A few financial bloggers that I read regularly have mentioned how in retirement you will most likely accidentally earn money. As an early retiree you’ll have 30+ years of health and energy ahead of you instead of 5 or less. I never quite believed it, but I did just accidentally stumbled onto a side hustle while I am still working, which makes me think they might be onto something.
My latest job allows me to work from home, but does have an office in a shared co-working space. As a part of this space the many different start ups that work there put on presentations every week. Sometimes you learn something – sometimes it’s simply a sales pitch. On the rare occasions that I am in the office I like to go to these presentations if they are on a topic of interest for me: which is mostly finance. This type of behavior isn’t new for me. When we would receive a blast email at my previous companies that there would be a webinar about how to handle your finances I would often log on just to see what they were saying – and sometimes laugh hysterically at what passes for good advice.
So one unsuspecting day I went to one of these presentations. It was for a company that said it wanted to help women navigate the financial world. That made me curious. 90% of the finance bloggers I read are male. FinCon seems dominated by men. The financial sector seems dominated by men. How would this company look to change that? Is there actually a different way to speak to women about finances that is more successful? My first surprise during this presentation was that the person presenting was….a man. The founder of the company was a woman who introduced herself and then passed it off to the man to discuss finance….we’re not off to a great start 🙂 . Throughout the presentation men started to trickle in. The room was originally female dominated and by the end about half were men. And guess who kept interrupting the presentation to ask questions? The men. And when the question and answer period came around I was the only woman to ask a question (and it was a trick question 🙂 ). Overall I was intrigued by the concept of this business, but found the execution lacking (as well as the male finance guy’s advice).
What I did next surprised me. I’m an introvert at heart and don’t usually put myself out there, but for some reason when the presentation was over I marched up to the founder and introduced myself. She asked me why I was interested in finance and without thinking I responded that I’m planning to retire in 3 years (at that time) and absolutely love how understanding your finances and investing makes that so easy. She seems shocked and excited. She asked if I would like to chat more with her. I agreed and that night added her to LinkedIn. She never responded. I had initially gotten excited about the prospect of talking to someone other than my myself about finance, but thought she’d forgotten about me and moved on.
A few weeks later there was an email in my inbox. It was from her. She wanted to chat with me about being an advisor to her company. Sounds like a Shark Tank situation! I was instantly intrigued. We met and she explained that she would love to run her work by me since I seem to know a lot more about finance than she does (she comes from the healthcare sector). She also told me that the finance guy had moved on and no longer worked there. I told her I thought that was a good change :). That night I excitedly went through a 10 page document she’d prepared for her company’s audience – giving my suggestions, explanations for my suggestions and sources. It was exhilarating. A while later she took me to lunch and explained that in addition to the advice I was giving her she would love if I would write blog posts about my experience and finance since that isn’t her forte. She also asked if I would be interested in taking on some of her personal finance coaching assignments, which she would of course pay me for…..interesting!
If this company didn’t need to make money for its investors I might be interested for the long haul! I was finally working with my dream subject (finance) though I wasn’t getting paid for it…yet. Side hustles are real and really do come out of no where. And it didn’t stop there. During that meeting another one came up: one of her business finance coaching clients was looking for marketing help. Would I like to do it on the side? I told her I like my evenings too much 🙂 , but a 1 hour meeting yielded 2 possible income streams. Amazing. I guess I should prepare myself to make more accidental money in retirement.
UPDATE: …or maybe not 🙂 . This never came to fruition, which I think is lucky because I don’t want to be a financial advisor.