October 2, 2026

The 25 Best Side Hustles For Creatives To Make Money On The Side

What are the best side hustles for creatives?

If you have a creative passion, you may feel like it’s not possible to make money from it. But that’s not true at all!

In this post, I’ll share my top side hustles for creatives based on:

My 15+ years of side hustle experience
Conversations with 100s of creative hustlers
Schedule flexibility and earning power

Ready? Let’s do it!

1. Sell Printables on Etsy

Selling printables on Etsy is a great way to make extra money if you have an eye for design and love researching new niches.

For example, Rachel Jones reported earning up to $10,000 a month without any inventory.

2. Print on Demand Products

Merch by Amazon is a fun way to make extra money. Upload your t-shirt (and other product) designs, set your price, and then let Amazon do all the work of printing and shipping your orders.

Elaine Heney made over $50,000 doing this part-time and shared some of her tips on The Side Hustle Show.

(My wife made over $2k in her first year doing this in her spare time too!)

3. Start a YouTube Channel

Creating content on YouTube is a a great creative side hustle. In playing producer, you’ll be in charge of:

script writing
filming locations
shooting or sourcing footage
editing
designing thumbnails

It’s a lot of work, but will definitely exercise your creative muscles. Once your channel reaches certain milestones, you can begin to monetize with YouTube’s built-in advertising options.

(You can also use YouTube in other creative ways, like to sell a digital product or service.)

In my case, YouTube is around a $400/mo income stream:

4. Freelance Writing

With millions of websites all competing for attention, freelance writing is a service that’s constantly in demand. Someone’s got to create all that content, right?

Georgia Austin even turned her writing side hustle into a full-blown agency!

Here’s a great free resource to get started: Your 9-Step Blueprint to Making Money as a Writer

If you have a way with words, make sure to check out this creative side hustle.

5. Web Design Service

In an inspiring Side Hustle Show episode, Chris Misterek shared how he taught himself web design and began earning $3000 a month.

It requires both creativity and technical skills to bring a website to life for a client. But even with a wide variety of DIY options, professional designers are still in-demand.

6. Build a Helpful Website

Write content on a topic you care about and build an audience in your niche.

For example:

Shelley earns $50k a month from her travel blogs
Scott earns 6-figures a year from his bird-watching blog
Katie earns $6k a month from her gray hair blog

Want to start a blog of your own? Check out my free 6-part video course on how to start your own site.

Pros:

Low startup costs

Great long-term earning power

Can sell the business down the road

Cons:

Slow to see results

Lots of skills to learn

7. Product Licensing

If you’re always coming up with new ideas, product licensing is the creative side hustle for you. How it works is you sell the rights to your idea to large companies, who then pay you royalties for every sale they make from that idea.

For example, Nate Dallas earned $300,000 from Mattel after licensing them an idea for a Pictionary spin-off.

8. Find a Virtual Job

Side Hustle Nation Approved


FlexJobs: #1 For Remote Jobs

4.7

The best place to find legit work from home jobs. Established in 2007, FlexJobs has 1000s of listings including part-time, full-time, and freelance options in tons of industries.

FlexJobs is the leading work from home jobs site. With over 50 career categories, FlexJobs has jobs ranging from entry-level to executive and freelance to full-time.

When I searched for “creative” jobs, I found over 200 results!

There is a nominal monthly fee to access their listings, but you’ll earn that back (and then some!) with one job.

This is a great way to find a remote job in your niche.

9. Teaching Music

With a love for music, teaching, and working with kids, you could start a part-time music teaching business. In our town, we see instructors setting up shop at children’s fairs and the weekly farmer’s markets to advertise.

10. Music Licensing

Singer-songwriter Cathy Heller found a unique way to “reverse-engineer” her dream job by licensing her catchy tunes to big brands and TV shows.

Alternatively, licensing stock music is a bit of a numbers game, but can be a cool way to earn passive income from your art.

11. Voiceover Acting

I think we can all agree that getting paid to talk is a pretty sweet gig, and Voices.com is the #1 marketplace for voice over talent.

