10. WHAT ARE YOUR SOURCES OF INCOME AT A NINE-TO-FIVE JOB BESIDES BASIC PAY?
Your income can grow only to the extent that you do. - T. Harv Eker
During the course of twenty seven years (27) working at nine-to-five jobs in corporate world I never really focused on salary increase.
I focused more on investing in myself, improving myself, and demonstrating results through better job performances. I believe in letting results speak for itself.
I'd worked for seven (7) companies in total. My first pay cheque was from Seagate Penang in 1991 as a process engineer. And my last pay cheque was from Jobstreet.com (SEEK Asia after acquisition from SEEK Australia) as a regional sales operations director in 2017.
In terms of salaries, my last monthly basic salary as a full-time employee with 27 years of working experiences was 1,800% more than my first monthly basic salary as a fresh graduate. I believe if I were to continue to be employed until my retirement age of 60, my basic salary would have been even more by then. But I decided to quit my nine-to-five job and let go of the opportunity to make more money for another ten more years. I’ve chosen to retire early at the age of forty nine (49) years and nine (9) months.
Actually, my salary increases over a 27-year period were nothing to shout about. My last drawn salary was nothing to shout about either. Many of my younger, more capable and intelligent employed friends and ex-colleagues make much more than me.
Let’s assume that I’m a business entity. The loosely calculated average annualised return would have been 67% per annum for capital growth over a period of 27 years.
From the return of investment's (ROI) perspective, 67% annualised return is considered the best investment I have ever made in my life. It's way much better than my any other investments in EPF, Amanah Saham, real estate, unit trust or share trading.
Of course, I couldn't really annualise my salary over a 27-year period and compare it to other investment assets in such a manner. But by doing such comparison, my sole purpose is for you to better realise that investing in yourself is the best investment ever.
Investing in yourself will earn you the highest capital appreciation and annual dividend pay outs compared to any other investment tools. Unfortunately, many employed people fail to see the true value in themselves.
Hence, I encourage you not to work just for the sake of receiving your pay cheque from month to month. You should focus on investing in yourself, making time and effort to continuously improve yourself. Believe me, your potential income will become limitless, even at your nine-to-five jobs. And you will be able to achieve your financial independence through your nine-to-five job sooner than you think.
Multiple sources of income from your nine-to-five job
Most people love to have multiple sources of income. Multiple sources of income can help to build wealth faster.
However, most people in fulltime employment spend their time and effort to look outside of their jobs for other sources of income. Some join multi-level marketing companies and promote the products during their spare time. Some become Grab driver in the evenings and weekend to earn extra money. Some teach piano or guitar lessons at music school to continue with their passion while earning some extra money.
However, many of them neglect one thing. They have forgotten that they can, and they should, spend more time and effort to figure out how to maximise their income potential from their nine-to-five job. In the long term, they may make more than driving Grab or doing their multi-level marketing business in the evening through their salary increase along with other fringe benefits.
The company you work for hires you to do your job well, to contribute to the organisation. Your employer treats you as an asset. If you perform exceedingly well with extraordinary results, the company is more than happy to reward you financially in various forms. For instance, basic salary, performance bonus, annual salary increment, benefits and allowances, job promotion, profit-sharing, and stock options. If you are in sales or commission-based role, you will have additional “source of income” from your company. Your company will pay you sales commission as a financial reward for your sales performance and revenue contribution.
Let's take a look at each “source of income” that you can potentially receive from your employer at a nine-to-five job. I’ll also share some insights with you on “where the money is” being an employed person.
1. Basic salary
You and your colleague may be holding the same position in the same company, but you both may receive different basic salaries.
How much you receive as your basic salary depends largely on how best your professional qualification and working experience can match the requirements of the job role.
Usually, there’s a salary range for each role that hiring managers use to determine what basic salary package is offered for each employee. You may receive a basic pay at the lower end of the salary range. Or you may receive higher salary closer to the upper limit of the salary range if you have more relevant working experience.
Some larger multi-national companies don’t even have salary scale for each role, especially for managerial positions and above. If you are a talent that they are looking for, these MNCs are willing to pay you more than your market value for you to join them.
