If you’re among the 45% of Americans who have a side hustle, you are in good company along with the roughly 70 million people side hustling in the U.S. If you’re a working woman, you may be part of the 51% of women who actually rely on the gig economy to make ends meet. Although on average, women’s side jobs earn less than men’s, both on a yearly and hourly basis, despite the fact that women are clocking in more hours, thus perpetuating the gender gap at a rate of 35%, side hustles are still prevalent among working women. As a matter of fact, 24% of these women consider their side gigs could become a full-time job.
All in all, there are many reasons why, as a working woman, you may have or consider having a side gig. From paying off debt, to purchasing a home or making more money to pay bills, your goals may vary. However, whatever your motivation or results may be, accounting for your side job accurately is crucial. Indeed, any income you may earn from it is taxable, which makes you liable to the IRS. Additionally, there are a number of deductions you may be able to get if and when you properly account for your expenses and revenues.
Here are a few tips to properly account for your side hustle, or at least set the foundation to do so:
Understand your side hustle
The first step to accounting for your side hustle is to understand your business. Answering basic questions such as the ones below may help to get you started:
What are your products?
Are you selling products or services?
Where are your revenues coming from?
What type of expenses do you incur?
These simple questions will help you better understand what your source(s) of income are, where your money is going in terms of expenses and expenditures, and how your side hustle works in general.
Keep track of your income and expenses
While you may not have a fully formed business just yet, you may want to keep track of any revenue your side hustle is generating. The same rationale also applies to your expenses. Anything you’re spending as related to your side hustle, be it in supplies, technology, courses, etc, should be accounted for.
You may even think about opening a business bank account to keep track of your income and expenses. In the meantime, you can use simple and free tools like an Excel spreadsheet to keep a record of these. This will help you know whether you’re actually making a profit, and will also come in handy when it’s time to report your revenues and expenses at tax filing time.
Carefully consider your taxes
Now that you understand how your side hustle operates and you’re starting to keep track of the revenue and expenses it generates, you can go one step further and consider some tax implications. Yes, you will have to pay taxes on your side hustle income, however, once you start generating substantial revenue, there are other tax factors to consider. For instance, if you’re selling services and/or products in a state where these are taxed, you have to collect sales tax from your customers. This is tax that you collect and then pass on to the state, consider it a pass-through tax. Keeping track of it is crucial if you don’t want to end up using your own income to pay it.
Another tax concern to keep in mind has to do with making quarterly estimated tax payments once your side gig starts generating substantial income. While you may be able to cover your business taxes with the taxes set aside from your regular employment at the beginning, after you owe more than $1,000 in taxes from your side hustle, you may need to start making estimated tax payments.
All in all, while side hustles are great ways to generate extra income and even lay the foundation for a lucrative business, they also carry with them important accounting and financial implications. The sooner you are aware of these and start looking into them, the better.
How many times have you started your week overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work staring you in the face? From your professional to your personal responsibilities, your schedule can easily have you going insane before you even begin your day, especially as a working woman and mom. Even worse, it can make or break your productivity and efficiency, and even alter your mental state in too many negative ways to count. As a recovering perfectionist working mom on the mend, I know all too well the toll that overcommitting yourself can take on anyone. Regardless of how competent, energetic, or indefatigable you may be, spreading yourself too thin is the perfect recipe for overwhelm, exhaustion and ultimately burnout.
There are many reasons why working women, especially overachieving ones, tend to overcommit in their families, careers and even friendships and other relationships. The root cause stems from an inability or difficulty to set appropriate limits and boundaries. For most, it even goes back to childhood, as girls are generally socialized to be accommodating, helpful and polite, often to avoid appearing selfish, self-centered or uncaring. This in turn breeds endless guilt on the part of women who cannot seem to say no. In many instances, over-commitment in overachieving women can stem from insecurity or pride.
If any of the above sounds familiar, you are certainly not alone. A 2019 study from leadership training company VitalSmarts finds 3 out of 5 individuals agree to do more than they can actually achieve in their available time. 1 in 5 people admits to have reached their limit in terms of commitments. Side effects reported as a result of over-commitment range from acute stress, anxity and worry, to draining feelings of defeat and overwhelm. Even more concerning yet, 44% of this study’s participants confess to not being fully present with their loved ones half of the time, with 37% admitting to being rarely if ever present. In the case of working women, this over-commitment is rarely ever truly rewarded, just by the sheet weight of breadth of expectations and demands on their time and energy.
