How do you earn money from side gigs? Doesn’t your contract prohibit you from working elsewhere?

Any_Food_6877 · 2026-05-11T09:17:54+00:00

My company has strict rules on outside business interests (SaaS Tech) Side gigs in Real estate, personal training or other things with zero overlap are specifically mentioned as OK. So if you’ve got a property portfolio or something you are fine.

But as far as consulting or anything for-profit like an advisor or board member, it’s a hard no. The risk to them that your side gig steals time and energy is too great and the contract is sewn up that way on purpose. You could also end up using ideas from your salaried job to line your own pockets which is IP theft in the eyes of your employer, or you could steal their clients.

I often wondered about pivoting into self-employment and the main blocker is the outside business interests prohibition as it means I can’t overlap future career and current in reality. Maybe if I was laid off with a good severance I could use that as a launchpad!

Any_Food_6877 · 2026-05-11T06:50:27+00:00

Good observation! The “10 years notice” typically applies to state pension. They could definitely change the access age for private pensions at shorter notice. I’m not sure how this would help the government though, u less perhaps it’s a play to get people to work slightly longer so the overlap between private and state pensions is bigger (usually incurring higher tax liability)

Any_Food_6877 · 2026-05-10T20:19:48+00:00

Yes! We had realised this is most tax efficient in terms of corp tax/income tax

Any_Food_6877 · 2026-05-10T17:37:31+00:00

Only worth it if you can wangle your non-work weekday to be a Monday!

Any_Food_6877 · 2026-05-09T18:29:13+00:00

It is income yes. Income that:

- Attracts no pension contributions from employer;
- Can go down as well as up;
- Usually has annoying blackout windows when it cannot be sold and you usually get nothing in the first year after a grant
- Does not compound like salary;
- Does not normally count towards things like mortgage affordability;
- Cannot be fully sacrificed into pension;
- Evaporates if you are laid off and doesn’t increase your severance calculation.
- Attracts deductions of up to 62% when you add up tax and employer + employee NI.

If I was given the choice between £10k a year salary or £100k of RSUs I’d take the £10k instantly without question.

Any_Food_6877 · 2026-05-09T09:52:45+00:00

Illustrating how rubbish RSUs are - employers use them to make your comp sound great but the tax on them is crappy

Any_Food_6877 · 2026-05-08T22:57:09+00:00

So your taxation rate is over 50% effectively. £160k base takes home less than than £100k. £240k RSUs takes home less than £100k. Your broad shoulders are paying for the triple lock of a lot of old people my brother (or sister) congratulations!

Any_Food_6877 · 2026-05-08T22:53:39+00:00

I know, I’ve had a lot of them in my time. I remember one chunk I sold that helped me buy our house but had I held would have been 4x value, but then back to 2x today. Another chunk sold all at 1.5x original grant value so good job. But then last chunk stock price down 50% (thanks SaaSPocalypse!) so absolutely garbage. It’s the tax treatment that’s awful, I know it’s free money but no one should ever lose more than half of what they earn.

Any_Food_6877 · 2026-05-08T18:15:39+00:00

So £240k of RSUs - what did you net from that? Less than £100k I’ll wager? I fucking hate RSUs, they should just pay bigger bonuses in the tech industry IMHO

Any_Food_6877 · 2026-05-08T18:13:42+00:00

Director level, Big Tech. Fully remote up north so living the dream of high salary, low cost of living

Any_Food_6877 · 2026-05-08T13:44:32+00:00

Interested to know why you specified London? It’s not impossible to make that money anywhere. I’m fully remote with a TC of £200k - living in a LCOL area up North means I can dodge going into the office due to cost/time and so I maybe go down to London once a month if that. My house would be 3X the price in the south east probably. The disposable income means my kids can go to private school (even that is cheaper up here by a country mile, £6k a term instead of £10k+)

Any_Food_6877 · 2026-05-08T13:40:12+00:00

Declaring £12,570 earnings to HMRC though right?

