AmeriServ Presents: Bank Chats

Counting The Real Costs Of A Side Gig

• AmeriServ Financial, Inc. • Episode 25

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Side hustles promise freedom and extra cash, but the real story lives in the details: taxes, time, wear and tear, and the quiet risk of burnout. From delivery apps and service work to rentals, flips, and reselling, we unpack what “profit” looks like after you count everything that doesn’t show up in the app’s payout screen.

Throughout, we come back to one test: calculate your true hourly earnings after taxes, expenses, and energy. Pick gigs that build skills, fit your schedule, and carry fewer hidden costs. If you’ve been weighing a side hustle—or wondering why your current one feels like a treadmill—this conversation gives you the tools to weight your own pros and cons. If this helped, follow the show, share it with a friend who’s hustling, and leave a review with your best side‑gig tip.

Credits:
An AmeriServ Financial, Inc. Production 
Music by SchneckMind
Hosted by Drew Thomas and Jeffrey Matevish

Thanks for listening! You can find out more about AmeriServ by visiting ameriserv.com. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

DISCLAIMER
This podcast focuses on having valuable conversations on various topics related to banking and financial health. The podcast is grounded in having open conversations with professionals and experts, with the goal of helping to take some of the mystery out of financial and related topics; as learning about financial products and services can help you make more informed financial decisions. Please keep in mind that the information contained within this podcast, and any resources available for download from our website or other resources relating to Bank Chats is not intended, and should not be understood or interpreted to be, financial advice. The hosts, guests, and production staff of Bank Chats expressly recommend that you seek advice from a trusted financial professional before making financial decisions. The hosts of Bank Chats are not attorneys, accountants, or financial advisors, and the program is simply intended as one source of information. The podcast is not a substitute for a financial professional who is aware of the facts and circumstances of your individual situation. AmeriServ Presents: Bank Chats is produced and distributed by AmeriServ Financial, Incorporated.

Drew Thomas:

So, I was having an interesting conversation with my dad.

Jeff Matevish:

Okay.

Drew Thomas:

And my dad is, as you know, self-employed, yeah, and he works, I was asking him, I said, you know, my dad is over 70. He's like 70, he's going to be 73 years old next month. And I said to him, I said dad, how many hours a week do you still work? Like I said, because he's there every morning at like seven o'clock in the morning. He doesn't leave until four.

Jeff Matevish:

He's dedicated.

Drew Thomas:

Sometimes after, yeah, sometimes even after that. So, the man's putting in at 73 years old, like, still like, like 50 hours a week.

Jeff Matevish:

Yeah, wow.

Drew Thomas:

And, and he used to do more than that, you know. I mean, they used to be open on weekends and stuff, but my uncle used to work with him. And my uncle retired a long time ago. I mean, like, I've had enough of this stuff, but I think my dad just has a passion for it, so he's, you know, he's still doing

Jeff Matevish:

I think a lot of people, too, are like, what if I it. retire, what am I going to do? You know?

Drew Thomas:

Oh, yeah, there's definitely an element of that for my dad, I would argue. But, you know, I was thinking about it, because whenever I was younger, he used to do, and then I got into doing it for a little bit of time too, running, I worked for a small outfit that couriered blood for the American Red Cross, okay, and so, you know, you would either go pick up, pick up boxes that at a blood drive and bring them back to the Red Cross for processing, or else, you, you take stuff on, like, routine runs for, like, supplies and things like that, you know. And it was, it was kind of a nice sort of thing that I could do on the weekends or evenings and stuff like that. And it was a nice little side gig. And now my dad used to do it too, but he's, he's done with that, thankfully, like he's, he still just does his main job. But when he and I were talking about it, it got me thinking about the fact that there's a lot of people these days where side gigs and side hustles are a big thing.

Jeff Matevish:

Sometimes a necessity, yeah.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah. So, you know, we kind of look at this, and you were reading an ABA article about this too, I think, right?

Jeff Matevish:

Like, a third of adults have a side gig of some sort, just to make ends meet, yeah.

