Gravy Time

With Thanksgiving coming up, I want to introduce the concept of Gravy Time.

Gravy Time is the time you’re working because you want to, not because you have to.

Hopefully you have Gravy Time in your day, in your month, your year, and even your life.

Here’s how it works: Once you’ve earned enough to cover your obligations, everything else is gravy.

The Origins of Gravy Time

My first experience with Gravy Time was about 10 years ago, when I was working my first real job after college. By day, I worked for Ford, but on nights and weekends, I was building my side hustle (the shoe biz).

I lived in a 1 bedroom condo in Atlanta, had a company car, and traveled almost every week for work. That meant I spent very little on gas or groceries and my overall fixed expenses were right around $1000 a month.

(They’ve probably quadrupled since then!)

One month during that time, my side business earned around $1000, and it was really eye-opening and empowering. My whole corporate salary was gravy!

Now that’s extremely low cost of living example, but the concept of Gravy Time has stuck with me since then. My hope is you can use this post and the material on Side Hustle Nation to earn a little more Gravy Time in your life.

Gravy Time in Your Day

If you spend $3000 a month, that’s roughly $100 a day, right?

If you earn $20 an hour at your job, you can cover those obligations in 5 hours. The next 3 hours of your work day are gravy. (Not accounting for taxes or weekends.)

Another example comes from Ryan Finlay of Recraigslist.com. Ryan had a similar goal in mind: could he find $100 worth of profit on Craigslist each day? If he was able to do that (and he was), he’d be able to cover his family’s expenses. And everything else was gravy.

He could choose to work more–or not.

Gravy Time in Your Month

Let’s say you take to heart the commonly-dispensed personal finance advice of living on half your paycheck. If you get paid on the 1st and 15th, the second half of the month is Gravy Time.

Now it really wouldn’t be practical to take every other two weeks off, but financially you could afford to.

Gravy Time in Your Year

In retail, Black Friday gets its name from Gravy Time. Historically, retailers operated at a loss all year until the day after Thanksgiving when they’d finally get in the black, giving them about a month of Gravy Time.

This one is probably best-suited to freelancers or people who are already self-employed, but imagine hustling for the first 3 months of the year to book enough work to cover 12 months worth of expenses.

You could keep working, or not. The next 9 months are Gravy Time.

Is that exciting? Empowering?

Gravy Time in Your Life

Gravy Time in your life is just another way of saying you’re financially independent. Income from assets you control covers your expected expenses … for life.

Maybe you accomplish this through a portfolio of real estate properties. Or maybe a large nest egg of stock market investments.

At that point, you can work on whatever excites you the most without having to worry about the day-to-day cash flow.

We’re working to get to Gravy Time, and then the question is, what’s next?

I don’t know, but everything else is gravy.

Source