After my Dad passed, I took on a lot of responsibility for my Mother. She was still living in Michigan and it seemed like the best thing I could do at the time from nearly 2,000 miles away. One of the first things I did was take a look at her bills and I realized a consolidation was necessary. I started with her cell phone bill and that’s remained as one of the things I handle for her. She sends me a set amount every month, an amount that doesn’t even really cover the bill, but it makes her feel good. I also helped her sell her house, move across the country, get settled in a new state, co-signed for her car loan, move twice again, and purchase a new condo. In retrospect, I should have taken all these as signs of how the future was going to unfold, but in the moment, I was just helping my parent, who just lost her partner, navigate this unknown world she was now finding herself in.
A little background on my Mom is probably necessary to really explain the situation I’m trying to frame here. She worked the same job for 24 years 50 weeks, and was laid off 2 weeks before her pension would have vested at 25 years. She never had a retirement account, never graduated college, had me at 21, and after she was let go from the one stable job she landed, bounced around for a few years basically doing any job she could get hired for. This was in her 50’s. She was working behind the counter at a bagel shop; as a cashier for walmart; and any other odd job she could find that was just a bit better than the last one.
I was in college and then moved to Colorado during this time period. I didn’t visit a lot. I was on my own journey of discovery and self growth, as one does in their mid-20’s. Trying to find myself as a man, doing my own job-hopping to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Transitioning from a shipping and receiving manager to a sales person for a company that sold award plaques to restaurants. I moved to Colorado with $400 in my pocket, a one-way plane ticket, one month’s worth of rent paid, and zero plan. I had shipped my stuff here and had some friends I rented a room from. I had to make it work for myself or I was homeless. There were no other options. Luckily for me, the one major way I differed from my parents was my hustle mindset. I should rephrase that and say, the one way I differed from my Mom. My Dad was a blue-collar, roll-up-his-sleeves, DIY, Army veteran turned auto mechanic turned semi truck driver. He would work 60 hour weeks without complaining and this drive to work so hard is ultimately what led to his demise. I can pinpoint the moment his life started to go downhill as when he fell off the back of a semi trailer, shattered his eye socket, his wrist, and a blown out sinus.
My Mom fell into the role of caregiver due to these injuries. My Grandmother developed stage IV lung cancer shortly after that, so she transitioned to her caregiver as well. My Dad’s health steadily declined but my Mom had finally found a job that supported her and looked like somewhere she could eventually retire from. The amount of time off requested for appointments, combined with caring for the two people closest to her during their end stages of life, meant she could no longer concentrate on that job the same way she previously had and they eventually let her go. She handled this in stride, but from afar I had confusion on how she was managing this financially. I grew up knowing that my parents asked my grandparents for help once in a while. There were certain times that money was tight, but they always seemed to manage and have it under control. It wasn’t until I got a deep look into my parents finances that I realized they absolutely did not have it under control.
My Mom is now a retired widow, living off of my Dad’s social security, in a condo that she has a mortgage for. She’s in her mid-60’s, does not have hobbies, friends, or really any passion for anything other than her current medical condition. She doesn’t have any conversations with people unless it’s her medical care team. My wife literally goes to a gym class where there is a woman in her 80’s who is a regular and my Mom is not only struggling to walk more than 500ft, but she’s struggling to pay her bills and to live a comfortable life that she deserves. It’s sad. However, it’s also a teaching moment for me. I don’t want to be struggling financially later in life. Which brings me to the real topic of this post, side hustles, gig culture, passive income, and generational wealth.
The biggest thing I want to stress here is that if you notice your parents have to ask their parents for financial help, then you will most likely grow up to be a person who also has to ask their parents for financial help. BREAK THAT CYCLE. This is almost more important than any generational trauma that is unintentionally inflicted on children with immature parents. I fell into this trap and what eventually helped me grow out of it was when I realized that I was asking people just a couple rungs up the ladder to support me. They weren’t financially solvent. They didn’t have a pile of extra cash to draw from. They were just my parents, trying to help their child out with some grocery money, because they knew what it was like to struggle. While this is helpful, it doesn’t teach you anything. Once I learned that if I couldn’t afford it, I didn’t need it, I learned to prioritize my bills and rent over concert tickets, new gadgets, or drugs. I’m not going to lie, it probably took longer than most for me to grow into an adult, but that’s mostly because I didn’t exactly have the best mentors for this.
I am lucky to have found a career that encourages contributions to a retirement account. I’m also privileged to have grown up in Detroit, a blue-collar city, with a hustler mindset. Watching my parents struggle has always motivated me to find a side-hustle before it even had that name attributed to it. I’ve worked since I was 12. In high school I was making fake ID’s with a friend, trading food from our job at Panera with the guys who worked next door at Kinko’s for computer use and laminator time. In college I was a great middle man for people looking for certain items that were still illegal at the time, which always included a finders fee. I’ve made T-shirts, sold stickers, delivered food, and given strangers rides in the pursuit of extra cash. The gig economy and side hustle culture has become the norm for people. I’m in my 40’s and I see it in people younger than me all the time. They have their 9-5 job, which likely isn’t even a 9-5, and then there is their true passion, the idea that inspires their creativity, the thing that takes up their free time. This can sometimes be considered their side hustle, but more often than not it’s really what they’d like to succeed and flourish.
I have focused a lot of my time on side-hustles and the gig economy for my alternate sources of income, but as I’ve aged, I’ve started to focus my attention on passive income. Unfortunately, I don’t have generational wealth to draw from, so real estate wasn’t an option. That also eliminated the option of buying a franchise or a collection of vending machines and then just sitting back and watching the money roll in. My latest venture is digital products, but this is a new space for me. I’ve been developing some new products and ideas in a niche area, but there’s definitely some room to learn. I don’t know how to develop a brand and in today’s culture of social media dominated advertising, I need to learn a lot of new marketing techniques.
Ultimately the goal is to be financially comfortable later in life. I am nervous about the future, especially with the constant threat of the government cutting funding for social security, the current state of the economy, and the way the financial landscape is currently unfolding. I’m finding myself becoming more and more concerned with my financial security into the future. I envy my friends who have generational wealth, have had assistance in purchasing houses, or starting their own businesses. They will always have that cushion to fall upon. But the truth is that I don’t have any cushions, I’ve realized that my grit and determination is all I can depend on when I have to do it myself. When I think about my current situation, I hear my Dad telling me that struggling for something and achieving your goal is more rewarding than it being handed to you without any effort. But as I get older, I realize that may be the exact reason why he worked his ass off his entire life, never actually having any time to relax and enjoy what little he had accumulated.