Companies are always on the look for professional voiceover talent. Once you start listening for it, you’ll hear voiceover work everywhere.

One Side Hustle Show guest reported turning her voiceover side hustle into a full-time gig in just 4 months, earning up to $3000 an hour in the process.

12. Start an Email Newsletter

The newsletter business model is low overhead, simple to manage, and can scale to a significant income stream.

For example, the popular daily business newsletter Morning Brew sold for a reported $75 million!

Building a newsletter is a popular way to build community with others who are creative just like you.

13. Self-Publish on Amazon

Pros:

Low startup costs

Great long-term earning power

Can sell the business down the road

Cons:

Slow to see results

Lots of skills to learn

If writing is your creative outlet, start publishing your work! Thanks to Amazon’s Kindle platform, you can publish your work and tap into a massive audience of book buyers. 

Self-publishing is one of my favorite and longest-running side hustles. I remember my first royalty payment from Amazon — it was something like $42 — and being thrilled, thinking “I did it! I’m a professional author!”

Since then I’ve earned over $75,000 in author royalties. Books are a pretty awesome way to build authority in your niche and earn passive income along the way.

Related: My Amazon author profile and book listings

11. Create an Outschool Class

Outschool is a marketplace for online small group classes for kids.

Inside you’ll find classes on:

creative writing
reading
coding
music
art
and more

For example, Jade Weatherington reported earning over $10,000 a month from her virtual writing classes.

What creative outlet could you teach?

12. Sell Lesson Plans and Material

Teachers Pay Teachers is a popular marketplace for lesson plans and other educational materials.

For example, Jodi Carlson began putting some of her content on the site and now earns $5,000 a month part-time.

This is a great way to get paid over and over for something you create once. If you enjoy sharing your passion, this can help both teachers and students.

13. Create a Local Experience

Another fun creative side hustle is to create a local tour. 

For instance, Alex Kenin hosts hundreds of “urban hiking” tours a year on the side from her day job — at $49 apiece!

What unique experience can you offer travelers?

It doesn’t even have to be a tour. Michele Mattix makes money hosting guided meditations through Airbnb Experiences. You can create your own experience, set your price, and Airbnb markets it to travelers.

14. Podcasting

Podcasting is a creative outlet for me. I get to come up with the show structure, choose the topics, share my ideas, and highlight the most interesting clips.

Plus, a large podcast following can translate into serious sponsorship dollars. It costs less than you think to start and The Side Hustle Show has honestly been a life-changing project for me.

And I’m not the only one — my friend Steve Young turned his part-time podcast into a full-time business with multiple streams of income.

15. Baking

Do people love your desserts? Maybe you could provide cakes, cookies, or cupcakes to some corporate event in town.

Jenn Fei has built a pretty serious following for her custom cookies—and sometimes sells out in just minutes!

16. Personal Chef Service

Could you picture yourself making meals in someone else’s kitchen? This could be a good way to monetize your cooking skills— without the risk of starting your own restaurant.

Some friends of ours pay $180-200 a week for meals delivered to their house.

HireaChef.com connects you with families and events looking for private chefs, or you might just post on Facebook or NextDoor.

With platforms like Eatwith, you could even begin charging to host meals.

Too Many Choices?

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17. Photography Service

This is my wife’s favorite side hustle, and earns her an extra $10,000 a year. Plus, it exercises a creative side of her brain that she doesn’t get from her engineering day job.

Another photographer, Vincent Pugliese, shared how “freelanced his way to freedom” and went from earning $30k a year to $30k in a day.

18. Teach an Online Course

One way to monetize your creativity is to teach others what you do. For example, Jacques Hopkins earns $30,000+ teaching an online piano course. Phil Ebiner built a huge online business teaching people photography and how to use the Adobe suite of products.

One place to sell your course is Udemy, an online education platform with thousands of on-demand courses. You can create your own course around a topic you’re an expert in and set your own tuition rate.

I did this several years ago with a self-publishing course and have earned over $25,000 in (mostly) passive income from it!