Be a top university student
That's the reason why I stress earlier that having a solid education from one of the top universities can give you a competitive advantage, especially if it's your first job. Generally, a top university graduate from the best global universities has a higher basic pay than other candidates with the same qualification but from lesser-known universities.
If your starting salary is higher than others, it's as if you start off your career with higher capital for investment to begin with. You receive more money from your employer. Hence, you can save more, invest more, and achieve your financial independence faster.
Many university students do not take their tertiary education seriously. They also think too highly of themselves. They graduate from lesser known universities with poor grades but yet they demand a high salary. Please don't fall into this category! But if you do fall into this category, please make an extra effort to make up for it knowing that you are already at a disadvantage compared to others to begin with. Not all hopes are lost. I have seen many who didn't do so well in university but yet they perform extraordinary at work.
Join a top management consultancy firm
Next, if you can set your foot into one of the big three management consultancy firms (McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Company), or one of the big four accounting firms (Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, KPMG after your graduation, your basic salary will definitely be above the market rate.
These firms are an excellent training ground for you to gain knowledge and experience in a wide area of industries and business practices. You will also be exposed to top management through your working relationship with different clients in your projects. Armed with several years of working experiences with such management consultancy firms, you will be highly sought after in your future job opportunities.
Different industries pay differently
Different industries also pay differently. For example, oil and gas industry, IT industry, and financial services industry are known to pay higher salaries than a retail, packaging or logistics company.
Different core disciplines pay differently
Besides industries, different core disciplines also pay differently. Accounting and finance may pay differently from technology and transformation.
However, this is beyond your control because you usually find a job best match with your university qualification and working experiences.
But you can still aim for the division with the best potential pay within the same core discipline. As illustrated in earlier chapter, talent management / acquisition, business partnership and organisation development divisions in may pay more than learning & development or industrial relations divisions within the same human resources core discipline.
Larger companies usually pay more
Company size does matter. Usually, large organisations, especially multi-national corporations, pay more than small medium enterprises. It's because the work is more complex and complicated. Hence the same job role may require someone with better qualification.
According to annual salary survey 2020 conducted by Robert Walters, a financial director in an MNC can fetch from RM360k to RM480k a year with more than 10 years of experience, whereby the same financial director in an SME can fetch RM264k to RM360k.
If I combine both roles, finance director’s salary scale can then range from RM240k to RM480k. SME pays at the lower salary range whereby MNC pays towards the high salary range.
Get a new job
When you change job or move to a new company, generally you can demand 15% to 20% salary increase from your previous employment.
Many people, especially today's millennials, become job movers or job hoppers so that they can have higher salary every two to three years.
From some of the resumes that I screened through, and the candidates whom I interviewed as a hiring manager, I noticed that some job seekers change jobs every one to two years. It's very rare to see candidates staying on a job for more than 5 years.
Is it right to change jobs so often?
Should you change job for higher salary every 2 years?
There is no definite answer here.
I thought it might be a good idea to share with you my personal journey in my job changes.
My career wasn’t all smooth sailing. I struggled to figure out what my long-term passion was, what industry to work at, what job role to take.
I had seven (7) nine-to-five jobs in total over a span of 27 years in my career.
My longest tenure was my first job with Seagate Penang as an engineer. I was with the job for three and a half years.
I then relocated to Kuala Lumpur for a career change from engineering to sales. I held three sales jobs from selling accounting software to ERP systems with a Singapore company, and two Dutch companies. A couple of these jobs lasted less than two years.
Then one fine day, a job opportunity was presented to me to be based in Shenzhen, China as a business development manager with a Taiwanese manufacturing company. I took up the challenge, packed one suitcase of luggage, and off I went to work in China. It was my first overseas job.
When a senior management role was presented to me at the age of thirty five (35) back home in Malaysia, I decided to come back home to be closer to family. It was a local public-listed company manufacturing automotive parts located 62 km from my home in Batang Kali, Selangor.
