate.

That is where and how he had made most of his money.

A great book to read if you want to know how Warren does it is called The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. To some it is considered to be the Bible of Basic Investing. If you wanted to call it something else, you could call it the nuts and bolts of making money by buying solid businesses.

I am going to tell you that reading Graham's book might be one the most valuable reads you may ever read, aside from maybe the Bible Itself if you happen to be religiously inclined. It is the key that opens the door to the vault of knowledge secured behind it.

It dispels the magic and the luck theories.

Going back to the income thing, think about this for a second. It goes right along with that how people think about money thing. College. For some it's a big deal. If you want to have a good income you need to have a degree that gets you a good job.

But even that, having a good job, does it serve one to really get ahead? The answer is mostly no. No good job really gets anyone ahead. Investing the money they earn does. And again, the people who actually want more money know this. It's why they have money.

Besides the fact that many non-college degree jobs pay more than degreed jobs do. Plumbers and electricians make a lot of money. So do welders and factory workers—depending on the job of course. A guy working in a brewery might make over $80,000 a year easily while someone working in a cereal factory might be closer to about $40,000-$50,000 a year.

Back in the day I worked for a Coca-Cola bottling plant on the factory floor and made over $60,000 a year. And that was more than 20 years ago.

But that's not my point. Just an illustration. I have always worked and continue to work to this day even though I don't really have to. But the second part of that, even if I don't really have to, is because I never spent all of what I made. 

I invested.

Moreover, I took the time to learn how to invest. I learned about the stock market. I even went beyond what Warren Buffet does and learned other aspects of investing such as writing covered call options contracts and that sort of thing.

I actually wanted more money and continue to want more money. To actually want it, achieving it through doing things that actually make it. By not wasting my time seeking out high incomes or time-consuming side gigs exclusively just to chase the next payday and do nothing more than get by.

There is one other thing I did. Rather than lambaste and scold the rich, or even be envious of them, I studied them. I wanted to know what they did to get there. I wanted to know how they did it. 

The bottom line is that simply wanting more money doesn't more money make. Only actions can do that. Only an active interest and participation in things that make money and create wealth will do it. Either you can sit back beneath the table of the rich and wait for crumbs to land on your plate. Or you can sit at the table with them and have your own plate.

The choice is entirely yours. But it is up to you. The opportunity is not lacking. You true desire to get at it is.

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MegaMillions At $172 Million

The lottery is one of those things that people either love, or hate, or perhaps even love to hate. The fact is that the odds are terribly stacked against the average player. Still, I have to look at a couple of things whenever I consider whether or not it is worth forking over a buck or two and playing. One big one for me is the fact that somebody has to win. And in many ways, despite the terrible odds against me, it causes me to consider that playing is indeed worth my money, and worth my time.

Of course, like anything having to do with gambling, or even socking money into a speculative stock market investment, the risk can only be taken if it happens to be money you can afford to lose. If it's down to putting gas in the tank, or food on the table versus buying a lottery ticket, of course you choose the former over the latter.

Another fact I consider are statistics that were compiled by TLC's docuseries How The Lottery Changed My Life. It happens to be a fascinating thing to watch by the way, especially when you see certain people who wound up winning a fortune, only to wind up broke due to a variety of factors, but mostly due to poor money management.

That goes in hand with something I have always believed, and that is that the rich get richer because they know how to be rich, and the poor get poorer because they don't know how to get rich. That is sometimes thought to be a bit of a controversial statement. But think of all of the rich who lost it all on a bad business deal, only to make millions on a good one? Or how about all of the musicians and sports players who made fortunes, only to wind up broke in the end? If you don't know what you are doing when it comes to money, any amount of money will not make a bit of difference in the end.

What did TLC find? The fact is that the lottery, for all its naysayers, creates roughly 1,600 new millionaires every single year. Breaking the math down a bit further that is roughly 4 new millionaires created every single day of the year.

Granted, billions of tickets are sold each year, and so while that does make 1,600 millionaires seem like a pittance compared, that's still a lot of people coming into new money just because they forked over a dollar or two to play the lottery.

The MegaMillions next drawing is worth $172 million. Even the Powerball is worth $110 million in tonight's drawing. You can bet I'll be playing. And of course, I don't expect to win. But since somebody must win, if there is any chance that that someone could be me, I have to have a ticket in my hand to be a possible winner. As the old saying goes, you cannot win if you do not play. And after all, what's a buck?