Drew Thomas:

So, yeah. So, I think that there's some valid reasons to maybe just take a little bit of time and talk about side hustles, and from, a from a monetary perspective, are they, are they always effective? You know, what kinds of things you know, are you definitely making money at it, or are they worth not, right? Are they worth doing? So, have you ever, have you ever done anything like that on the side, like, done, like side, yeah, you've done a few things.

Jeff Matevish:

Videography and photography and stuff like that. But yeah, just little, tiny side gigs.

Drew Thomas:

So, would you call that a side hustle? Or would you call that a hobby?

Jeff Matevish:

It's a hobby with benefits, yeah.

Drew Thomas:

Hobby with benefits. I got to remember that one I like it.

Jeff Matevish:

It's one of those where it's usually the money that I make with that goes to like, car insurance for the year or Christmas presents at the end of the year. Yeah. You know, yeah. So, more, more of a hobby, I guess, yeah.

Drew Thomas:

But still, like, you said, like, you do make some money, you know? I mean, I've done things. Oh, I've done lots of stuff over the years. I mean, I've cut grass, and I've done the blood run thing, and I've, I've, I was a radio DJ for a while, and that was never my main gig. I wouldn't, if I had been born in 1950, I probably would be doing radio today, okay? Or I would have, yeah, I would have done radio, you know, as my career, right.

Jeff Matevish:

We learned last month that you walk for money, you have an app.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, that's right, yeah, that's right. There is that app that, if you walk around your neighborhood, you can collect stuff, yeah, do that so, but I really, I mean, you hear about things all the time, people talking about like, oh, I have a side hustle, or I'm going to, you know, entrepreneurship is a real big buzzword these days. Yes.

Jeff Matevish:

I mean, everyone seems to be an entrepreneur.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, or wants to be, yeah, yeah. The question is, do you have the dedication and sort of nose to the grindstone attitude to really be an entrepreneur? Right? Again, you know, my dad's self-employed. I know what it takes. And you know there are definite advantages to being an entrepreneur. I mean, this is, I mean, this is also important, pertinent, because this is self, Small Business Month. You know that November is Small Business Saturday. Saturday. Yeah, you know. So, you know, there's advantages to being your own boss, 100%, you know you but the advantage, it's kind of like growing up. When you're a kid, you think being an adult is going to be a lot more fun than it is. And I think that sometimes people have this idea that being an entrepreneur is a lot more fun than it is, yeah? Because...

Jeff Matevish:

Hey, I get to make my own hours. I don't have to listen to anybody, but you're responsible for you. Yeah? Yeah.

Drew Thomas:

And when you make your own hours and you only work 30 hours a week, you don't make as much money. And when no one's telling you what to do, some people don't have the discipline to do it themselves, true. So, you know, shows like Shark Tank and things like that really make entrepreneurship seem really glamorous. Yeah, that you can with the, with nothing but a pipe cleaner and a dream, you can, you can change the world, and if you can, God bless you. I'm really happy for you. But for most people, entrepreneurship is a lot of hard work.

Jeff Matevish:

Yep, yep. There's lots of ups and lots of downs, yeah, yeah.

Drew Thomas:

And the same goes with these side hustles. You know, there are people that advocate, you know, doing garage sailing and doing, I don't know what other, what are the, I don't know. Did you have any like list of like, different things that people tend to, I'm sure grass, grass cutting and things like that are on there.

Jeff Matevish:

You know, delivery services, Ubers and Door Dashes for food. Yeah, yeah. Babysitting.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah. I mean, although, I mean all of that kind of stuff can, can bring in some extra cash, but you have to also weigh the consequences of, of having that job, yeah, and what it can mean. I mean, first of all, I would argue that you had better check with your main employer that you're allowed to do it. There are definitely employers out there that do not want you moonlighting and doing anything else. There are some employers that don't care if you moonlight, as long as it doesn't have anything to do with what you do during the day. So, if you are a...

Jeff Matevish:

Like a non-compete type thing, yeah.

Drew Thomas:

yeah. So, you know, if you are a, a lawyer, during the day, you probably shouldn't be doing pro bono contract negotiations at night. Yeah, right, yeah, that kind of stuff. So, that's the first thing to make sure that if you, if you want to have a side gig, or you do have a side gig, you might want to make sure that the side gig is kosher with your actual gig, definitely, yeah, your thing, you do, definitely. But you also want to make sure that you're actually making money.