Despite the long-distance commute and new challenges, I still decided to give it ago. It was my first time managing people and entire operations from procurement, business development, manufacturing, inventory, account and human resource. I thought it would be an excellent opportunity for me to polish up my people management and general management skills.
After 6 years soaking myself in EP Manufacturing Berhad, my job scope had become stagnant. I felt that I wasn’t growing much. I reached a career bottleneck.
At forty years-old (40), I decided to go back to IT industry - my first love. It wasn't easy for me to have another career change back to IT after a six-year gap. But I thought I should still give it a try.
I was lucky to be interviewed by Jobstreet.com's CEO Suresh Thiru at that time. Without the required past experiences in HR or Internet industry, I thought my chance of getting the job would be slim. He later recommended me to Jobstreet.com Malaysia’s General Manager Eric Sito and Head of Sales YY Chook. I was so happy that I was offered a job with the number one’s job portal in Malaysia.
I’d worked at Jobstreet.com for a total of nine (9) years holding various positions locally and regionally until I retired at 49.
As you can see, from the time I started my first job at the age of twenty four (24) to the age of thirty four (34), I changed jobs a total of five (5) times over a span of eleven (11) years. My first job lasted slightly more than three years. Two other jobs lasted less than two years. On average, I changed job every two to three years during this period.
But from the age of thirty five (35) to forty nine (49), I had only two (2) jobs. One lasted for six (6) years and my last full-time employment lasted for nine (9) years.
Hence, my recommendation is that when you are in your twenties and thirties, you can change jobs every two to five years for higher pay or for a more senior position.
Even though high salary is important, I hope the motive for you to move is to learn new things, to have more exposure, to have better environment for your personal growth, and not so much for higher salary. It’s important that you find a working environment that allows you to invest in yourself, to improve yourself, so that your potential income from your job can grow over the years.
Once you reach your forties, you are probably in a managerial role or leadership role in the organisation. If you can continue to grow within the organisation, then there is no reason to change job so often already. Besides, if you are still a job hopper changing job every two to three years in your forties, potential employers may perceive you as someone non-committal. They will be uncertain if you will stay with them for long should they hire you.
Basic pay isn’t everything! Follow your heart…
If you put money in the bank, you will gain interest over the principal. The more is your principal, the more you will gain from interest.
Similarly, if you have higher basic salary, your salary increment, promotion, and bonus will then definitely be more. The reason is very simple. This is because annual salary increment, performance pay outs are calculated based on percentage of your basic salary.
Having said that, you should not solely chase after a higher basic pay all the time. Sometimes, things may pay off in an unexpected turn if you follow your heart.
It happened to me.
I defied the tradition and took a 20% pay cut to join Jobstreet.com from EP Manufacturing Berhad in 2008.
Wasn't it strange to take a 20% pay cut to join a new company?
Was I out of my mind?
Why didn't I continue to stick to EP Manufacturing Berhad or look for another company with higher pay?
I was shocked myself for taking the 20% pay cut.
I was struggling with my decision initially.
But my deep desires to have more meaning to my job and to learn new things outweighed my desire to have a higher pay.
I was so attracted to Jobstreet.com's mission, "Improving lives through better careers." I felt that it would bring even more meaning and purpose to my 9-to-5 job.
While I worked in corporate world, I could still contribute back to the society by helping the employers to find the right candidates for their organisation. These people will have jobs. They will receive their monthly pay cheques. They can put food on tables for their family and loved ones. I thought the mission was very noble. It has lasting impact on me personally.
Additionally, Jobstreet.com was in expansion mode to other countries. With the opportunities to learn more about recruitment in an internet industry, and the potential for regional exposure, I was quick to jump on this great job which would allow me to grow as a person.
I thought I should follow my heart to join Jobstreet.com.
I was glad I made that painful and unpopular career decision back then. It has paid off over the years in terms of my career growth, personal development, and financial gain.
If not because of Jobstreet.com, a company that I took 20% pay cut to join, I might still need to work for extra three to five years before I could retire.
2. Annual salary increment
As an employee, you must be excitedly looking forward to salary increment at the beginning of every new financial year.
Salary increment is usually based on your previous year's job performance.
