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The pros and cons of becoming a rideshare driver
With so many possible side hustles available in today's gig economy, how do you decide which to choose?
Today, I want to make the case that driving with for a rideshare company is a plausible choice for several reasons. But there are also some major distractions that you should be aware of before signing up.
My name is Josh Overmyer. I've completed over 2900 rides as an Uber/UberEats driver-partner since 2014. I know what you're thinking: “That's a lot of rides!” It is. And I've learned a lot in that time.
Here are my biggest takeaways from four years as a rideshare driver.
The Pros of Becoming a Rideshare Driver
Here's the good news. You likely already have the knowledge and equipment necessary to be a rideshare driver!
Small leaks sink great ships: How little habits can have large consequences
If you've spent any amount of time reading money blogs over the past fifteen years, you've heard of the latte factor. In fact, you're probably sick of hearing about it.
This concept — put forth by David Bach in his best-selling The Automatic Millionaire — is based on the idea that daily spending on small things has a big impact on your future wealth.
“We don’t even realize how much we're actually spending on these little purchases,” Bach writes. “If we did think about it and change our habits just a little, we could actually change our destiny.”
Financial advice from my father (when I was nineteen)
“Who was there for your father when he died?” Kim asked me a few moments ago. She's interested in becoming a death doula, so she's reading a book about end-of-life care.
“It's odd you should ask that today,” I said after I told her the story of my father's six-year battle with cancer.
“Why?” she asked.
“Today is the equivalent day in my life as the day when Dad died in his,” I said. “It's ten days until I turn fifty. Dad died ten days before his fiftieth birthday. So, it's a somber day for me. I'll be thinking of him all day.”
Actually, I've been thinking of Dad all week.
How I learned to stop feeling hopeless about money
J.D.'s note: Last week's talk by Vicki Robin was hosted by the School of Financial Freedom, a Portland-based organization I'm friendly with. At that talk, I met Naomi Veak, one of the school's coaches. She and I have a lot in common (grew up poor in small towns, attended the same college, etc.). I asked if she'd share her story with Get Rich Slowly readers. She agreed.
Have you ever thought how different your life could have been if you’d taken someone’s advice? What if I told you it may not be too late?
I recently rediscovered a letter my mother wrote to me when I was 19, attending a small liberal arts college in another state.
By the numbers: My spending for February 2019
One of my goals in 2019 is to get back to basics. I feel like I've succumbed to lifestyle inflation, so I'm taking the time to track my money in detail (using my fave tool: Quicken 2007 for Mac) in an attempt to identify problem areas. When I find money leaks, I need to decide whether to eliminate them or accept them.
While I'm skeptical that sharing my monthly spending report has any real value — and it invites unnecessary judgment (I'm already judging myself!) — popular opinion from GRS readers seems to be: Do it!
You folks like looking at my struggles with money haha.
So, here's a quick look at how I spent my money in February — the good, the bad, and the ugly.
February Spending Report
In January, I spent $4819.27 to support my lifestyle. In February, I spent $4556.49, a decline of $250.
What is money for? An evening with Vicki Robin
When I was a boy, my heroes were athletes and astronauts. I dreamed of playing pro football one day. Or, better yet, walking on the moon.
As an adult, my heroes are more mundane. They're the people who make personal finance accessible to average people. Long-time readers know that billionaire investor Warren Buffett is one of my heroes. So too is Dave Ramsey, who has helped countless people — including me — get out of debt.
But perhaps my biggest hero is an unassuming 73-year-old woman in cat-eye glasses who lives on Whidbey Island in Washington's Puget Sound.
Two months with HelloFresh: A quick look at the cost and quality of HelloFresh recipes
When I published my first HelloFresh review last June, I liked the popular meal-delivery service. Kim's employer had given us a one-week free trial. The three recipes we received were fun and tasty. In the end, we chose not to sign up with HelloFresh but resolved to remember it for the future.
At the end of 2018, as I was evaluating my spending patterns, I was shocked by how much I was spending on food. It's embarrassing to show the following numbers, but facts are facts and truth is truth. I was spending over $1100 per month on food.
“Something needs to change,” I told Kim. “Maybe we should try HelloFresh again to see if it can help us cut costs.”
“Do you think so?” Kim siad. “Isn't HelloFresh kind of expensive?”
Saving regret — and how to avoid it
In November 2018, the National Bureau of Economic Research published a paper called “Saving Regret” [here's the full PDF version]. Once you wade through the study's academic language, there's some interesting stuff here about why people do and don't save for retirement.
Saving regret, the authors say, is “the wish in hindsight to have saved more earlier in life”.
Obviously, you can suffer from saving regret at any age. When I met 31-year-old Debbie for dinner last week, her issues boiled down to saving regret. She wishes she'd saved more when she was younger. But for the purposes of this paper, the authors turned their attention to folks aged 60 to 79, people of traditional retirement age.
Twenty years of U.S. government inflation data
Inflation is the silent killer of wealth. Year after year, the purchasing power of your dollar (or pound or euro or yen) gradually erodes. My father was one of those “hide money under your mattress” type folks because he believed that was the best way to keep his cash safe. He was wrong.
If you sit on your money, it doesn't maintain its value. It loses value.
At his Carpe Diem blog, economics professor Mark Perry recently published a new version of the following chart, which visualizes the effects of inflation on certain consumer goods and services.
As you can see, this chart tracks 21 years of inflation data: from January 1998 to December 2018. (Perry uses official Consumer Price Index data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.) He writes:
Case study: Deep in debt but scared to take action
Last night, as I do from time to time, I met with a GRS reader. Actually, Debbie doesn't read this site but her sister does. And Debbie means to. Although I met Debbie's sister last year at a Camp FI event, I'd never met Debbie before.
“So, what's your situation?” I asked after our waiter had brought us each a glass of wine. “What do you want to know about money?”
“Everything,” Debbie said, laughing. “I feel like I don't know much at all right now. I guess deep down, I know what I need to do. I just don't do it.”
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