How to do you keep then from overcommitting yourself when demands and expectations pile up? It’s a question that like so many working women and moms, I’ve struggled with and still wrestle with regularly. Like so many, I’ve tried it all, from attempting to delegate more, to building a not-to-do list, to even attending productivity workshops. Many of the techniques advertised out there would work for some time, until I would revert back to my packed to-do lists and compulsive “yes” habits.
When I read about the rule of 3, which basically consists in using 3 words as a figure of speech to communicate an idea, reflecting a rhetorical technique from ancient Greece, I started applying it to various areas of my work. It wasn’t until a while later that I started applying it to my own schedule, using these 3 guiding steps:
Identify 3 areas of Purpose
This first step requires much introspection and reflection before even engaging in it. If you take a look at your to-do list, you may notice that it runs the gamut, from picking up the dry cleaning to finishing the quarterly financial presentation. This can make it hard to focus on what is most important and most impactful. Notice I didn’t mention “most urgent”. In the times we live in, everything is mistakenly deemed to be urgent, from picking up a random phone call to having your brain “picked” at the drop of a dime.
This is where the “Rule of 3” comes in. After much reflection and self-audit, can you consolidate your commitments into 3 main areas? These are what I call the three areas of Purpose. These are intentional areas regrouping your most important and most impactful commitments. If you work as an auditor with a side consulting practice, your three areas of Purpose may be Audit, Consulting and Personal, for instance. My three areas of Purpose are Teaching, Writing and what I call my Sacred Zone, which includes my spiritual, personal and family commitments. What are your three areas of Purpose?
Streamline 3 main goals per area per day and/or week
If you look at your daily to-do list and you have upwards of 15 commitments to uphold, you may be burning yourself out. As a matter of fact, at any given moment, you may not even remember what those are. Instead, streamlining your commitments by area of Purpose, and limiting them to three per area of Purpose can help you accomplish more, minus the overwhelm and stress eating.
What are three main goals you can tackle today in each one of your areas of Purpose? If consulting with clients is one of your Purpose areas, then Mondays may be dedicated to planning, email and administrative tasks, while Tuesdays may be focused on client calls, meetings and networking, for instance. Picking a theme under which to place each day’s commitments may also help in this streamlining process.
Use the AIR criteria:
The following three crtieria and questions, can help to identify and confirm your areas of Purpose and commitments within each area:
Alignment: Is this area or commitment aligned with my role, skills and sense of Purpose?
Impact: Does this area and/or commitment create the most desired impact?
Real Growth: Is this area and/or commitment contributing to my growth?
Last but not least, keep in mind this is a growing, living, breathing process. The most important metric to consider here is progress, which makes it important to review your process daily. I’m constantly looking at better ways to streamline my commitments and areas of Purpose to create more impact, but also to achieve the ultimate freedom, that is time freedom.
Would you or are you using the Rule of Three to streamline your schedule?
Have you ever stood at the door of an incredible opportunity, and wanted nothing less than to run the other way? How many times have you anticipated with dread the possibility that you may actually win? Have you ever feared actually making it, rather than failing at it? That strange feeling in the pit of your stomach, that peculiar mix of joy and dread, is actually the fear of success so many women experience, especially in a professional context.
Fear of success for women is actually a theory developed by Matina Horner, as part of her graduate dissertation back in 1968. In her study and dissertation at the more than 30 years ago, Dr. Horner asked asked an audience of college students to respond to a scenario-based case in which a male, represented by “John”, or a female, represented by “Anne”, is at their medical class’s top. As a result of the negative responses by students to “Anne” being at the top of her medical class, the research concluded women experience a fear of success. As such, females anticipate negative repercussions for succeeding or even participating in male domains.
What Dr. Horner also discovered is the more women’s ability increases, the more their fear of success increases. This in turn negatively impacts their ability to compete with their male counterparts. Fear of success was also found to be correlated with women’s progress in school, where they tend to switch more “traditionally feminine” domains. It was also tied to society’s attitudes in general.