Your superiors may also evaluate your past year's job performances versus the year before. You are usually expected to perform even better than the year before of your own performance to receive the same salary increment as previous year.
As you grow in your work experience with your job every year along with higher pay due to annual salary increment, your bosses also have higher expectation of you.
Your bosses expect you to perform better now that you have gained more experience. Therefore, if you still perform at the same level as the year before, you are no longer considered good enough.
Your previous year's job performance will also be benchmarked against your colleagues’ who fall into the same salary grades or same positions with similar functions. For example, if you are a manager, most probably your job performance will be benchmarked against other managers too. Even if you perform very well in your own eyes, but if there are other managers who perform much better than you, you may not end up getting the salary increment that you expect.
After each department head submits his / her own department’s individual performance ratings, usually there is a performance appraisal’s calibration conducted by top management.
It's very common that the top management may follow the normal bell curve to decide who deserves higher salary increments in the whole organisation.
10% of the employees who have poor performances may receive 0-6% annual salary increment. Some of these employees may end up in a 3-month or 6-month performance improvement plan (PIP). If they don't improve on their job performances within the stipulated period, they may be shown an exit.
Have you heard of Jack Welch, a famous general manager from Generals Motors? In his book “Winning”, he famously would let go the bottom 10% of the low performers every year in General Motors. It means that every year, the bottom 10% was shown an exit. Through this annual 10% exit strategy, General Motors managed to continuously keep their staff performances at tip top condition.
For the 70% of the employees who have average work performances, they may receive 7-15% annual salary increment. Even within this range, you can see that you may fall in the low portion close to 7% or at the higher range closer to 15%.
Now let's talk about the top 20%. This group is the creme of the crop! They are the leaders in the organisation. They are the shakers of the company. If following the typical bell curve, these top performers may receive 15% or more annual salary increment.
You spend 8 to 12 hours daily including commute on your job. Don't you want to get the best return? If you can get 6% return on your EPF, you definitely can get higher return through your annual salary increment based on your job performances.
I used to have staff whose basic salaries were lower to start off with. But due to their better job performances, their basic salaries have caught up with others who perform relatively worse.
How is this possible? If an employee A receives 15% salary increment three years in a row versus another employee B who receives 7% salary increment annually, it’s highly likely that employee A may end up having higher basic salary than employee B three years down the road due to multiplier effect. Essentially, 15% annual increment is more than double compared to 7% annual increment.
Therefore, you must value yourself as an asset. You shall invest in yourself so that you can make the best return of your time and effort spent at your job by constantly being a top performer.
3. Bonuses
Bonuses are commonly paid based on number of months of your monthly basic pay. They are also inter-related to your basic salary and annual salary increment.
In order to get higher basic pay, you need to be a top performer to receive higher annual job increment. And the higher your monthly salary, the more bonuses you will receive.
I am sure you’ve heard of your friends and colleagues asking, "How many months of bonus does your company give this year?" or "How many months of bonus did you receive?"
I used to envy my friends who work in oil and gas, or banking and finance industries. They can potentially receive 6 months to 12 months of bonuses if their companies do exceptionally well. For most other industries, bonuses usually range from one month to three months though.
Bonuses are largely dependent on company's performances, not so much of individual. If a company registers record sales and profit, as a reward, I believe you will receive a huge bonus at the end of your financial year from your organisation. If the company is not doing so well and making less profit, then your employer may not be in a solid position to pay out many months of bonuses.
Therefore, no matter what your role is in an organisation, besides improving yourself, you shall focus on helping your company to achieve its objectives, especially on sales and profitability.
Have a mindset of team and organisation if you want to receive better bonuses. Treat your company’s business as your own business.
If you and other employees do your part well, giving your best to the organisation, I am sure profits and high margins in business will be the end result. As a reward, you shall receive fat bonus pay out from your company.
4. Commissions / cash incentives
Not all jobs are commission-based. Commissions usually apply to jobs with sales target in terms of revenue or market share. If you achieve a certain percentage of your sales target, then you are entitled to sales commission paid in cash.