If you have an existing audience, you might be able to sell the course directly (without giving Udemy a cut). In this episode with Nate Dodson, he shares the framework he used to earn $40,000 a month teaching people how to start a microgreens business.

19. Event Entertainment

Brian McGovern is a party entertainer — he’s been practicing magic and performing since he was in high school. On The Side Hustle Show, he reported earning up to $10,000 a month doing something he loves.

Maybe you’re a photographer, comedian, DJ, celebrity lookalike, or musician.

Check out sites like GigSalad to set up your profile and get booked. 

20. Graphic Design Service

Quality graphic design is always an in-demand side hustle, and there have never been so many outlets on which to sell your skills.

The most popular design-focused site is 99designs, but you can also check out Crowdspring, DesignCrowd, or other freelance marketplaces.

21. Furniture Restoration

Side Hustle Nation member Ryan Cron earned extra money restoring and flipping furniture in his spare time.

His advice?

Start with dressers. “It’s basically a rectangle,” he explained.

That way, you can practice sanding and painting a relatively straightforward piece before tackling more challenging projects.

Look for inexpensive furniture at moving sales or on Facebook marketplace and clear out some space in your garage to do the work.

The other key is taking attractive pictures when you go to list the item for sale — make the piece look good!

22. Interior Design

Bringing a creative vision to life is super satisfying, and interior designers get to do it every day. With this creative side hustle, you’ll be in charge of selecting furniture, finishes, decor items, paint colors, and more.

If that sounds like fun, the prospect of earning $5,000-$10,000 per project may light you up even more! 

Most interior designers are using Instagram to showcase their portfolio and connect with potential clients.

23. Home Organizing Service

The Marie Kondo craze is still alive and well, but helping people set up an organized home always involves a bit of creativity. 

It’s like a real-life game of Tetris in some cases! If you love creating order out of chaos, this could be a rewarding side hustle to start.

Home organizers charge an average of $55 an hour, which makes it a strong creative side hustle.

24. Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing might include:

Creating social media content/posts (text, images, videos)
Increasing followers/growing a community
Managing social media engagement and conversations
Moderating online communities
Commenting on social posts
Curating relevant content
Scheduling content in online tools like Buffer or Hootsuite
Running ads and campaigns
Increasing brand awareness
Generating leads

As you can see, there’s a lot of creativity required nearly every step of the way. 

For example, Pete Macleod (@petecodes) started a Twitter-writing service that now earns $10k/month. Creating Twitter and LinkedIn content was something he enjoyed doing anyway, so he began offering it as a service to other content creators.

25. Video Editing

Video editing is a great creative side hustle that you can do from home.

Typical rates may range from $50-250+ per video, depending on the industry and complexity. 

And it’s a business that can scale. For example, Justin Tan turned Video Husky, an unlimited video editing service, into a 7-figure business in just a few years.

What’s the Best Creative Side Hustle For You?

It’s totally possible to make money with a creative side hustle.

The best one is the one you take action on. Take a look at the options and get started today!

Looking for More Side Hustle Help?

Start Your Free $500 Challenge. My free 5-day email course shows you how to add $500 to your bottom line.
Join the free Side Hustle Nation Community. The free Facebook group is the best place to connect with other side hustlers and get your questions answered.
Download The Side Hustle Show. My free podcast shares how to make extra money with actionable weekly episodes.

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The 30 Day Money Cleanse: A Step-by-Step Detox Program for Your Financial Health

Have you ever done a juice cleanse or a “Whole30” challenge?

While I haven’t ever gone to that extreme, I DO always feel better physically and mentally after even just a few days of clean eating.

So if a quick “cleanse” can work for our health, why not try it with our money?

To dive deeper into this, I’m joined by Rachel Jimenez from Money Hacking Mama, one of the most popular Side Hustle Show guests of all time.

Her episode on selling printables on Etsy has been downloaded almost 90,000 times.

Ready for the cleanse? Let’s do it!

But First, Download the Printable Checklist

Grab the Free Printable Money Cleanse Checklist

Print it at home and tackle at your own pace.

