Framed by his Side Hustle?

I bumped into a friend a few months ago. I knew he’d retired about two years prior, and since I was just on the cusp of doing so, I steered the conversation toward how he was enjoying himself.

As we talked, he revealed he was pretty stressed out and far too busy to enjoy himself. Surprised by this confession, I pressed him for the reason.

It turns out, being good with his hands, he had always fancied having a go at picture framing and purchased some equipment for this endeavor. He thought he could maybe make a few dollars and fill a bit of his spare time. Things have gone better than he expected, and it’s snowballed into an enterprise taking up all his time, to the extent he may as well be working full-time and more! He’s also breached the UK turnover threshold for sales tax (VAT) and needs to register with the tax authorities and keep detailed records of his sales. He’s somehow let it get out of control because he doesn’t want to let customers down.

Thinking about it during our conversation, I remarked he was maybe letting himself and his wife down, and that was possibly more important than the customers. That may sound a bit blunt, but I knew he and his wife had been looking forward to his retirement and had quite a few plans to enjoy their time together, which now seemed to be on long-term hold.

We finished our conversation and went our separate ways. But this got me thinking: side hustles in retirement are possibly not always what they’re cracked up to be. Maybe my friend should have thought things through a bit more, and although he couldn’t have known he was going to get so busy, having some guidelines around what is “enough” for his retirement project would have paid dividends. More time with his wife and plans, for one thing.

What might he have done differently? In my mind, keeping his turnover down would have been a critical step, and limiting the number of hours he devoted to the side hustle would have been another. Learning that “no” is a sentence all by itself and doesn’t need any explanation would have been a good start. He could still have had an enjoyable pastime and a bit of money in his back pocket without robbing himself of the most valuable asset there is: time for himself and family.

Because he knows I have a financial and business background, he had asked for help with his sales tax problem. I politely declined helping, pointing out I was soon retiring myself and wanted to keep my time free for my own future plans and projects. I hope the next time I see him, my blunt message got him to think things through, or maybe my more subtle message about plans for my own retirement time gives him pause to reconsider his own original retirement goals. My final thought as I left my friend was how ironic his very success has really been his retirement failure.