Fear of success can manifest in various ways, including procrastination, avoidance, low self-esteem, intimidation, fear of speaking up, among others. Many women will deliberately lower or hinder their own performance in order to avoid success. There are many reasons for this, from the fear of being cast out and rejected, to the torture of not belonging and losing social and emotional support, especially as nurturers. This also explains why despite the rising number of educated women, the representation of women at higher professional levels is still limited.
This fear of success in women is costing us valuable resources, innovation, and advances that remain buried in the unproductive soil of negative societal pressure. Beyond the most visible economic and financial argument, is also that of the personal limitations and even decay, imposed by restrictive gender roles that are frankly no longer aligned or adapted to our modern society, if they ever were.
In many cases, what is construed as being a fear of failure really hides a terrifying fear of success for working women. One we must first understand in order to deconstruct and challenge in the professional, personal and social contexts. One we must learn to honestly diagnose in ourselves and others, in order to limit and eventually stop its destructive consequences for all of society. It’s a challenge that must be undertaken on a personal and communal level, at the academic level, in professional organizations and teams, all the way to the highest governmental spheres, if we want women’s potential not to remain untapped for much longer.
If you are a working mom yourself, the mental load involved in running a household and caring for children is no surprise to you by now. Truth is, many working moms feel quite alone carrying this invisible load, as their partner and society at large are often blissfully unaware, or unwilling to acknowledge, the strain they are under on a near-constant basis.
What does this invisible mental load look like? On any day, it may go from having to remember the kids’ doctor appointments, activities, grocery lists, clean (or not so clean) laundry, to having to improvise when a child is sick or an emergency presents itself. This is on top of holding a full-time job, trying to advance one’s career, caring for family and relatives, and attempting to be a decent human being overall. No wonder so many working moms end up feeling drained, exhausted, and resentful at the end of the day…
This mental load is also part of the reason why many working moms are not able to achieve their full potential, losing the race towards their purpose before it even starts. It also certainly has contributed to the working mom exodus we’ve witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The unequal distribution of this mental load, along with its physical baggage of household chores, childcare and elderly care, is no longer sustainable in families increasingly relying on two incomes. Neither is it sustainable in a society where women constitute half or more of the population, and play a crucial role at all levels, including socially, economically, and politically.
Protecting working moms and their potential then requires equalizing the mental load between household partners. This is no easy feat, as the structural, societal, political and economical structures we’ve been socialized in, and are still living, heavily contribute in perpetuating it. In some instances, crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic tend to even accentuate it. There is no doubt then that equalizing the mental load between partners is more of a process of undoing archaic systems, beliefs and behaviors ingrained in individuals, communities and organizations for centuries. These are antiquated systems even we, as working moms, still adhere to and often unconsciously co-sign and perpetuate to our own detriment. However, it’s also a process that can reap so much fruitful progress, finally opening the door to working moms’ potential, and changing the narrative for so many little girls and boys watching their own mothers for cues for the future.
Here are a few ways to get started:
Acknowledge your own invisible mental load and beliefs
Many, if not most working moms do not acknowledge their invisible mental load until it’s almost too late and they’re too angry to get past it. Don’t get me wrong, in most instances, the anger is justified. So is the sheer exhaustion and pain hiding behind it. This is where acknowledging in an honest, concrete and pragmatic way the actual weight, impact and effect of this load come into play.
It’s hard to understand the true extent and impact of it until one takes a good, hard look at what life really is like on a day-to-day basis. It may be a matter of making a list of all the demands on one’s time on a day-to-day basis, and concretely make an honest assessment. The latter also requires honestly assessing the role one plays in carrying, even hoarding this mental load, as we often unconsciously subject ourselves to it for fear of stepping away from the “norm” as we’ve always known it.
Have an honest conversation with your partner
This may be the most challenging part by far in this process of equalizing the invisible mental load in one’s partnership. Making someone else see and perceive the heaviness of your experience, especially the parts of it that are not readily apparent to others, is no easy feat. Considering how traditional gender roles have been constructed over time, it can be even harder to challenge the status quo and preconceived notions.