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Day 1: Track Down Your Money

Make a list of all your financial institutions and your usernames and passwords to access them. Figure out how much you have in all your different accounts. 

When Bryn and I did this, it was almost embarrassing how many different accounts we had accumulated over the years.

Since then, we’ve been on a mission to simplify and consolidate our banking and have made some pretty good progress.

We’ve been able to close or merge half a dozen accounts, and I’m feeling much better about the situation. 

You might find you’ve got long-forgotten accounts or even a 401(k) from an old job that could be rolled over.

Day 2: Identify Your Financial Goals

What money goals do you have in mind?

“I will be debt free by the end of the year.”
“Our house will be paid off in 15 years.”
“I will be making $1000 a month on the side by the end of the year.”
“I will retire at 40.”

You’ll notice that each of these sample goals is specific and time-bound — not something vague like “I will spend less money.” 

Day 3: Discover Your Net Worth

Use a tool like Empower or Monarch Money to pull all my accounts into one place so I can figure out my net worth.

What’s net worth?

Your net worth is your assets minus your liabilities, basically what you OWN minus what you OWE.

Here’s an example:

In this scenario, the person (or family — my wife and I always do this as a team sport) has $380,000 in assets and $227,000 in liabilities, leaving him or her with a net worth of $153,000.

What’s cool about your net worth is it doesn’t care about your income or expenses. It’s just a financial snapshot of where you’re at in one moment of time. It gives you a benchmark to work from. 

Day 4: Figure Out Your Actual Income

Do you know what your take home pay is?

You probably know your salary, but what’s leftover each month after taxes, insurance, and other deductions?

In this number, make sure to include your side hustle income as well.

You can look at this at an annual or monthly level, whichever makes the most sense to you. My wife’s income is pretty predictable, but my income tends to fluctuate month to month, so I need to zoom out a little to get a more accurate picture.

Day 5: Figure Out How Much You Actually Spend

Have you ever taken the time to itemize out your expenses — like ALL of them?

It’s a pain in the butt, but can be pretty eye opening. That’s one reason I put almost everything on credit cards — partially to get the rewards, but partially so I can have a detailed electronic record to review.

Don’t stress too much about cutting costs at this point, we just want to get a baseline of income and expenses right now.

Day 6: Calculate Your Personal Profitability

You’ve got your total income number from Day 4, and your total expense number from Day 5, and if you subtract the expenses from the income you’re left with your net profit.

Did you end up with a positive number or a negative number?

What percentage of your income is left over? For the sake of reference, the nationwide average savings rate is less than 5%. That means for every $100 the average family brings in, less than $5 is left over for savings.

It might be weird to think of yourself as being profitable or unprofitable but this really is a key mindset shift. No company can survive being unprofitable for long, and neither can we as individuals.

Naturally, the bigger the gap between your income and your expenses, the more profitable you can be. 

More than any other personal finance “metric”, this is the one to optimize for. When you’ve got margin in your live — some breathing room in your budget — everything else gets easier and you can fast-track your financial independence by investing your “profits.” (Work for the money, then put the money to work for you.)

Day 7: “Bucket” Your Spending

On Day 7, take a closer look at your itemized expenses from Day 5. You’re going to put everything you spent money on into one of 2 categories:

Fixed
Discretionary

In the Fixed column, you’ll have stuff like rent/mortgage, car payment and insurance, daycare, and groceries.

In the Discretionary column, you’ll have stuff like eating out, new clothes, travel, and Netflix.

I’m not out to cut anything yet, but being honest with yourself and labeling some of your spending as “discretionary” or “optional” can be helpful in “finding” money.

Day 8: Determine Your Bare Bones Budget

Nobody wants to live on a bare bones budget for long, but by adding up all your fixed expenses, you can see your minimum “cost of living.”

This number is important because it’s your baseline “Rat Race Freedom Number.” This is the income you’ll need to produce from non-job sources to be able to quit your job without dipping into savings or taking on new debt.

For some, it may only be $1,000 a month. For others, it might be $5,000 a month or more. But you’ll never know until you add up your baseline fixed spending.

