Even if you’re getting a Social Security paycheck and dividends from a nest egg, you may struggle to make ends meet in retirement. One solution is to take on new side gigs for generating extra revenue, but as you get older, you may not have the physical stamina, cognitive capacity, or personal interest in pursuing some of the most common retirement hobbies and side gigs.
What enjoyable, accessible hobbies can help you earn extra money in retirement?
Identifying the Perfect Side Hobbies
In this article, we’ll be covering a handful of the side gigs we feel are most appropriate for a wide audience of retirees. However, there are countless more options available that fulfill similar criteria.
Good side gigs for retirees should be:
Accessible
First, you need to think about accessibility. As a retiree, you may not have the strength, stamina, or flexibility necessary to handle certain side gigs. For example, it’s probably not a good idea to work for a moving company when you’re 65 years old. Additionally, you want a side gig that doesn’t require any specific credentials or extensive training. Ideally, any older person should be able to take on these side gigs without much education or preparation.
Stimulating
You also want to look for side gigs that are meaningfully stimulating. Many retirees look for side gigs not purely for extra income, but also to stay active. Some activities are intellectually and mentally stimulating. For example, developing and using web3 apps is technically complex and challenging. It can help you prevent cognitive decline and have fun learning new things. Other activities are physically stimulating, giving you incidental exercise. For example, walking dogs can help you stay mobile and strong without overwhelming you.
Flexible
If you want to preserve the feelings of freedom and relaxation that you get from retirement, you’ll also need to seek outside gigs that are flexible. You don’t want to be bound to a rigid, intensive schedule. You may also want the option of scaling up your operation so you can do more and make more money in the future. The key is to find something that’s easy to adapt.
Valuable
There are lots of hobbies to consider during retirement that are perfectly enjoyable, but they don’t make any money. If you’re specifically looking for side gigs as a means of income generation, you need to think about how much money you can make from each endeavor. If you already have a solid baseline income, this is less of a consideration. However, you’ll still need to make sure that your time is being properly compensated.
Social
One of the downsides of getting older is loneliness. For your physical and mental health, it’s important to stay social and continue engaging with others well into your retirement years. That’s why it’s a good idea to specifically target side hobbies that allow you to socialize with others naturally during retirement. It’s a great way to make new friends, stay in touch with others, and feel socially integrated as you get older.
Enjoyable
Finally, you should focus on side gigs that are personally enjoyable to you. There’s no use pursuing a side gig that makes you miserable, and conversely, any money making opportunity that you genuinely enjoy is not going to feel like work.
With those criteria out of the way, let’s look at some of the best available paying side hobbies for retirement – and some of the pros and cons of each.
Gardening and Foraging
First, you could consider gardening and foraging. The goal here is to grow plants that are valuable to others, most commonly crops, and search for food on your property or publicly accessible property so that you can sell it to others.
There are several advantages of this:
Easy Entry
You probably already know the fundamentals of gardening. Even if you’re not an experienced farmer, you should at least be able to grow simple crops like tomatoes and cucumbers in your own backyard. With a bit of experience, you can accomplish much more.
Nutritious Bounty
The primary goal of gardening as a side gig is selling crops, but you’ll also have a cut of the bounty for yourself. With smart gardening, you’ll have abundant access to fresh fruits and vegetables, which can help you maintain a more nutritious diet.
Countless Options
There are countless ways that you can pursue this hobby. You can create raised beds, dedicate space in your front yard to creating a garden, take advantage of community gardens, and forage in various areas. You can grow almost anything you want, assuming your local climate supports it.
However, there are some disadvantages too:
Inconsistent Income
This side gig is associated with relatively inconsistent income. Crops come in at different times, and there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to offload all your goods at the farmer’s market. Still, if this is merely supplemental income, this may not be a big downside.
Physical Limitations
A good starting garden needs about 75 to 100 square feet. If you live in a small apartment, or if you don’t have a yard, it’s going to be hard to procure even this relatively small area of land.
Low Profits
Also, gardening and foraging are associated with relatively little profitability. It doesn’t cost much to get started, and seeds necessary to grow crops are relatively inexpensive, but people aren’t willing to spend much money on basic food items. It’s not hard to make this operation profitable, but your profit margins are going to be slim.
Teaching/Tutoring/Coaching
Another option is to educate and inform other people. If you take on a role as a teacher, a tutor, a coach, or a consultant, you can share your knowledge and insights with others and get paid for it. There are various mediums and channels you can use in pursuit of this. Depending on your preferences, you can teach people in person, virtually, or over the phone.
