We're hustling! Our stories of Side Hustles
A few months ago, my brother sent me a Craigslist link to a red Crate and Barrel swivel chair. It was listed for about $65 and I asked Ms. C if she wanted it. She said yes, so I went and picked it up that night. We decided to fix it up and try to sell it (or keep it if we couldn't sell it for a good price). After watching a few YouTube videos on how to restore genuine leather, I bought some supplies and got to work!
The chair turned out very nice for my first try and we were happy with the result. I listed the chair on Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist hoping to get $400 - after all, the style of chair I had went for over $1200 new. It sat in the office room of my house for a few weeks, which was perfectly fine for us to enjoy, and we finally got it sold for $300 about a month or two after the original listing!
All in all, I spent about $30 for the supplies (so about $100 invested), a few hours spread out here and there for picking it up, researching, cleaning, refurbishing, and delivering the chair. I estimate that I spent about 6 hours in total for the whole project, so I'm pretty happy with the investment of time. I think that even if I had spent 10 hours, it would be worth it. For all of that and having fun while learning a new skill, I think 3x the investment was well worth it!
This was the beginning of our "Side Hustle" journey! It's just a nice way to bring in some extra cash outside of our main jobs. Our goal is to reach financial independence, and finding a side hustle or 2 to help us get there is important to us. It gives us a lot of flexibility and makes us happy. We've got 2 main side hustles going and they're bringing us a lot of joy. One added benefit down the road will be the possibility of replacing our jobs with these side hustles. Ms. C hopes to make some money doing her side hustle part time when we have kids. Read on to find out what she's up to! The goal is for her to work a few hours a week on her side hustle to bring an additional source of income for us to choose whatever we please (hint: probably saving it).
For my side hustle, when Ms. C and I find free items in my neighborhood or on Facebook Marketplace, we try to be the first ones to claim it and refurbish them. We've had some great successes and a few time-wasting failures. Overall, it's a great deal of fun and we're constantly learning new skills. We also love the recycling aspect of this game - we are happy to keep things from being trashed and finding a new home for them so others can enjoy it for a much cheaper price and we get a profit from it. We're having fun with it, and will definitely stop if it becomes a burden. We want to increase our income, but only on our terms, and that has a lot to do with finding joy in our projects!
Alongside of me, Ms. C started an online thrift shop in December of end of last year. Even with a slow start, she has pushed through the tough beginner stages and now has over 600 followers with quite a few sales. She has found a lot of excitement in working on this project, and what makes it even better is the fact that she decided to donate all the profits to the Houston Catholic Charities non-profit organization!
Ms. C and I both love a good sale, but she really enjoys shopping for clothes (and now, I do too! haha). There's a thrill that comes from finding great items and being able to turn it into a profit. We like to source our items at thrift shops around Houston and are considering going to garage sales. You know what they say - one man's trash is another man's treasure! In our case, we're looking for high-priced items that will sell for a nice profit!
We're still pretty new to this, but we've found that thrift stores such as Goodwill (bins) and Family Thrift allow us to find many items for less than $2 each. We often hope to make between $20 and $30 for each item, on average. After fees and shipping (which can eat about a third of that cost), we find that we usually have a nice profit in the end. If it doesn't bring us big profits, that's totally okay. It's not always about the money - we're trying to do our part in lowering the amount of items that land in the landfills by finding these items new homes and the bonus is that it helps us move toward our financial independence goals.
We've learned to source good items, clean those items, photograph them, sell them, ship them, and so much more. It's been a long process, but well worth it. There is a lot more to learn, so we lean on the reselling community (on YouTube) for information. Many of them are entertaining and helpful, so we're happy to subscribe and follow along. We've learned a lot from them, so we've adjusted our strategies based on the experience that they've shared. We hope to do the same here in our Faith and FI community and we sincerely hope you are inspired to do more.
Recently, we've increased our dedication to Ms. C's online thrift shop and I'm the "accountant" on the team, and we've enjoyed doing this project together. We're learning a lot about this very interesting reseller world we've found ourselves diving into, and we're happy to take you along if you're interested! These "side hustles" give us great opportunities to bond in hobbies we both enjoy and allow us to support one another in our endeavors.
So my challenge to you is this: Find something you enjoy doing and make some money out of it. You never know what you can find out there and your resourcefulness will pay dividends. I didn't know how to clean and recolor leather before we picked up that first chair, but heck, we took a chance and knew we'd keep it otherwise so why not? Your path to financial freedom has a lot to do with keeping your expenses as low as you can as well as increasing your income. We're trying to find creative ways to do both. I hope you join us on our journey!
Here's a small warning, you have to find the silver lining in all of this: be courageous about the idea that you're not always going to succeed and make a lot of money. See the intangible possibilities - such as enjoying something for what it's worth while you have it (if you can't sell it immediately), learning a new skill, recycling things by helping items find a better homes, and many more reasons. If it doesn't work with your first project, keep trying new things! I know you can do it!
Do you have any side hustles you're working on? Please share with us! We'd love to hear your stories.
With much enthusiasm,
Mr. K
P.S. If you're curious to find out who Ms. C is (and maybe figure out who I am), please feel free to follow her thrift shop on Instagram: @lagunathrifton and