Learn me moonlighting

I have a professional career - an office job, and it's going well. It pays well, and I'm happy with it most days.

I want some fun money so I can buy some of the cars I played on Windows 98, so I'm thinking about trying to find some outside-of-business-hours work. Preferably, it'd tolerate me ignoring it during normal work hours and be non-locative. Work has a moonlighting policy, so I'd have to let them know, and they'd probably want my work to not have a competitive disadvantage to them or degrade my quality of work.

I'm just not sure how to get going.

I guess I'm interested in self-employment and other side-hustle, moonlighting type stuff the GRM group is doing.

I referee hockey on the side. It is perfect, since all the games are at night or on weekends. Pay is ok--I'll be bringing in an extra $1k this month, probably around $1.5k next month; December will be around $500. June I don't think I made a single dollar. But I can more or less pick my schedule (I never work when I don't want to, but I don't always work when I do want to). 

Maybe see if there is something like that around you for whatever sport you are/were into? 

I have 4 jobs, None of them are even remotely in the same field.

I told my main place of employment I was going to do what I had to to make ends meet when they cut my hours and wage. They said do what you have to so I am. They no longer have exclusivity and it bites them in the butt now and then but they dont think losing that much money on a regular basis is enough to put me back on the schedule for the hours I want to work. 

I am an engineer at a big company. I moonlighted (moonlit?) for my former employer for about a year. I charged them a lot. Taxes were high. I got permission from the now-employer first. It all went fine.

What would Bruce Willis do?

Appleseed said:

What would Bruce Willis do?

Cybil Shepard, I assume.

In reply to Appleseed :

Tom_Spangler said:

Appleseed said:

What would Bruce Willis do?

Cybil Shepard, I assume.

I was hoping for a joke and was not disappointed. 

I've been approached a few times for smaller jobs, still in my line of work, but haven't bothered because the companies wanted to 1099 me for less than I make hourly now.

I can throw in a few hours of OT per week at my current, so I'm sure as hell not going to work extra hours for 70% of my normal wage.

I've taken on plenty of IT consulting gigs alongside my day job, I have 2 right now. The consulting gigs are weekend/after hours work. I could be fired if word got out at my day job, but they don't have to know. If they really didn't want me working side gigs they should pay me enough that there isn't such an enormous incentive to do so, right?

z31maniac said:

I can throw in a few hours of OT per week at my current, so I'm sure as hell not going to work extra hours for 70% of my normal wage.

Same here.  

Some years ago, my ex- and I did some engineering side-work for a former coworker.  It was a PITA, but that was in the pre-PDF days where we issued physical drawings.  Might be a little easier now.

Did it for years.  Started by working second shift in a machine shop while going to college to become a shop teacher during the day.

After I started teaching I always had some type of part-time job I worked at after school during the school year.  A lot of them turned into full time work in the summer.

In reply to Tom_Spangler :

Well done.

^^^ yes it was...

Started my own company. I am just not cut out to work for anyone. 

https://sidehustleschool.com/podcasts/

I've listened to all of these and am now starting a coffee side hustle.  My angle in this crowded field is sending a big portion of the profit to mission work in the countries I'm sourcing coffee from.  I have lots of good feedback and places to send funds.  Time to get started on it.

My only advice is not to wait for the perfect opportunity.  Start this week and iterate/refine as you go.

I've been selling "stuff" for decades. It started out as my full time job - I was going to auctions, buying surplus from governmental agencies and corporations on sealed bids and negotiated contracts, refurbishing some things, and selling it on to both resellers. Mostly I focused on commercial electronics like network gear and test equipment and workstation grade computers and the like. But anything I saw for a good price I would buy, clean up, get working and presentable, and sell it on. I made a ton of money at it - at least a ton of money for a young guy that hadn't seen money before - and it was enjoyable. Nowadays I do it as, I suppose, moonlighting from my self-employed day job. It takes some space; you need to store inventory, photograph it, ship it, etc. I don't go to auctions any more since I don't have time. But stuff still has a habit of finding me, somehow.

The disadvantage is the space it takes up and that if you're not working you're not making money. If something sells you need to ship it right away, but if you don't have time to list things for sale then you don't sell anything so you can easily walk away for a while. Most platforms have a vacation setting (eBay, Amazon, etc.) that you can activate so items won't show in searches or will have a disclaimer as to when they'll ship.

I most recently put these skills to work selling the parts from the MR2 Spyder I parted out. It didn't make me a ton of money but netted me $700 so far and about $1500-$2000 in parts I'm going to use. I still have more to sell, and I'm pretty sure I'll end up with about $1500-$2000 net. https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/parting-out-cars-for-fun-and-maybe-profit-2003-mr2/131419/page1/

I'm thinking about buying an insurance total car next, from the iaai auctions that we've been talking about on here.

I once did some moonlighting for a dealer I worked for.    It was called speedometer repair.   

I have a mobile detailing business on the side. I mostly do it on the weekends and advertise on the facetwitter and CL. There is some initial investing from the beginning, but I do everything with a rinse less detail product. so I don't need the large rigs that bigger companies have. Product is the biggest overhead, but it's not terrible. I made a couple thousand last year and I was able to write off my car and gas that I used for details. 

I do a little bit of handyman work on the side.  I should do more but as I've gotten older it seems like my drive to really bust my hump for extra spending money has faded.  Painting, carpentry, powerwashing, installing flooring, basic plumbing, basic electrical, stump grinding, light tree work. 

Everything is time + materials and I charge my day job hourly rate (except stump grinding, that I bid and my goal is 4X usual rate)

I make stuff like this:

Look like this

Which makes people happy and keeps my beer fridge full and Molvo chugging along. 

I thought the key to moonlighting was good ingredients and and nice clean cool water source, with nice cover and a way to get in and out that didn't tip off the authorities..

Maybe I am thinking of something else.

ronholm said:

I thought the key to moonlighting was good ingredients and and nice clean cool water source, with nice cover and a way to get in and out that didn't tip off the authorities..

 

Maybe I am thinking of something else.

Did someone say "Gardening"

We'll be doing that soon enough

Wrong 'pot'