Usually there will be additional sales inventive too. For example, there may be early bird incentive (if you achieve your target a week earlier, you can get extra cash as motivation), product incentive (if you achieve your target selling a particular product, especially new product, you can get extra cash as motivation), consistency incentive (if you can achieve your monthly or weekly target 3 consecutive months or weeks in a row, you are entitled for some extra cash incentive as rewards), etc.
Designing sales commissions and cash incentives used to be my forte. In my previous roles as country sales manager for Jobstreet.com Malaysia, and country manager for Jobstreet.com Indonesia, I was responsible for coming up with monthly sales incentive plans for telesales team and key account team. During my tenure in the regional sales operations role, I also had the opportunity to review, evaluate and involve in Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Philippines's sales incentives and commission schemes.
When you hear the notion that sales professionals make a lot of money, it's very true - at least for the top performers. There were top performers in my teams who made much more money in a month than me as their manager. Their basic salary and sales commissions combined could reach 50% more than my monthly pay cheque.
If your role offers you commission scheme, be aggressive and go all out. You can really max it out on your income by being a top achiever.
5. Career promotion
In the corporate world, it's like a pyramid. As you work longer into the job and as you gain more experiences, you would want to move up another level.
From a junior executive, you may want to be promoted to be a senior executive. From a senior executive, you may want to be promoted to be an assistant manager. And from an assistant manager, you may want to be promoted to be a manager.
Even within managerial roles, you may want to manage larger teams or cover a few departments.
You can never stay in the same role forever. Everyone needs to progress.
If you want to bring home more money from your job, getting a career promotion will be the only way in a long term. For a job promotion, you can probably get between 20% to 50% jump in your basic salary. It might take you a few years to reach that kind of salary package if you continue to be on the sale role with mere annual salary increment.
Having said that, it doesn't mean that everyone can be promoted. It's only the best employees e who have proven track record, who have demonstrated leadership skills, that can be promoted.
During my employment as a senior manager, we promoted executives to team leaders, and a selected team leaders to managers. I can see their career growth today. Some progress really well. Some become stagnant.
You need to treat career promotion like a booster in your career, not only in terms of your personal growth, but also for your take home pay in the long term.
Of course there are new skills to learned to be a people manager, but those skills will serve you well in future.
I also encountered a few staffs who insisted on being promoted. But in actual fact, I and other senior managers didn't find the person to be capable enough to handle the more challenging role.
Usually, if you are good and capable, your managers and leaders can spot you. If you are a gem, you can't hide from shining.
For those of you who don't like to manage people, you can also opt for the technical route. You can be promoted to be a specialist or a senior solution architect.
An ex-colleague of mine used to be a customer care manager at Digi. After being in the role for a few years, she got tired of people management. She then applied for internal transfer to a more technical role dealing with product management only. Under her new role, she had no subordinates. Her pay was the same. It was a lateral move for her. She was extremely happy. And she progressed to a more senior role after that.
Move up your corporate ladder through career promotion if you can! But first you need to improve yourself and share your career aspiration with your boss. If you are a gem, your talent will not be left unnoticed. If you are not yet a gem, keep polishing until you shine one day.
6. Retention program / profit-sharing program / stock options
I lump retention program, profit-sharing program and stock options under one category because these are usually not offered by all organisations. It's only some organisations that prefer to use these programs to retain their top talents to help their organisations to grow.
It gives these top talents a sense of belonging. It makes these top talents feel that they are a part of the success and growth of the organisation. It makes these top talents realise that now they no longer put only their own self-growth first, but they shall put the company's growth as the top priority. They become the think tank and the core of an organisation.
What is retention program then?
Let me illustrate by using an example. In order to retain top talent from leaving the organisation joining others, the organisation may offer a two-year retention program to some selected employees. During this two-year period, these selected few will still receive their usual basic salary, annual salary increment, bonuses etc. However, upon the completion of the stipulated period, they may be paid a lump sum amount of a few months of their last monthly basic pay.
For example, if your last month's pay cheque at the end of this 2-year retention program is RM 10,000 , you may then be paid an additional lump sum of RM 20,000 (2 months of your last drawn salary) to RM 50,000 (5 months of your last drawn salary).
