Hey everyone! Happy Friday. I’ve decided that every other Friday I will attempt to publish a short post that asks all of you readers a question. Today’s question is about what is more important to you: negotiating for a raise or working on increasing your side income.

Both negotiating for a raise and working on side income are important to me. Of course I want to work my hardest at my job, but my side income is also growing at a very good rate. Both are very important to me.

As everyone of course knows, I talk about extra income and working on side hustles a lot on my blog. It has pretty much taken over my blog, and that’s because it’s the main thing that I’m working on in my life and ours lives revolve around it right now.

Last week, Savvy Financial Latina published the post I Got My First Raise. In this post she said:

I wasn’t expecting a huge raise, but somehow the raise I got disappointed me. I should be happier my paycheck is increasing by $50 every two weeks, but somehow I’m not. $50 is not going to change my life. Don’t get me wrong I love that I’m earning $50 every paycheck. An increase in income is always good by me! I just don’t want to be stuck in the pool of workers who expect and/or are satisfied with a small percentage merit increase every year.

Side Hustles are worthwhile

Her post made me think. To me, a raise that I’ve earned from my job is usually a very small amount and insignificant to what I can/could make with my side hustles. However, when I first started my job, I thought that the only way that I could ever make more money would be from me earning salary raises. I never even thought about side hustles or that people focused a lot of time on income outside of their job.

Savvy Financial Latina said that she was disappointed with her raise. Why is that? Well, $50 is still good money, but it’s nothing life changing for her. This is exactly why I work towards side hustles and extra income. The amount you get from a raise, is usually very small compared to what you can make with a side hustle. Yes, sometimes a raise can be a decent amount, but what if you want to strive above and beyond the usual 3% raise each year?

The amount that you get from a salary raise is limited.  However, the work you put into your side jobs and extra income can become an unlimited amount of raises. There doesn’t have to be a limit on the amount of income that you make from a side hustle.

 

Raises are important also

On the flip side, of course raises are important as well. Raises and bonuses that a person earns can be more worthwhile because not everyone has time to develop a side hustle and increase their income that way.

For a lot of people, negotiating for a raise can be worth more than a side hustle because of growth. Maybe a person doesn’t want a side hustle because they are happy with what they make from their job and are content with their life. Nothing wrong with that of course, and this could be a good reason for why negotiating for a raise holds a higher value to someone.

In the post, Leigh comments and says that “huge raises early in your career make an incredible difference because they compound over your career! Then again, my salary has gone up by a bit over 33% of my original salary since I started working post-college about 3.5 years ago!” This is where salaries can come into play as well. A side hustle may not be sustainable forever, whereas your salary most likely will only increase from where it is now, and will add up over time.

So what about you?

Are you focused on increasing the amount from side hustles or is a salary raise more important to you? Why?