Day 9: Rank the Discretionary Expenses

Of all the things you spent money on in the Discretionary column, which ones brought you the most joy?

For Day 9, go down that column and put a little smiley face 🙂 , neutral face 😐 , or sad face 🙁 next to all those expenses:

Flights to Mexico — 🙂
Dinner with friends — 🙂
New shirt — 😐
Candy bar — 🙁

For example, I’d rank a dinner out with friends over a new shirt. Your list might not have ANY sad faces, and that’s totally fine. After all, why spend discretionary money on something you didn’t really want?

Again, you don’t even have to cut anything right now. The mere act of doing this might influence future buying decisions. And that earns a 🙂

Grab the Free Printable Money Cleanse Checklist

Print it at home and tackle at your own pace.

Sweet!
Where should I send the printable Money Cleanse checklist?

I’ll also send you my best side hustle tips and weekly-ish newsletter.
Opt-out anytime.

Day 10: Emergency Fund Check Up

Do you have 6 months of fixed living expenses in savings? Or 12 months if you’re really conservative?

For example, if you spend $4,000 a month on housing, insurance, groceries, and other fixed costs, that means maintaining an emergency fund of at least $24,000.

If you don’t, make a plan to get there.

Living on the brink of broke is no fun, so build yourself a little cushion.

Day 11: Savings Interest Check Up

Is your emergency fund sitting in your checking account earning ridiculously low interest? Consider moving that cash to a higher interest savings account.

Rates subject to change of course, but you can easily earn 4-5% risk-free on your cash right now.

Even if you don’t have substantial savings (yet!), it might be time to make the switch.

It’s not great, but it’s better than .01% my checking account gets.

If you have more than 6-12 months of expenses saved up and sitting in cash, that brings us to Day 12…

Day 12: Deploy Idle Cash

Yes, there is such thing as “too much” money.

Every year, the value of your savings gets whittled away by inflation. After your emergency fund is flush with cash, put the surplus to work for you!

That means investing in low cost index funds either on your own or through a service like M1 Finance or Betterment. 

One thing that’s helped me get over my market fears is dividend investing. I don’t necessarily care if the stock price falls; I’m just there to collect my quarterly dividend payments.

Caveat: If you think you will need the money in the next 2-5 years, like to buy a house or a business, ignore all of Day 12.

Day 13: Re-examine “Memberships” and Subscriptions

What recurring monthly or annual memberships or subscriptions do you pay for? Do you really use them enough to justify the cost?

In my case, it’s stuff like Dollar Shave Club, your cell phone bill, and Netflix.

And this goes for the business side too, with software like LeadPages, Ahrefs, Riverside, and GeniusLink.

You might find something you’re not using enough to pay for anymore, or you might find a lower priced alternative.

Day 14: Play the Substitution Game

I’ve been a Mint Mobile customer for years. It runs on the T-Mobile network, and when you pre-pay, it costs just $15 a month:

Compared to my old provider, Ting, and my even older provider, Verizon, this represents savings of $180-500 a year.

Similarly, if it’s been more than 2 years since you last shopped for car insurance, you’re paying too much.

Check out Insurify for a quick and painless comparison on car and home insurance. It’ll take just a few minutes and users report saving an average of $489 per year!

What other recurring monthly costs could you cut by negotiating with your service provider or by shopping for a similar service?

Day 15: Max Out Your 401(k)

If your employer offers it, make sure you’re enrolled in your 401(k) plan. At the very least, contribute up the amount of any company match.

When I worked at Ford, this was 6% of my salary, meaning if I allocated 6% of my paycheck to my 401(k) retirement plan, the company would contribute an equal amount to my account, dollar for dollar. That’s like getting an extra 6% raise in free money!

Unfortunately, they paused the matching program shortly after I joined the company. Womp womp.

In any case, the 401(k) plan allows you to reduce your taxable income this year, and force yourself to save for retirement.

If you’re self-employed, you can defer even more cash through the company match … which is nice when you own the company. This is something we talked about on a recent tax-saving episode of The Side Hustle Show.