Implement a process
The most effective way to tackle equalizing the invisible mental load as partners is to implement a proactive, concrete plan. Just talking about it is barely enough. Instead, getting deep into the nitty-gritty of daily tasks, concerns and questions is crucial. This may be a matter of designating who’s responsible for making and keeping appointments, who makes the phone calls, or who picks up and drops off on what days…Ideally, the distribution of tasks and responsibilities would align with each partner’s areas of strength and what they enjoy doing, so they can actually keep doing it for as long as possible.
Check in and recalibrate periodically
Processes are not infallible. Processes that challenge what most of us have been accustomed to from infancy are even less infallible. So many working moms report attempting to equalize the invisible mental load with their partners, only for things to return to the unsustainable normal it was before. This is why it’s so important to check in with each other, and re-calibrate as often as possible.
All in all, equalizing the invisible mental load for working moms is not only necessary, but it should be a priority for working moms, partnerships, and society in general to thrive. As life gets increasingly complex, it’s becoming a matter of survival for families, and an imperative in raising well-balanced children.
As a small business owner, you may have been hit particularly hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. You are certainly not alone. While countless businesses have literally sunk under the economic, societal and political effects of the pandemic, small business have suffered the most under the pressure. Most of these small businesses are also owned by minorities, including women and African-Americans, worsening the socio-economic impact of an already devastating crisis. Of these struggling minority businesses, a majority is women-owned and has registered a 13 point drop in overall health in July 2020, as compared to a five point drop for male-owned businesses, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
As vaccines are getting distributed more widely and the next normal is slowly setting in, a reset is imposing itself for most companies. From the way they operate, to their employees’ schedules, not to mention their very revenue-generating activities, companies have been gearing up for significant changes. Despite being provided some assistance relief, these changes are still spelling doom for many. Yet for most, these are necessary changes carrying with them incredible lessons of resilience, adaptability and growth.
At the end of the day, the main, and most resounding concern small business owners have, is around resetting their organizations for the best after the pandemic. The main question, however, is how.
How do you change and adapt at the same time? How do you create opportunity out of apparent scarcity? How do you manufacture the next normal in an uncertain landscape still ridden with crisis?
Get re-acquainted with your “why”
Crisis are excellent opportunities to reconsider the “why” behind our motives, projects and organizations. As a small business owner, a crisis of such a magnitude as the pandemic we all faced, may have put everything you thought you knew back in question, especially when faced with the horrid prospect of life or death, of survival or destruction.
While there are many mechanical, financial and tactical concerns that may appear to rule the existence of a successful business, its main driver really is its “why”. All systems, processes and people ought to rally around a strong sense of identity of the business. This sense of identity may have been altered or reinforced by the recent crisis, or may have been even reinforced. Whatever the case is, re-evaluating your business’ why is indispensable to moving forward and resetting as a small business owner after the pandemic.
How can you adapt your business to the current business landscape
One thing that has been made even more constant by the recent pandemic is change. As individuals, we’ve changed the way we related to each other, the way we live, the way we parent, and definitely the way we work and do business. More than ever, our adaptability and resilience skills are needed to help us understand, manage and overcome the onslaught of change we’re now facing. Our organizations and businesses especially are grappling with these drastic changes in unprecedented ways.
As a small business owner, what this may mean for you could be to reconsider the environment your business is currently in. Is your business adapted to the new online trends that have prevailed as a result of the pandemic’s physical distancing? Are you prepared to restructure the way you manage your employees? Is your organization open to upcoming economic changes? These are just a few of the questions that come to mind when considering where your business currently is, as opposed to where it is supposed to operate.
Check your systems
If the “why” and the adaptability of businesses are the heart of a business, its systems are its limbs. These systems and processes are the very mechanisms , from accounting to financial, that keep the business functioning to its optimal capacity. In times of crisis, these mechanisms can unfortunately doom an organization to utter failure.
Are your accounting systems adapted to the nature and type of products or services you sell? Is the way you’re structuring your finances adequate for your type of business? If your business is currently changing, are your systems also being adapted to these changes?
Overall, as a small business owner, changes are more than ever needed to recover, and strive through the aftermath of this and any crisis. Resetting priorities, motives, skills and systems is then no longer a luxury, but an ever-present requirement.
How are you re-setting your business as a small business owner?
