theChanel via flickr
When most people start earning a decent side income from their online ventures, they quit their day job and focus entirely on building their empire. I want to explore this idea, asking if is best to keep you day job or get rid of it. As I start to build up my side business (and businesses in the future), I have started to ask myself this very question. I want to suggest a different answer to this question.
Quitting My Day Job
Having enough money from my side ventures would be such an encouraging thing. In theory it would suggest that I can do even more with my skills and efforts if I had more time. Quitting my day job would give me a lot more time to focus on these online efforts, as well as planning my entry into real estate investing. While I like my job in many ways, I don’t see it as my career and it can be somewhat monotonous at times.
The only downside to getting more free time when quitting my day job is that I’m not guaranteed to increase my income right now. While I have been successful in growing my first blog to make money, I can’t guarantee that it will continue to grow or that my other blogs will be as successful. There’s a good chance, but nothing guaranteed.
Keeping My Day Job
Staying at my current employer as I continue to work on my side income would offer me great security. It might limit the time that I can invest in expanding my side ventures, but it is a huge safety net. Giving that up would be hard, even if I was earning just as much online as I do at my day job.
Earning the same amount online doesn’t mean that you are bringing home just as much. Going to self-employment means paying your own taxes and healthcare. Thankfully my wife works and I could easily get on her healthcare plan for not too much more, but it is something else where I would lose. In addition to that, I would also lose my ability to contribute to my current employers 403b plan. This is what most concerns me in the switch. My employer offers a decent match and that is hard to give up.
It is for this reason, that I want to keep my day job, for at least a couple of years after being able to replace it. If I start to make close to my regular salary with my income streams within the next year, I plan to maintain my current employment and maximize my 403b contributions. This may not sound that radical, but consider that I make less than three times the yearly contribution limit, it is quite radical. This would be taking almost half of my check and saving it for the future. This means that my retirement fund radically increases in little to no time.
I can’t keep up the pace of investing lots of my free time in my online sites while also working full-time forever. This is why I would only do this for a couple of years beyond the point where I start to make as much online as in my day job. After two years, I should be able to judge whether I have grown steadily and whether online income this is maintainable.
Would you quit your day job at the point when you make the same about online?
This is an excellent topic and one that many people should consider when moving to self-employment. Today has been a particularly rough day at work, I even came close to beginning to write up my 2 weeks notice.
I realize, though, that I have no fallback income yet. I think that I would give it about 6 to 8 months of steady income before I quit my day job. We have enough savings to last 6 months to a year right now, and by then we’d have quite a bit more.
Agreed. I will definitely not consider it until I have replaced my day job income.
I like my job and it’s amazing benefits, so I don’t think I would ever leave my day job unless my blog by some miracle started making enough that it would cover everything I make at my day job (including health insurance and retirement contributions). And even then! I like the security of a job in case something should ever happen with the blog. I’m a worry wort I guess.
Yes, I certainly understand. Thinking that I may make this move sooner rather than later is a little scary, but it’s also exciting too!
You can also take the time to prepare for going independent. You can save up a big emergency fund and max out your 403(b) contribution like you said. That way if things aren’t smooth, then you have more cushion before needing to go back to another day job.
Yeah, I definitely won’t be taking any chances without the proper safety net. Then again, with my wife having a stable job, that is a pretty good net too.
Even If I was making a full time income online…I would never quit my day job. Why? more money! besides I need something to keep me occupy instead of just sitting at the computer all day managing multiple sites. Wait, I do that at work anyway haha. My job does have matching 401K so that’s another reason to keep it
haha. Yes, the matching funds are nice.
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I make same as my day job? If I can earn side income with my day job, then why should I quit?
My thought is that if you can make that much money as a side income, think about what you could do with more time.
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