Day 16: Find Something to Sell in Your Garage or Attic

I’m pretty confident you’ve got something collecting dust that someone else would pay for. Put it up for sale on Facebook Marketplace or ebay.

I’ve sold bobblehead dolls, model cars, bikes, appliances, books, furniture, Magic cards, electronics, and tons more.

You’d be surprised what people will buy! We even had someone buy the leftover flooring from our remodel project. 

Day 17: Gift Card Round Up!

Another fun way to find “free money” is to take stock of any gift cards you’ve received but never got around to using. Thankfully my wife is very organized and keeps a stash of these in a little folder. 

In the past, we’ve gotten free lunch at Chipotle, free Christmas lights at Home Depot, and even a fancy dinner out from gift cards we’d forgotten about.

Make a plan to use those up! After all, it’s what the gift-giver would have wanted.

And if you don’t think you’ll use them, you can turn them into cash by selling them online.

Day 18: Get Some Free Money From a Bank

Over the last decade, I’ve earned thousands of dollars in free money from banks in the form of credit card sign-up bonuses.

Now if you don’t trust yourself to only spend what you can pay off each month, absolutely don’t do this. But if you use credit cards only with money you already have to buy stuff you would have bought anyway, I think it makes sense to get the maximum bang for your buck.

Credit cards like the Capital One Quicksilver Cash Rewards Credit Card offer a $200 sign-up bonus after you spend $500 in your first 3 months — with no annual fee. That’s up to 40% cash back!

Learn more and compare this card to other cash back cards here.

If you know you’re gonna spend $500 in the next 3 months, that’s #freemoney. This card also gives you one of the highest cash back rates, with unlimited 1.5% back on every dollar you spend.

1% cash back is boring, but 20-50% cash back in the form of free travel? That’s what I’m talking about in applying for new credit cards and earning big sign-up bonuses.

(If you don’t have a business credit card for your side hustle, that could be a good place to start!)

Day 19: What Could You “Waste” Money On (To Improve Your Life)?

Tim Ferriss asks, “How can I waste money to improve my quality of life?”

The word ‘waste’ is important because it acknowledges that this is non-essential spending, but that after a certain level of income or financial comfort, it still might make sense to spend it.

In our household, it’s translated into things like hiring an occasional cleaning service; splurging for direct flights, extra legroom, or more convenient hotels; or ordering meal kit deliveries.

It’s even helped us justify a large-scale kitchen remodel — yes, it was expensive, but it got rid of all those little frustrations and definitely improved our quality of life and daily happiness in our home.

There’s a lot of pushback in the FIRE community against “lifestyle inflation” … but isn’t a better lifestyle kind of the whole point?

Day 20: Create Your Worst-Case-Scenario Binder

This could be a physical binder kept in a safe place, or a shared digital folder, but it’s basically a one-stop repository for your important documents and passwords if you get hit by a bus tomorrow.

Will your family or partner know how to access your accounts? Have you set up your will and trust? A medical power of attorney? Have you named beneficiaries on your accounts?

This is something I’ve procrastinated on for years. Thankfully, my friend Chelsea sells a digital Family Emergency Binder that makes it a little easier.

Grab the Free Printable Money Cleanse Checklist

Print it at home and tackle at your own pace.

Sweet!
Where should I send the printable Money Cleanse checklist?

I’ll also send you my best side hustle tips and weekly-ish newsletter.
Opt-out anytime.

Day 21: Subscribe to The Side Hustle Show

Have you subscribed to the award-winning Side Hustle Show yet? If not, you’re missing out. 

Each week my guests and I will fill your earbuds with all sorts of part-time business ideas and actionable advice toward building job-free income streams.

The award-winning Side Hustle Show is a
Top 10 Entrepreneurship podcast
with over 1,200 5-star ratings!

Listen in your favorite podcast app or directly in your browser.


You can even build yourself a personalized playlist by answering a few short questions here.

Day 22: Find a FIRE Friend for Accountability

The old Jim Rohn line that “you’re the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with” is true. That’s why you need to surround yourself with at least ONE other person on a similar path. 