Jeff Matevish:

Enough money that justifies your time, yes, yeah, yeah.

Drew Thomas:

So, I think that one of the big things, one of the big examples of that, is, like, the Door Dashing and the like can, how does that work? Have you looked into that much at all?

Jeff Matevish:

Ah, I didn't look into it too much. But how I would imagine it works is, DoorDash takes a cut of whatever that, whatever you're paid from the customer.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, you're, you're, you're paying the cut, like, as, as the, as the, as the user of the app, you're paying them, and they're, they're, they're paying you, like you Uber or DoorDash, whatever, yeah, okay, but you are considered an independent contractor, yeah? Meaning you're responsible for your own taxes, for all of your own expenses, all of that kind of stuff.

Jeff Matevish:

I'm sure you get a 1099 from them so that you can file your own taxes.

Drew Thomas:

Okay, yeah, I looked into it a little bit, not so much for myself, but my stepdaughter was thinking of doing some, some Door Dashing, Uber, not so much Ubering, but Door Dashing and stuff whenever she was in college. And I said, you really got to think about this, because, yeah, it sounds really good on paper. Oh, I can set my own hours, like we talked about, right? I can, you know, do this in my off time. I can, you know, make a whole bunch of money. But then when Uncle Sam comes calling in, in April, and wants 30% of whatever it was that you made you better have set it aside.

Jeff Matevish:

Yeah, I was going to say, a lot of people have trouble putting that money aside. They just want to spend it all. Hey, I made $100 I'm going to spend $100.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, but you know that, I mean, that's probably an overly simplistic way of looking at it, but really, it's like one of those things where, well, if I made $100 I can only spend $70 of it, yeah. The other $30, I better put into a savings account or something like that, so that when tax time comes around, I can, I can pay my taxes. Yeah, there's also additional things you got to think about that I was sort of bringing up to her at the time. I said, you know, what about, whose car are you going to use, right?

Jeff Matevish:

Are you considering the wear and tear on your car and your gas and all that?

Drew Thomas:

Sure, yeah. I mean, your tires.

Jeff Matevish:

You add expenses, yeah.

Drew Thomas:

You know, all that kind of stuff, so you have got to include that as part of your expenses. So, if, again, if you're making $100 a day in it on Uber, and you're setting $30 aside for taxes, now you better start also setting $10 or $20 of that $100 aside for tires and brakes and gasoline that you're going to need to drive all around town to deliver all of this food.

Jeff Matevish:

Yeah, I was reading one of these articles that said something like the depreciation on your car. The IRS said, like 50 cents per mile, you can factor in as depreciation on your car, which just sounds ridiculous. Wow, really high. But, yeah.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah. Well, I guess whenever most of these cars are starting out at $65,000 when they're brand new, yeah, but still, at 50 cents on every mile, you figure, if you, if you drive that thing for 80,000 miles, you you've just taken$40,000 off the, off the sticker price of your car.

Jeff Matevish:

Yeah. So, it makes you think a little bit more about your deliveries, and what jobs you actually take, you know. Hey, I might be able to deliver, you know, a larger, a larger delivery farther away, but that's, that's adding extra miles onto my car that I don't need to add on.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, yeah. So, you know. And a lot of people, quite frankly, you know, they use tax preparers and things like that for even their basic taxes. They go to HR Block or wherever, you know, and they're using Turbo Tax online, or whatever it is. When you become an independent contractor that becomes exponentially more complicated than a simple 1040 EZ tax return, right, right? So, you want to, you definitely want to think about that. What did the ABA say about, you said that, how many people did they estimate are now using, doing a side hustle?

Jeff Matevish:

1/3 or 33% of consumers reported working a side job. Wow. And it said that among those 45% were over the age of 40 or under the sorry, under the age of 40, or were financially overextended. Wow, yeah.

Drew Thomas:

So, yeah, I mean, I think that there's a lot to be said for that too, because financially overextended seems to be the buzzword of the day as well. I mean, yeah.

Jeff Matevish:

Working longer hours paid less, yeah, yeah.

