Side Hustles: A Millennial’s Saving Grace in a Land of Poverty and Debt

Millennials are finding new ways to financially sustain themselves through the help of passive income or side gigs in addition to their main income more than any generation has before.

Stagnating wage growth, uncertain economic conditions, generational circumstances, the struggle to find well-paying jobs and debt plague the group. Passive income protects them if something happens to their main income source. It diversifies their income so they’re never completely reliant on one source.

Take Justin Wahl, a 27-year-old who accrued $90k of debt in four years after he recovered from addiction, had uninsured urgent surgeries and heaping medical diagnoses. He makes $1,000 monthly from side hustles alone, which is enough to pay for his most of his bills so that his paycheck goes to groceries and emergency funds.

He has “stopped keeping track” of his medical record after having been diagnosed with depression, PTSD, Asperger’s, ADHD, black mold poisoning, asthma, paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia (PSVT)— a heart disease—and “tons of physical problems” that he said often debilitates his life. He cannot afford prescriptions for any.

“Being poor is expensive,” Wahl said. “[It’s] enough debt to make you contemplate killing yourself because it seemed like yet another boulder that you'll never get off your shoulder.”

Wahl had a rough upbringing having been born into a low-income household with physically abusive parents who had addictions and debts of their own. Children born into chronic poverty are much more likely to be abused, suffer from mental illness and stay poor as adults, the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) published.

He and his doctor believe a chunk of his medical issues, both physical and mental, stem from staying in poverty-ridden environments long-term. Poverty leads to poor health and poor health leads to poverty, so especially when a child’s developing brain is hindered by the effects of poverty, a generational cycle of suffering and debt continues.

In the US, many families in a low-income group (the bottom 20 percent) spend more than 40 percent of their income simply paying off debts, said John Timmer who does research at Berkeley and Cornell.

Wahl said to him, paying off his debt is an “unattainable goal” and his credit is ruined “beyond redemption.” “I was born sick so if they want to penalize me for that then I refuse to pay,” Wal said, who emphasized that he is unaware if there’s consequences for not paying.

When he was unemployed and homeless for months a couple of years ago, he was able to scrape by with his side hustle revenue to feed himself. Today, he said, he remains scraping by.

“Every time, I struggle at the end of the month to make rent,” Wahl said. He, among almost two-thirds of millennials, say they’re living paycheck to paycheck, a Charles Schwab 2019 wealth survey found.

Thirty-one-year-old Lucas Howland, also born into generational poverty with depression, said he could not afford utilities during a freezing Missouri winter for six months.

“Freezing every night without heat, not being able to wash myself and even losing access to my friends by not being able to charge my phone made me feel so hopeless,” Howland said. “I kept thinking about how I will never be able to escape poverty and how tired I was of surviving.”

Howland is 70k in debt from hospitalization for suicide attempts and treatment for mental health and addiction. Just like Wahl, the suicide watch, medication, rehab that followed ended up around $10,000-15,000.

“When you're on that brink, it's a spur of the moment kind of thing and the hotlines always are like, “have you tried addressing the root of the problem?” so you’re left urgently desperate while uninformed of the costs,” Wahl said.

Howland was denied a truck driving job due to his hospitalization from a suicide attempt a year prior. To get the job, he needed a doctor’s note that would clear him to work and the medical company that the trucking company went through said he also needed a drug counselor and a psych for approval.

“I spent $20 on my drug counselor because we are close, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to afford it. The doctor’s appointment was through a free clinic, but I had to get a friend to drive me an hour and half away since I don’t have a car,” he said.

Once he got over those hurdles, he was stuck trying to find a psych that would take him. “It’s expensive and the places that do it for cheap are so booked that it would have taken months to get in,” he said. Because of this, he was unable to get the job.

“It’s just a bad system that makes it impossible for poor people to do simple things,” he said of the United States healthcare system, which he described as an example of gate keeping those in poverty.

“I’ve accepted I’ll never have good credit, nor will I ever be a homeowner,” he said. “And now, I’ve run out of endurance to get a better income.”

Howland said he owes his survival to trading food for favors, but “never for money” because he understands that his friends are in similar financial situations as him.

Selling handmade jewelry, designing logos, donating plasma, teaching music lessons, landscaping, auto repair and printing shirts for sale are just a few of the side hustles that allows Wahl to survive each month. Getting monthly bills out of the way mitigates his costs and lowers his anxiety, he said.

Wahl’s graphic t-shirt designs that local bands have asked him to make for some extra money on the side. 

Wahl isn’t the only millennial with side hustles — according to a recent Bankrate report, more than 50 percent of millennial — those 18 to 34 years old — have a side hustle or in other words, a way to ensure that bills are paid on time. The report showed that millennial Americans are more likely to have a side hustle due to this financial necessity.

With the higher cost of living, college expenses, mortgages, rent and a decrease in real income, insured, it’s no surprise that approximately three out of every four millennials in the U.S. have some form of debt, according to an NBC News/GenForward survey.

Wahl almost qualifies to be categorized in the top 11 percent of millennials with over $100,000 in debt, though for comparison’s sake, the survey showed that a quarter of millennial are over $30,000 in debt, mostly for student loans. Medical debt for millennials is uncommon, though it could be just as devastating.

Wahl said he is thankful he does not have extra debt like student loans or heavy credit card debt tacked onto his $90k. He is able to pay for rent, debt, groceries and has the luxury of a cell phone plan by always making and saving money as an avid coupon user in addition to his side hustles.

Justin Wahl with his “side hustle” notebook where he plans his financially creative endeavors. 

Common side hustles are photography, delivery jobs through apps like DoorDash or Postmates, recycling aluminum cans or signing up to be extras in movies. With technology, side hustles are easier than ever.

“You never know when or how you might go through a financial crisis,” Wahl said months before a global pandemic. “Anything could happen in America.”