This additional retention pay-out is definitely a great motivation for top talent to work even harder for the organisation. It also prevents them from moving to other companies.
Usually this offer is only given to perhaps top 100 people or top 10% of the people in an organisation who are considered to be key assets.
If you are given such opportunity, it proves how crucial your contribution is to the organisation. You should go all out to help your organisation to grow especially in terms of revenue and market penetration. And your return will be the additional few months of salary at the end of the retention program.
Besides retention program, some organisations offer profit-sharing option to either key leaders or to all staff.
Just as what the name applies, if a company makes profit, you then get to share part of the business profit in proportion to your role, and your salary earned.
This is an excellent way to get everyone to be excited about helping a company to grow. I understand that a lot of start-ups are unable to pay a high salary to some top talents to join them. Therefore, they may offer a lower salary package to the candidates but the package comes with profit sharing scheme.
There are also top leaders in larger organisations who receive high salary and high percentage of profit sharing too.
If you are working for a public listed company, be it listed in Malaysia or overseas in the US, Australia or wherever, you may be allocated some shares in the company stock.
The higher your positions, the more units of shares you will be allocated. You are given an option to either buy the shares of the company stock at a cheaper price, or you may be given some shares of company stock for free.
This is another way of having you to feel the sense of belonging and putting company's interest first. However, this doesn't come with a lock-in period like retention program. But it will motivate you to work harder for the company.
Ultimately, you want the company's business to do very well so that the stock performance is good. If the share prices go up due to better profits and revenue, you also reap the reward in terms of stock dividends. And should you want to sell your stocks one day, you will also get higher returns.
Unfortunately, if it's a small medium enterprises and not a public listed company, then this stock option may not be available for the staff.
I was very fortunate to be offered stock options at two public-listed companies I had worked for. I was also one of the few to participate in two-year retention program twice.
These stock options and retention rewards came unexpectedly. They were not even at the negotiation table during my job offer. These retention programs and stock options were offered to me during my employment with the organisations.
Until today, I am full of gratitude for being one of the recipients. The financial rewards from these programs have helped me to achieve financial independence faster. Otherwise, I may still be working in corporate world for a few more years.
Therefore, it's always good if you can work for organisations that appreciate top talents' contribution.
Even though you may have higher chance of being offered all these 3 talent retention and recognition schemes in a multi-national corporations or public-listed companies, please don't discount the opportunity in small medium enterprises or start-ups too.
Small medium enterprise can still offer profit sharing or retention program to the staff if they choose to. The financial reward can be smaller though. However, if you are one of the talent to help these companies to become public listed one day, you may end up having a very large allocation of stock-options.
A cent saved is a cent earned through Benefits and allowances
Benefits and allowances are equally important, but not as important as your basic salary.
Personally, I think as long as you have your other needs (basic pay, good salary increment, good bonuses) covered, then this is not so critical. Besides, you can't make money out of company benefits and allowances given to you. At least you don't have to fork out money from your own pocket to pay for them. Your company will pay on your behalf. Hence it’s a saving to you.
You may not use your medical benefits much if you are a healthy person. You will only claim for your medical bills or hospitalisation only if you are not physically well. For those in senior management positions or over 40 years old, their companies may provide free annual medical check-up. You may even get to join a fitness centre at a corporate discounted rate.
These are all the awesome health and medical benefits that you are entitled to. You don't need to fork out a single cent (or only a minimal) from your own pocket for such expenses.
You may also receive phone allowances, wifi data plan allowances, parking and toll claims should your job require you to have such facilities. If you travel on business trips, you may have daily allowances and other travel-related allowances. As to how much your entitlement is, it's entirely up to your organisation.
If you want to know whether an organisation cares for you or not, you actually can check on its compensation, benefits and allowances for the employees. There are organisations that provide better compensation, benefits and allowances than others.
For example, my sister has been working in a family-run trading business for more than 15 years. Their staff are only entitled to claim up to RM30 for each clinic visit. The employees have to top up the balance. I personally find this benefit to be unreasonable with the escalating medical costs. However, in most organisations, you can claim fully your clinic visits to doctors with a yearly limit.