Drew Thomas:

And, you know, with everything seeming to continue to creep up, maybe not at the rate it was before. I mean, thankfully, we seem to be past the days of six and 7% annual inflation. Yeah. But, you know, housing costs are still going up. Other costs have sort of maybe leveled out a little bit, I would say. I mean, my gas, like, the price at the pump, hasn't really gone too far up or down recently.

Jeff Matevish:

Yeah, I haven't, I haven't been following tariffs very closely, but I'm not sure any new tariffs have gone into effect?

Drew Thomas:

I get a headache trying to follow everything, yeah, as to go on with the tariffs these days. Because one minute there's a tariff, the next minute there's not, yeah. Sometimes, you know, then it's being renegotiated, and it's, it's...

Jeff Matevish:

It's only on this product, this product and this

Drew Thomas:

Yeah. It makes your head swim. But yeah, so, I mean, product, yeah. and so even beyond, like, the dasher stuff, when you start talking about side gigs, I mean, there are people that I've seen signs around town for people that say, like, maybe not so much this time of year, but in the spring and through the summer, I saw a lot of signs around town that said pressure washing. You know.

Jeff Matevish:

Yeah, that's, that's been a big one the last couple years.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, for pressure washing your, I'll come pressure wash your driveway or deck.

Jeff Matevish:

And vent cleaning. That was another, another one that, that's been creeping around, yeah, cleaning, like ductwork in your home and stuff like that, with all the lint and everything out. Yeah, yeah.

Drew Thomas:

And, you know, in those kinds of cases, I guess it depends first of all on how much you charge, what the, what the, what the, the economy will support in terms of what you can charge per session or whatever. But you also have to think about, I guess in that case, you still have the same thing as a Dasher. You still have wear and tear in your car and gas and gas and all that stuff. But if you buy a pressure washer, right, chances are you're going to get many times what you paid for the pressure washer back in terms of what you, the jobs you book, right. And you only have to buy it once until, hopefully, yeah, until it breaks down, yeah. But you have to buy one, yeah. Things like cleaning out duct work. I don't know if there's machinery or tools involved in that, or if it's literally just a brush and being skinny enough to get into duct work, I don't know either, yeah, yeah. But you see those kinds of things, leaf raking, things like that, that, you see, you know, people will do.

Jeff Matevish:

Lawn care, just in general, yeah, yeah.

Drew Thomas:

Like I said, whenever I was, when I was a teenager, my dad had a sort of a side hustle doing lawn care. We would do 16 or 17 lawns a week. Yeah. Some, I mean, some of them were smaller, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, so, I mean, some of them were smaller, some of them were larger, and...

Jeff Matevish:

Did you have a tractor or was that just all push mower?

Drew Thomas:

Oh no, no, no, we did everything with the push mower for the most part. Everything was like, load the push mowers up in the back of the truck, and off you'd go.

Jeff Matevish:

That's rough, yeah. Good way to stay fit, though, I guess.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, you got your steps in, for sure, but that was back way before steps being a thing was a thing. Yeah, you definitely got your exercise in, that's for sure. Yeah, especially if you had a rainy spell. You know, if you had a week of rain, oh, man, it was awful, because you had to try to get as many of those lawns done inside of the two or three days right after the rain stopped.

Jeff Matevish:

If you were the people that take care of the, my neighborhood, the rain doesn't bother them. They'll be out there at nine o'clock in the morning during the rain, cutting grass. And how do you do that.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, that's, that's not easy to do. I mean, clump up, really easy, yeah, stuff, you know, and then, and again, you know, you, so I think that, I think the recurring theme that we're finding here is that there are hidden costs to doing side gigs in many cases, and so you have to account for those right before you start, you know, just saying, hey, I've got a side hustle making me$100,000 a year. To say...

Jeff Matevish:

Wow, do you want to share that with me?

Drew Thomas:

Okay, might have been a little exaggerated, exaggeration on the money there, but making $10,000 a year on a side hustle, are you though? Yeah, right, you know. And make sure you're accounting for that kind of stuff.