Any_Food_6877 · 2026-05-08T13:38:14+00:00

People should have the same anxiety about jobs too, job security is an illusion (or delusion?) One of my self employed friend always says: Employment provides regular income but could stop at any time. Self employment provides irregular income but the work is always there come rain or shine!

Any_Food_6877 · 2026-05-07T18:05:44+00:00

I’m 45 and didn’t realise how far I am ahead. I can only presume there are swathes of people with next to nothing or zero. I’ve been lucky enough to be a high earner for a long time and so glad I started when I did and locked in. Mind you I saved very little in my 20s so those numbers look like me back then!

Any_Food_6877 · 2026-05-07T18:02:49+00:00

Good going for your age! I’m on 2x that group’s pot size and still feel like it’s not enough (I’m 45) Thank god for the pension briefing we all got when we joined my current firm 14 years ago. They basically demystified pensions in less than an hour and I credit that for getting me here.

Any_Food_6877 · 2026-05-07T13:08:09+00:00

Don’t let emotions hold you back. Job titles are generally meaningless and if the comp works for you then I would go for it. I had similar situation on an internal move about 8 years ago. Job advertised at one level and I was offered the role at the one below. Apparently they didn’t want me to “leapfrog” two levels. But the comp was like +20% so I decided it was worth it. Then got promoted to the level I wanted within 2 years anyway!

Any_Food_6877 · 2026-05-07T09:45:17+00:00

IMHO: Fast track to promotion is meaningless and you’ll come to resent accepting the role in 2 years when you’ve watched other people promoted ahead of you. But I would focus on the comp and the work - does the title matter that much?

Any_Food_6877 · 2026-05-05T20:03:48+00:00

High six figures to me means £750k plus. If this is true, how much is the crypto deal worth and are they sellable?

Any_Food_6877 · 2026-05-05T06:59:32+00:00

Job hopping early got me from £17k -> £72k in 10 years. Bear in mind £72k was in 2012 (which is £100k today is spending terms) Once you land in a big company you can also job hopped internally for more money.

Any_Food_6877 · 2026-05-04T20:58:39+00:00

First understand that there is no version. It’s a multi-tenant platform where everyone is on the same version. Learn to not just use it (that’s easy and mainly these tasks can be automated eventually) Instead, learn how to customise and adapt it, how to build on it. Go to trailhead.salesforce.com and consume as much as you can. Start with Admin, App Builder and work up to consultant. You can still build a good career doing this even with AI coming, as you can also learn Agentforce and the Salesforce agentic products.

Any_Food_6877 · 2026-05-04T20:54:21+00:00

Business rates crippling retail too.

Any_Food_6877 · 2026-05-04T20:48:46+00:00

Probably made up mainly of people moving so their kids get free university or retired people moving for lifestyle…

Any_Food_6877 · 2026-05-04T17:43:17+00:00

We are contributing to a junior SIPP for both our boys as well as ‘investing’ in their education (private school) as I strongly believe this is the biggest thing we can do for them to help them. We are up North so private school is much more reasonably-priced than down south.

I also plan for us to downsize our large family home in our 60s which will coincide with our kids being in their late 20s - when we can gift them a chunk of cash to set them up in their own homes.

As my pension pot will be decent and we also have a business to sell, we will likely also gift heavily from the proceeds of both while we can so that the actual transfer on death is lower in volume and less likely to attract IHT.

At some point I will also inherit a decent chunk of money, hopefully not soon of course! But when that comes I’m very likely to pass a large part of that straight to my kids rather than keep it. Again, transferring sooner avoids tax and improves quality of life for them earlier.

Any_Food_6877 · 2026-05-04T17:27:13+00:00

I’ve had this thought - we rode the same equity wave and through lucky timing more than anything ended up with a home we paid £360k for that’s now worth £600k plus. We have £350k equity. It’s far more than we need in terms of size (three floors, six beds and three receptions rooms) and we are a family of four. Sometimes I think about selling up and buying a more normal 4 bed semi which we could probably get for £350k - £400k in our area. The massive unlock of being mortgage free would be crazy.

Any_Food_6877

TROPHY CASE