These are some of the greatest advantages of this:
Taking advantage of knowledge and experience.
As you enter retirement, you’ll probably have an abundance of knowledge and experience that would be valuable to other, younger people. This might include professional experience, which you can share with other young professionals, or simply skills that you’ve mastered in your personal life. In any case, this is one of the greatest ways to take advantage of knowledge and experience you already have.
Contributing to a new generation.
This is also an opportunity to contribute to a new generation. Through this side gig, you’ll have the opportunity to meet and interact with a ton of new people – and you’ll get the opportunity to help them succeed in various ways.
Few physical demands.
Another upside of this is that there is minimal physical demand. Gardening isn’t exactly intensive, but it can be too strenuous for some people. As a teacher or tutor, you probably won’t need to participate in any demanding exercises. The only real exception to this is if you’re teaching people a sport or other physically demanding activity.
These are some of the downsides:
Potential time intensiveness.
Teaching and tutoring can be time intensive activities. If you choose to meet with people one-on-one, your hypothetical hourly rate is going to be capped, and there’s going to be an upper limit to the number of new students you can take on. One potential workaround is hosting classrooms or online classes, where you can teach many people at once.
Competition.
Another important downside to recognize is that there’s a lot of competition in this space, for practically every conceivable niche. Teaching, coaching, and consulting are commonly sought professions, so if you want to stand out in this field and attract new students, you’ll need to find a way to differentiate yourself.
Content Creating
Retirees can also consider becoming content creators. This term is open and vague intentionally, because there are so many different ways that you can create content for others. All that’s important is that you create materials that other people genuinely want to consume, often because they’re especially informative or entertaining.
For example, you can maintain a blog, create videos, or even live stream for other people. As long as you have an audience, you can make money from this.
Here are some of the greatest strengths of this approach:
Unlimited freedom.
Being a content creator provides you with nearly unlimited freedom. You can experiment with a variety of different mediums and cover any topic that genuinely interests you. There are some limitations here, as you’ll still need to appeal to specific audiences, but you can generally produce content in ways that you enjoy.
Multiple paths to monetization.
There are many ways to monetize your content. For example, you can make money from advertising, affiliate linking, or even selling merchandise once you accumulate a sufficient number of audience members. You may also benefit from selling subscriptions that allow consumers to access premium content or dedicated extras.
Infinite scalability.
Creating content online provides you with infinite scalability. Even if you have a relatively small audience, you can make some decent money by making new blog posts and videos somewhat regularly. But if you’re willing to invest in marketing and advertising, you can scale your operation to make much more money for roughly the same amount of effort.
Here are some of the weaknesses you’ll need to keep in mind:
Unpredictability
There’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to make money from your content creation. Remember, you need to have an audience before you can start generating income – and there are a lot of barriers to building that audience.
Initial Time Investment
Successful content creators must sink substantial time into their content if they’re going to succeed. You might spend dozens, or even hundreds of hours on your project before you start seeing results.
Constant Need to Adapt
If you want to stay successful, you need to adapt. Learning new mediums, retaining a competitive edge, and catering to an audience can be challenging.
Additional Tips for Managing Your Side Hustles
Here are some additional tips for managing your side hustles in retirement:
Add one at a time.
You might be excited about pursuing multiple opportunities. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, but it’s important to avoid overwhelming yourself. Only add one side hobby at a time until you become acclimated.
Take plenty of time for yourself.
There’s a fine line between staying busy and overwhelming yourself. Some retirees take on too much at once in an effort to remain occupied, but this can have severe drawbacks. No matter what your pursuits are, it’s important to take plenty of time for yourself to relax.
Don’t be afraid to cut.
Things change. You might experience changes in competition, your target market, or even your personal disposition to your side hobbies. Whenever a side hobby feels like it’s no longer worth it, don’t be afraid to cut it. There are plenty of alternative options available to you.
Plan for taxes.
Don’t forget about taxes! If you make significant income from any or all of your side hobbies during retirement, you’ll need to properly account for it. It’s a pain, but it’s much better to be proactive in this regard.
Whether you’re looking for extra income, an opportunity to socialize with others, or just a way to stay physically and mentally stimulated, side hobbies can help you in retirement.
If you’re discerning in your choices, and you’re willing to do some due diligence, you should end up with a much more compatible array of side hobbies to help you pursue your retirement income goals.