Jeff Matevish:

Burnout is a big factor too. You know, if you're working a nine-to-five, working eight hours a day to come home to do another side gig that's going to get old real fast. I mean, I would think, yeah, so you got to make sure that it's worth your time, you know, not seeing your family necessarily, or missing holidays or events and stuff like that, yeah.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean, that

Jeff Matevish:

Your mental health.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, difficult on relationship with your kids and can be difficult on a, on a relationship. stuff, too if you're not around a whole lot, like, you know. My well again, they are going back to me whenever we did the grass cutting, like it was still a family affair, we were all there, yeah? But you, not everything can do that. Yeah, right. Not, not every side gig is, is in, and these days, you know, putting your kid, putting your, child labor, 14 or 15 year old to work isn't, isn't, isn't as widely accepted as it used to be, right, which may or may not account for the state of our society. You also mentioned in here, um, rental properties. Talk a little bit about rental properties as a side gig. I think that's, I think that's, I think that's definitely worth, worth discussing, because I think a lot of people think they can be a landlord.

Jeff Matevish:

Yeah, I think a lot of people can. But yeah,

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, you rent? there's, there's a lot of costs with that too. You have to have enough to be able to replace that hot water heater when it goes bad or put a new roof on when you have a leak. Yeah, there's just because you can keep a tenant, it doesn't mean that you're going to make that money every month. You may make that money every month, but it's going to go away too with, due to repairs.

Jeff Matevish:

But I did rent, okay, one point, yeah. I rented from a company, yeah.

Drew Thomas:

Did you rent from a company or from a person? Okay, so you probably had an easier time dealing with stuff like that, than, than yeah.

Jeff Matevish:

Well, yeah, yes and no, because I lived in a complex that had buildings, like five, five or six buildings that had, you know, 50 apartments in each so, yeah, they had, they were streamlined on their like, you know, submitting a ticket. You know, this doesn't work, yeah, and, you know, they'd come fix it, but you, it may be a little bit of time because, you know, they only had so much staff, and they were fixing someone else's problem, you know, gotcha. But yeah.

Drew Thomas:

I don't...

Jeff Matevish:

You rented too at some, at one point?

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, I did. Yeah, yeah, I did. But I also rented

Jeff Matevish:

Yeah, evicted, and it's a lose, lose. from a complex, okay, so it was a company, yeah. And I, I had my share of issues when it comes to things like that. I think every renter does, because you kind of feel like you're hamstrung a little bit by the fact that you can't do the work yourself, yeah, in some cases, right. But I always felt, and I could be, if I had rented from an individual, maybe I would feel differently, but I've heard horror stories the other way. I've always, I always kind of felt that renting from a company, I at least, had some recourse if things weren't getting done, to complain to a higher up, to complain to if the local property manager wasn't doing something, I could complain to their boss, or the Better Business Bureau or something like that, where, if you're renting from an individual, I think some people have a more difficult time with that, because if that landlord simply doesn't want to do the work or says, well, I'll get around to it, or something like that, who do you go to, to complain? You know.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, it's kind of a lose, lose, for sure and, and not, not, not picking on anybody, but just being, just being honest, whenever I was a renter, I didn't have the money to hire a lawyer. I mean, that's why I was renting. Yeah, you know, right? So, you know, if, if things go sideways, I don't know how realistic it is that the renter or the tenant, yeah, can, can, can really do much about it if you're, if you're renting from an individual.

Jeff Matevish:

Yeah, I think if you're renting from an individual, hopefully you have a better relationship with that, that landlord. Maybe there's a little bit better vetting, or more vetting, to make sure that, that was a better fit. You know.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, that's fair, yeah. But if you are, thinking of doing this as a landlord, right? If you're thinking of doing this as a side hustle, and you say, hey, you know what, there's a couple of houses around town that I could probably fix up and flip I was watching Property Brothers on HGTV, and, heck, I can do that. First of all, make sure you can, because, you know, we've talked about that on the show before, where people think that they can renovate a house in half an hour. It does not work that way. Yeah. But at the same time, just make sure that you're, you're, you're fully understanding that, yeah, you can rent that house out to somebody and make a decent amount of money, and potentially that can be a good income stream for people if you're, if you're good at doing that.