In summary, a company with good benefits and allowances will help you save money. Not so critical, but good to have.
Focus on improving yourself at work
You spend 8 to 10 hours a day at your workplace on weekdays. Assuming you sleep 6 hours a day, you are left with only 6 hours to 8 hours in a day to do other things: spending quality time with your family and loved ones, exercising, catching up with friends, engaging in your hobbies (playing guitar, reading, etc). You also need your me time to rest and recharge after a long day's work from office.
With so much time and effort spent at your full-time job every day, you should really focus on improving yourself at work and make the best returns out of your time investment.
I have shown you that there are 7 effective ways you can maximize your take home pay from your full-time job. Unless you work on improving yourself, you will not be able to maximise your returns on your time spent at work.
I see that many employees who do not take their jobs seriously. They live on pay cheque month by month without looking within on how they can better improve themselves for better career progression. That's probably why some people are stagnant at their career. If you fall into this category, it's time for you to focus on increasing your own value so that you can contribute more to your company.
How about side hustle or side income?
Is it worth your time to make extra money from side hustling or part-time jobs?
There are many out there who do part-time jobs, either after work in the evenings or during weekends. They want to earn side income through side hustling.
There are so many ways you can do your side hustling. Some people bake cakes and cookies at home and sell online or through social media. Some become a part-time property agent, insurance agent, or unit trust agent. They go out to meet clients in the evening and during weekends. Some become Grab Car drivers.
I remember this very young courteous Malay chap who stays in Kota Damansara but works at KLIA. I took his Grab home from airport once. During our conversation, he shared with me that since after work he needs to back home towards KL direction. He might as well pick up passenger from KLIA as a grab driver. It's the "on the way' thing. However, it's only one trip per day. He then spends the rest of the evenings with his family with a new born baby. During weekends if he has time, only he will drive his car to pick up passengers to earn extra side income. I really salute him working very hard to put food on the table and to buy baby milk for his new born. He is a very hardworking young man indeed. I respect him. He said that he does it in a way that it doesn't affect his full-time job. That's the right way to go!
But I have also encountered many cases whereby they spend too much time on their side hustle until it affects their job performances at their full-time job.
There was a staff in sales department who was also conducting group fitness classes as his part-time jobs in fitness centres. There was a period of time he actually left office earlier so that he could make it to the fitness classes in the evening. He lost his focus on his main job and it affected his sales achievement.
I had to hold a one-on-one conversation with him, stressing strongly to him the importance of his main job. If he couldn't perform by achieving his sales target, he could end up under performance improvement plan. It would also hurt his full-time job income. He may even risk losing his job.
In his situation, even if he could make extra money from his fitness classes, I personally feel that it's not worth it. After the talk, he adjusted his group fitness schedules so that he could do both in parallel. His full-time job performances successfully came back on track again.
If you ask me whether I encourage you to have side-income or not, my question is yes, but with a condition.
The condition is that your side hustle shall not affect your full-time job. And you shall still put more focus and effort on self-improvement for your career advancement instead of having the mindset of using side-income to make up for the lost income from your main job. That will be a wrong mindset to begin with.
Should you still want to go ahead with a side hustle, choose a side hustle that you can slowly build into a sustainable passive income.
I know of a trail runner friend who loves to cook and post recipes on his Facebook page about authentic Malay food. He also writes blog articles for his food creation. Recently, he even ventured YouTube making videos of his food cooking. He has since garnered a large followings.
He is now making around RM1,000 to RM3,000 a month from Google Ads from his hundreds of posted food recipes. This sort of side -income is very excellent because it has turned into a passive, recurring passive income. This is all happening while he is holding on to his full-time job.
SECTION 2
INVEST IN YOURSELF AND YOUR CAREER
“The best investment you can make, is an investment in yourself…
The more you learn, the more you’ll earn”
Warren Buffet
F I L L
Financial Independence, Live Life
achieving financial independence from 9-to-5 job before 50
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