3 Tips for Managing Your Finances with Multiple Side Jobs

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Working multiple jobs is a challenge as it is, but when you’re trying to manage your finances while balancing all of life’s responsibilities at the same time. If you’re wondering how to maintain your side hustles and maximize your income, you’re in the right place.

In this post, we’re discussing 3 tips for managing your finances for multiple side jobs. The best part? They apply whether you’re working salary, freelance, or hourly!

1. Make crunching numbers simple

Even self-made entrepreneurs deal with number strife. It’s not easy to manage multiple sources of income, let alone calculate what you need to make for this, that, and the other bill. But the good news is, there are a few tools that can help you crunch numbers without pulling your hair out.

Financial calculator

There’s no better way to look and calculate like a boss than with a financial calculator. Can’t I use my phone, you ask? A financial calculator is designed to perform calculations beyond the functions or your phone or pocket calculator. This means you can calculate figures like cash flow, compound interest, and simple interest to get a more insightful perspective on your financial profile. If you’re managing loan payments and other bills, this tool can be really useful to help you plan out your monthly and yearly budget based on your income and expenses.

Another important use for those with a side hustle is figuring out which of your jobs earn you the most bang for your buck. Once you find out this information, you may want to prioritize hours there rather than other jobs where you might not make as much.

Budgeting apps

Budgeting apps are taking over the personal finance world—they’re easy to use, effective, and automated—a perfect recipe for the girl or guy on-the-go. Additionally, different budgeting apps have different features that can help you build your savings account, invest money, and pay down debt.

Some of the most popular budgeting apps for 2019 include:

Mint
PocketGuard
YNAB
Wally
Mvelopes

When you’re budgeting, make sure you have your main necessary expenses covered first. These include your living expenses, debt, and miscellaneous bills. From there, you can allocate a certain percentage to your personal expenses and savings. One of the most popular styles for budgeting is the 50/20/30 rule: 50% of income goes toward expenses, 20% goes toward savings, and 30% to needs and wants. You can use budgeting apps to help you combine your income and allocate how much money goes where using the 50/20/30 rule or any other budgeting technique that works for your lifestyle.

2. Use the $10 bill rule

Just because there are all these fancy tools out there helping you balance numbers and calculate your cash flow, doesn’t mean the analog rules of budgeting are obsolete. One of my favorite basic budgeting strategies is the $10 bill rule.

It works like this: since $10 bills aren’t as common as 1’s and 5’s, each time you get an Alexander Hamilton you have to stow it away in your savings. That $10 adds up quick and it doesn’t take away a ton of money from your existing income, so you should still have plenty to cover your bills and personal expenses.

3. Keep a calendar

When you’re trying to balance multiple jobs, a social life, and other responsibilities, it can be hard to keep up with your commitments. In order to avoid scheduling mix-ups, it’s important to keep a calendar on hand for all of your work and life responsibilities.

If your work uses a scheduling platform to manage hours, be sure to download the app if there’s one available. Many scheduling apps will send you notifications when a shift is coming up, or even have access to copies of recent pay stubs so you can ensure your checks are being reflected accurately.

If you’re a freelancer, you may also want to invest in a time-tracking application so that you can easily calculate how much time you’re spending on each of your projects, and easily generate invoices for your clients.