They can be local or online. The ChooseFI community has local branches around the country with informal meetups. 

There’s a taboo about talking about money, but it’s a lonely road to walk alone. Bring your partner or friends along for the ride.

Day 23: Remove Your Personal Information from the Internet

This won’t make you money, but will probably help you sleep better and may help prevent identity theft.

Unfortunately there are dozens of sites that post your name and address online. I share a lot of my data and things about my life, but there are still some things I’d prefer not to have be super-easily-publicly accessible. 

Each of these sites usually has a manual removal request process but it’s probably easier to hire a service like DeleteMe or Optery to do it for you.

Day 24: Shop Smarter

If you’re not already a Rakuten member, you should be. Basically you earn cash back for shopping online as you normally would.

They’ll even give you $30 just for signing up.

Day 25: Make it Automatic

A few years ago, I had my first-ever late payment fee and interest charge on a credit card. Somehow I missed the statement reminder email and it happened.

Embarrassing!

(I sent the bank a note asking for forgiveness and they actually waived the fees.)

But after that I immediately set the card up on auto-pay so it wouldn’t happen again.

All our utilities get paid automatically. So do our mortgage, our insurance, our monthly investments, the kid’s college funds. Set it up once and don’t think about it.

It’s one less thing to clutter your brain with and you never have to worry about being late. 

Day 26: Take Inventory of Your Skills (and Salary)

Write down all of your skills, even the ones no one has ever paid you for. If you don’t think you have any skills, ask your friends or co-workers what you’re good at. You might be surprised!

I’ll admit, I have a hard time with this too, and I think it’s because once you know something, it’s hard to imagine not knowing it.

For inspiration, it might help to browse some of the categories on Fiverr.com or Upwork.

It also might make sense to review your current salary? Check out sites like Glassdoor to make sure you’re being compensated fairly for your skills and experience.

Day 27: Brainstorm Business Ideas

Side Hustle Nation is filled with side hustle ideas, but that doesn’t mean they’ll all be particularly exciting or doable for you.

One exercise to consider: “What Sucks?”

Think of all the little annoying things in your day or your week. What do you find yourself complaining about? What do your peers or coworkers complain about? On the other side of those annoyances might be a business idea in providing the solution.

After all, that’s what led to side hustles like these:

How to Start a Pet Waste Removal Business: $50 an Hour Part-Time, with Erica Krupin
My $550k Side Hustle: An Online Business from Idea to Exit
$6k a Month Blogging About Gray Hair, with Katie Emery

Sometimes constraint breeds creativity: If you had to make $1,000 in the next 7 days, what would you do?

Day 28: Start Rolling Your Side Hustle Snowball

The Side Hustle Snowball is a way to reframe that journey to Rat Race Freedom by looking for ways to cover your expenses with new non-job income streams, starting with the smallest and working your way up.

Check out this post for a more detailed explanation and how I’ve gone about “erasing” some of my actual expenses with various side hustles.

Day 29: Set Monthly & Quarterly Check-ins

Make a calendar reminder to check your account balances monthly, and check your net worth quarterly.

It’s not something you need to track day to day, but over time, you’ll start to get a picture of how it (hopefully) grows in response to your efforts.

Every 6-12 months, review your investment allocations and rebalance if necessary. 

Day 30: Make a Donation to Charity

Make a donation to the charity of your choice. Living well is about being able to give back.

Bonus points if you set it up as a recurring donation.

Day 31: Treat Yourself

Congratulations! You made it all the way to the end of the cleanse!

via GIPHY

Take a moment or two for some (inexpensive) celebration, and recognize that figuring out this whole “money thing” isn’t easy.

I definitely won’t pretend to have all the answers, but I’m confident that in going through these steps you’re better off than you were before (and you’re miles ahead of most of your peers).

Grab the Free Printable Money Cleanse Checklist

Print it at home and tackle at your own pace.

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Your Turn

What do you think? Was this money cleanse helpful?

Anything you’d add or change? Let me know in the comments below!

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