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Side income is deceptive because the money arrives in visible lumps and the cost is paid in invisible minutes. Three hundred a month feels like found money — three hundred a month for twenty-five hours of messaging, driving, cleaning and waiting is twelve an hour, which may be worse than the alternative. This does the arithmetic honestly. Nothing leaves your browser.
Count everything. If you would not have spent that time otherwise, it belongs here.
Calculating logs this month automatically. Come back next month, run it again, and you will see whether the changes you made actually moved the line — which is the only way to tell the difference between getting better and feeling busier.
StillWorth works this figure out per item, so you can see exactly which one is dragging the average down.
Almost everyone counts only the hours that feel like work. The thirty minutes spent replying to someone who never books, the drive to collect a part, the ten minutes standing in the drive waiting for a person who said they would be there at six — none of it feels like work, and all of it is time you cannot spend on anything else.
There is a second reason too. Money in a side hustle arrives in noticeable lumps, so it gets remembered. Time leaks away in five-minute pieces, so it does not. That asymmetry is why people are frequently surprised, in both directions, the first time they run this properly.
There is no universal answer, because it depends entirely on what else you would be doing. The useful comparison is not against zero — it is against your realistic alternative. A side hustle paying less per hour than your day job can still be the right call if it is more flexible, more enjoyable, or building towards something. It is only a problem when it is none of those and you never checked.
This calculator is for reflection and planning only. It is not financial, tax or business advice, and it does not account for tax owed on your earnings — which will lower the real figure further. Check your own position with someone qualified.
Take everything you were paid, subtract every expense, then divide by all the hours it took — including admin, messaging, travel, cleaning and waiting around. Most people only count the hours they think of as 'working', which is why the honest figure is usually well below what they assumed.
All of them. The work itself, plus answering messages, buying materials, travelling, invoicing, chasing payment, and time spent waiting on someone who turned up late. If you would not have spent that time otherwise, it belongs in the total.
Not automatically — it is a reason to change something specific first. Raise prices on the slowest-earning work, drop the cheapest jobs entirely, bundle small jobs into larger ones, or cut the unpaid extras like free delivery. Get faster too: the first ten jobs always take far longer than the fiftieth. Stop only if the number stays low after you have tried those.
Not to zero. Compare it to what you would realistically do with the same hours — overtime, a second shift, freelance work, or simply rest. A side hustle earning less per hour than your day job is not automatically wrong, but it should be a decision rather than an accident.