Jeff Matevish:

Yeah, now, but so my father-in-law is a landlord, but he is also a contractor, so he saves his money by being able to fix all his problems himself. So, I mean, if you have, if you are handy enough, and you can do, you know, your good fix it jobs, yeah, you know, yeah, then yeah, you could be profitable, yeah.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah. So, I think that's, I think that's the point is that if you're somebody like your father-in-law, and you're really good at this, and this is something that you're, you're good at math, and you're good at budgeting, you're good at organization, because if you're managing multiple properties to your point, something could go wrong at multiple properties at once, and you got to prioritize and figure out which ones to fix and how quickly.

Jeff Matevish:

Yeah, quickly. That's a big one too. You know, getting a contractor nowadays to do anything in a reasonable amount of time, at least around here, can be very difficult, Yeah. yeah.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, you know. So, and then, you know, if he's a I don't know. I don't know how that works for contractor, obviously, then there's certain things he can do, but he's probably not licensed for everything, right? He's... general, like, contracting licenses, like, if you're a general contractor, are you then also licensed to do electrical and plumbing, or is...

Jeff Matevish:

For residential, yeah.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, okay, yeah. So, in that case, you know, he's, he's good, you know, because then he can, but then, you know, even, then you, even if you are a licensed contractor and you know exactly what you're doing, you still have to get certain things inspected, which means dealing with your local municipality and getting inspectors out there, and sometimes they're not quick on the draw and, right, right. So, I think again this goes, this goes back to this idea that side hustles are great, but there's more to it than, than just saying, hey, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to rent a house out to somebody and make, you know, my, my mortgage payment using the yeah I get from that house that I'm renting. Yeah, right. It's not always that simple. No, yeah, you know, definitely. And what else did you say? I'm trying to think of stuff that friends of mine have done. Some of my friends, I had a friend, once he would do stuff, there was a, I don't know if that, I don't know if they still do it. Amazon used to have a thing called Mechanical Turk. Mechanical Turk, yeah, and it was the idea, the idea, we talked about this on the show, because I gave you the whole history lesson on what

Jeff Matevish:

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. a Mechanical Turk does.

Drew Thomas:

So, I won't do it again, I promise.

Jeff Matevish:

A mechanical, or the...

Drew Thomas:

The, yeah, the mechanic the chess player, yes, that was not a mechanical chess player. But so, they would do like little like, side jobs, things like that, technology base, yeah, they would do little coding, make little apps, things like that. You know, as a side gig. There are people that read books for a side gig. Yeah, you can, there's, there's a couple of companies out there, I guess that let you do it. But essentially, you know, audio books have become huge. You know, people want to listen to stuff in their car. They want to listen to stuff while they run. They don't have time to sit down and actually read. Some people just don't like to read. They like to, they would rather listen to, to a story, yeah? Some, you know, books we, I'm going to show my age, books on tape. I almost said books on tape.

Jeff Matevish:

I remember books on tape, yeah.

Drew Thomas:

Audio books are a huge thing, yeah, but somebody's got to read them, and not every author is, uh, gifted vocally, to be able to, to express a reading out loud. And some people can read out, you can, some, some people can read out loud. And then some people can add some, you know, flare, flare to the whole thing. Yeah, so you could, you know, you might be able to do that. But it also, just remember that invests a lot of time. There's a lot of time invested in doing certain things like that too.

Jeff Matevish:

But hopefully you find something that you enjoy. So, you know, if you enjoy reading, and you can do that for a side gig, that's a, that's a win, win.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, yeah, it is. But, but you know, you have to edit it. You have to editing this podcast. Sure, yeah. You've got to know how to use audio editing software, like Audition. Or what, I can't remember what some of the, there's another really big one out there, other than Audition.

Jeff Matevish:

For, for audio?

Drew Thomas:

Was it Amplify or Audio? I can't remember what it is anyway. Point being you, you might need to know how to do some of that stuff. Yeah, did we mention garage saleing? Did we talk about garage saleing?

