Why I Started The Side Hustle Fund

If you'd asked me five years ago whether I'd ever leave a £43,000 job with absolutely nothing lined up, I'd have laughed.

I'm someone who likes security.

Actually, that's probably an understatement.

In my early years, money wasn't something we had much of. It wasn't just about not having treats or holidays. It meant living in one diaper per day. It meant the church donating a car that couldn’t reverse so my Mum could keep us safe. It meant living in a caravan because social services didn’t have any houses available. So as an adult, financial security has become one of my core values. I live to know that the bills are paid. I like having an emergency fund. I sleep better knowing there's a plan.

Which is exactly why leaving my job made absolutely no sense on paper.

But life isn't lived on paper.

For years I was trying to juggle a full time career in healthcare, support my elderly disabled parents, manage my epilepsy, be a decent wife, spend time with my dogs and, somewhere in amongst all of that, look after myself.

Eventually I realised I couldn't keep spinning all of those plates.

Healthcare itself wasn't the problem.

The children and families I worked with certainly weren't the problem.

The problem was constantly trying to work in systems that often stopped you providing the care you knew people deserved.

There's a term for that: moral injury.

It's different from burnout, although the two often go hand in hand. Burnout is exhaustion. Moral injury is what happens when your values and the reality of what you're expected to do no longer match. You know what good care looks like, but you're repeatedly prevented from delivering it.

I don't think enough people talk about it.

The difficult part was that I wasn't only seeing it at work.

As a daughter, I found myself fighting many of the same battles.

My parents are elderly and disabled, and so much of my life now revolves around helping them navigate health and social care. I don't expect miracles. I know people get older. I know people die.

What I struggle to accept are the things that are preventable.

There came a point where I realised I couldn't keep trying to be everything to everyone.

So I made what felt like the biggest gamble of my life.

I handed in my notice without another job to go to.

People often ask whether I had a business plan.

The honest answer?

Not really.

I had an idea.

I'd been side hustling on and off since 2009. Surveys, music reviews, cashback, little bits here and there. I'd never taken it particularly seriously because I always had a salary. It was just extra money.

This time was different.

This time I needed it to work.

Not forever, necessarily.

Just enough to give me some breathing space while I worked out what came next.

As I started earning a little money, something clicked.

I realised I wasn't actually interested in side hustles.

I was interested in financial resilience.

They're not the same thing.

Side hustles are just one tool.

The real question became: how do you build a life where one salary isn't the only thing standing between you and financial stress?

Because here's the thing.

Illness happens.

People become carers.

Redundancies happen.

Burnout happens.

Life happens.

And yet so many of us are taught that one job is the answer to everything.

I believed that for years.

I grew up thinking you got a good job, worked hard, stayed loyal and retired from the same career.

Healthcare almost reinforces that belief. There can be an unspoken feeling that looking outside the profession somehow means you've given up on it.

It took me a long time to realise that wasn't true.

I've spent the last two years in therapy recovering from burnout and moral injury, learning to accept what I can and can't control with my parents, and challenging a lot of beliefs that I didn't even realise I was carrying.

Some of those beliefs had served me well.

Others were keeping me stuck.

So this website isn't me pretending I've got everything figured out.

Quite the opposite.

It's an experiment.

The first goal was simple.

Can I earn anything at all?

The second is to replace my old salary.

The third is to go beyond it.

Can I really spend a day caring for my parents and still earn money?

Can I build income that doesn't depend on me sitting at a desk for eight hours every day?

Can ordinary people create more options for themselves before life forces them to?

I honestly don't know.

That's why I'm documenting it.

You'll see what works.

You'll see what doesn't.

You'll see the numbers.

And hopefully, whether you decide to start a side hustle or not, you'll come away with one idea that helps make your own finances just that little bit more resilient.