The whole website is dedicated to provide people advice on how to make money, save money and live a better life. Often, when people come to this site they are looking for a way to earn extra money but the one sure fire way to make extra money is to get another job. You can take that one of two ways, get a higher paid, better job or quite literally, get another job on top of the one you already have.
Now everyone’s circumstances are different and realistically getting a second job isn’t going to work if you are sole carer/parent unless you have some very helpful grandparents.
I want to try and give a little perspective here. If you’re on a minimum wage job, try and get one that’s above minimum wage. You probably read that and wanted to scream as is so blatantly obvious and probably a little insulting but let’s just think about it for a second. Let’s say you work in a warehouse, there’s a warehouse across the industrial estate pay £0.50p per hour more, you probably wouldn’t apply. You like where you work, the people are nice, you’re comfortable but that 50p an hour over a 40 hour week and 52 weeks a year is £1,040 you’ve just lost out on. Even if you want to calculate the extra after tax, you’re around £832. I’m going to holiday to Crete in May for £699, that pay rise would pay for it. Not a warehouse worker? Same applies for coffee shops, shop assistants, anything like that.
A second job, the idea of it puts most people off and there are tax implications if you already earn over your tax free allowance. More often than not you will be put on a basic rate (BR) tax code meaning you are deducted a straight 20% tax with no tax relief, your tax relief is already included in your primary job. This means for every £1 earned in your second job, the government initially taxes you £0.20 leaving you with £0.80 to take home. However, every tax year you can claim a tax rebate for any overpaid tax which is highly likely if you have 2 jobs or more.
My advice is to do both, find a higher paid primary job and find a second job, even if the second job is only for a few weeks to try it out or until you get that higher paid job.