Jeff Matevish:

We didn't mention that, yeah. Yeah, selling stuff online, like eBay, though, a lot of people use, make that a complete side hustle. I know a guy that you know, he'll, he'll work a regular job, and then that'll be his, that's his needs covered, you know, with, with that money, and then all of his play money is through selling stuff on eBay, you know, yeah, yeah. But, but even that's becoming more expensive and difficult to do. Well, now with, you know, you got a factor in shipping is costing a lot more. And now, with Amazon being free shipping, you know, it's kind of forcing other companies to, to go the free shipping route too, because they're losing business.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah. I mean, last month, you know, right around the beginning of October, there were all those huge sales, yeah, that Amazon did, and then I noticed, like, Walmart and Target and everything's getting on the bandwagon. And I'm, I'm reasonably sure that the whole point is that they realized that a lot of people's holiday clubs get dispersed right around the second week of October.

Jeff Matevish:

Yeah, that makes sense.

Drew Thomas:

Now all of a sudden there's all these big sales around the second week of October. Yeah. And you know what Amazon does, everybody else sort of has to follow, because otherwise Amazon's going to get the lion's share of the money, yeah, by running some sale of their own. So, then Walmart does the same. And right, right, but yeah, so I guess, I guess the whole idea behind this, this episode, has just been again, you know, side hustles are a big thing, and there's nothing wrong with wanting to earn some extra cash on the side, but just understand that there are additional costs involved.

Jeff Matevish:

Whether that be monetary or not, yeah.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah. That you may not necessarily be thinking about, right? You know, even the garage sale like thing, you got got to know what to look for, you know, not to go out every Saturday morning and go garage saleing. everything, just because it's old doesn't mean it's valuable. That's a big one, yeah, you know.

Jeff Matevish:

You can tell, you can tell a hardcore garage saler or because they'll be looking at everything, but they'll also have their phone out and they'll have, like, the eBay app up and checking prices, you know, comparing prices, yeah, and making sure that, hey, that, that's the valuable version, you know, yeah.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, yeah, and, and make sure that they're selling for that amount.

Jeff Matevish:

Yes, completed, items, right. You know, you can look and ask for anything.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, you can look at these online auction houses and stuff, and you can, you can list that thing for whatever you want, but you got to look at what has actually like closed, what is actually completed items, yep, and see what they're selling for, and things like, you know.

Jeff Matevish:

And even that, you're not going to make as much as you think, because they're now eBay and all of these other applications are taking cuts too, so.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, they got to make, I mean, they're in business, they're going to take their cut.

Jeff Matevish:

You got to factor in the shipping. You got to factor in the fees. So, yeah.

Drew Thomas:

Packaging sometimes, boxing it up, bubble wrapping it, if it's fragile, right? You know, all that stuff costs something, you know, you got to do, you got to be, and then even determining your carrier, whether you do, you send it through the post office, UPS, FedEx?

Jeff Matevish:

Yeah, luckily, a lot of those, those apps or those websites get you a little bit better deal on, on shipping costs, but still, yeah, you still have to factor that in. one you said is going to be $100,000 I want to know, and I'm going to do that.

Drew Thomas:

I, as soon as I figured out, I'll let you know.

Jeff Matevish:

Right now, it's nothing, yeah, I don't have time right now.

Drew Thomas:

Fair enough. Fair enough. All right, go edit this podcast. All right. All right, thanks. I'll see you later.

Jeff Matevish:

This podcast focuses on having valuable conversations on various topics related to banking and financial health. The podcast is grounded in having open conversations with professionals and experts with the goal of helping to take some of the mystery out of financial and related topics, as learning about financial products and services can help you make more informed financial decisions. Please keep in mind that the information contained within this podcast and any resources available for download from our website or other resources relating to Bank Chats is not intended and should not be understood or interpreted to be financial advice. The hosts, guests, and production staff of Bank Chats expressly recommend that you seek advice from a trusted financial professional before making financial decisions. The hosts of Bank Chats are not attorneys, accountants or financial advisors, and the program is simply intended as one source of information. The podcast is not a substitute for a financial professional who is aware of the facts and circumstances of your individual situation. Thank you for listening. Please check out our full library of episodes, which can be found on the ameriserv.com website. You can also download or stream the podcast from your favorite podcast app.

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Drew Thomas

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