Australians battling a cost-of-living crisis are turning to lucrative side hustles to pay their bills and earning up to an extra $48,000 per year.
Brittany Davidson, a 27-year-old mum from Canberra, has been making extra money on the side by finding rental properties for rich investors, mystery shopping for big corporations and even writing funeral eulogies.
The qualified baker and pastry chef has been bidding for jobs on Airtasker for the past six years, and charges up to $250 an hour.
‘I really think that your earnings can be limitless – it really comes down to how much effort you want to put in and how much time you want to devote,’ she told Daily Mail Australia.
The single mum is able to make $4,000 in a good month if she is able to find the time between raising her five-year-old son and caring for her grandmother.
‘The reason that I work this way is because I have other things that take priority,’ she said.
‘I took advantage of what I could do as a single, stay-at-home parent in the early days – it was around the time just after my son was born.’
She is among almost a million Australians working multiple jobs to pay the bills.
Brittany Davidson, a 27-year-old single mum from Canberra, has been making extra money on the side by finding rental properties for the rich, mystery shopping and even writing funeral eulogies (she is pictured left with her son who turns six soon)
Ms Davidson’s most lucrative job is finding rental properties for wealthy investors, which can involve spending just 15 minutes visiting a house to see if it is suitable for her clients.
‘Some of them are rental inspections, I represent investors in real estate who have corporate jobs and who can’t attend all of the inspection times,’ Ms Davidson said.
‘I liaise with the realtors, asking questions on behalf of my client.
‘Some people are looking to purchase investments from interstate – when you work for those more corporate and high-end clients, they do tend to pay a little bit more than somebody that’s in a different financial position and can’t afford to splurge quite as much on things like that.
‘I’ve had doctors that have been relocating from elsewhere to practice in their field in Canberra.’
Ms Davidson also makes money going undercover at stores as a mystery shopper, giving feedback on customer service, presentation and hygiene for service stations, pharmacies, and food outlets.
‘I just go in and act the same way I would act if I was walking around any other shop – you just have to have really good attention to detail and be a little bit more observant.
‘Every person who seeks out somebody to be a mystery shopper will have different things that they want to focus on – if they’ve got a promotion running, they want to know whether or not staff are upselling that promotion; or you’ve got others that are looking at food safety and food handling.’
Work agencies recruit for mystery shoppers either by listing positions on Airtasker or advertising on career sites.
‘The company has their portfolio of businesses that they mystery shop on behalf of and it can be a very diverse portfolio,’ Ms Davidson said.
‘It’s really not just one thing. You’re not working directly for any company, you’re working a middle man.’
Then there are jobs writing eulogies for a grieving individual ahead of a funeral which Ms Davidson also finds on Airtasker.
Australians battling a cost-of-living crisis are turning to lucrative side hustles to pay their bills – potentially earning an extra $48,000 a year
‘Generally speaking, I’ll try and have a bit of a conversation with the person who is looking for somebody to complete the work to just see whether or not we kind of form a good rapport,’ she said.
‘You need to be able to communicate quite well with the person that you’re writing on behalf of – talk about what kind of things they want to focus on and what they really want to pay tribute to about that person.’
Frank Hoyt, a 40-year-old mobile hail repairer can also potentially make up to $4,000 extra a month by bidding on Airtasker for painting or plastering homes either in Brisbane or on the road as he travels around Australia.
The married father of two daughters repairs cars as part of a mobile panel beating workshop when bad weather strikes, having worked in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Newcastle, Rockhampton and Gympie.
But when time permits, he can make up to $500 a day bidding for jobs painting bedrooms or plastering interior walls, as he and his wife try to save up $150,000 for a 20 per cent mortgage deposit in Brisbane.
Frank Hoyt, a 40-year-old panel beater can also potentially make up to $4,000 a month – in his case, by bidding on Airtasker for work painting or plastering homes either in Brisbane or on the road as he travels around Australia
‘With the extra work, I am achieving to getting where I need to be with getting a house,’ he told Daily Mail Australia.
Mr Hoyt is hoping to find something with a backyard for $750,000 but that is a challenge in a city where median house prices during the past year have climbed by 15 per cent to a shade under $1million.
The millennial tradie said life was a lot tougher for his generation.
‘It’s not easy. My parents and my in-laws, when they talk about them buying a house, these guys had only one job they stuck with and they were pretty comfortable – they had a nice car, they had a house and they were paying it off,’ he said.
‘I feel like it’s so hard to do what they’ve done and I feel like there’s more opportunity now to get work but to try to own a house is getting further away from us.’
In March, 6.7 per cent of the labour force or 974,000 people worked multiple jobs, Australian Bureau of Statistics data showed.
Unemployment is still low at 4.1 per cent but the inflation rate of 3.8 per cent is well above the Reserve Bank’s 2 to 3 per cent target – leading to more people working extra to cope with the cost-of-living crisis.
