Gig work has become quite the rage as many have tired of being told when, how, and where to work. Traditionally taken on as a side job, some have switched it out as their main gig in order to create a work/life balance that either allows them to spend more time with their families and loved ones, gives the ability to travel, or just affords them the opportunity to make money on their own terms. Intrigued, I took on 3 months as a full-time gig worker with Snagajob to see how viable of an option it can really be.
Going back a bit, for me, I was first introduced to Snagajob (known as Snag amongst the workers and businesses) in October of 2019. Wanting to have various streams of income, I started looking into different gig work options. I’d done Instacart for a while at the beginning of 2018 when they were still offering a guaranteed amount per week (enough for it to act as full-time income with part-time hours), but tired of that when they started sending me out into no man’s land my car started becoming an issue. Though I love the option as a rider, the idea of picking up potentially unruly, belligerent, or otherwise unsavory strangers made driving for a rideshare company a no for me dawg as well.
After reading about apps that will allow you to work for various businesses at your leisure, I searched the App store and came upon Snagajob. I sporadically picked up shifts starting with Carowinds Halloween event, Scarowinds, and some of the Carolina Panther’s games in 2019 followed by some Brixx Pizza and Harris Teeter grocery store shifts in 2020 before taking a break from the app for a year because … pandemic. At the end of 2021, when my full-time furloughed job became completely non-existent and federal pandemic unemployment benefits ended, I decided to revisit Snag to see if being a full-time gig worker is actually feasible. The answer, kind of …
You Have to Treat It Like a Full-Time Job
That probably sounds obvious but it could sometimes be hard to put yourself in a frame of mind to treat something differently when you’re not used to treating it that way before. I’d been used to just checking into the app here and there to grab the occasional shift when I wanted extra spending money for a trip or a holiday coming up, so I had to retrain myself to be more frequent and intentional with how I used the app.
Businesses post their open shifts at different times, but I started noticing the trend of Friday to Monday being the time most things were posted. I’d check in around the same time each of those days and this would secure me 30 – 40 hours for a week, sometimes two, at a time.
It Will Flex Your Discipline Muscle
Admittedly, I don’t always have the best discipline. The pro of a regular full-time job is that you automatically wake up feeling deep in your soul that you have to go in or you will get fired. With gig work, you might wake up knowing you need to go in but still opting not to because you simply don’t feel like it that morning or the rest of that week for that matter.
This takes us back to the step above and treating it like a full-time job. You just have to get yourself in the mind frame to remember it’s not just gig work to you any longer, it IS your full-time job. While you might not get fired for taking a couple of days or weeks off, you will be broke unless your money is set up right or you have another form of income.
With that being said …
Know Your Expenses Going In
A lot of people know their expenses but they don’t know their expenses. You might know you have rent/mortgage, utilities, food, etc. each month but do you know exactly when they’re due, how much you’re going to be paying for fluctuating utility bills, or how much you spent on that handful of quick stops for Starbucks, unplanned groceries, and extra gas due to taking the scenic route with rising gas prices? Usually not.
Taking a harder look at bills and random expenses is actually something I started doing when I first really started budgeting in 2019. I set a certain amount for random expenses each month to account for things like a Tuesday matinee movie or a Starbucks grande black and white hot chocolate with 4 shots of toffee nut. I took the average of things like water and electricity and started paying a set amount for my, otherwise, fluctuating utilities. Some months the bill may have been a little more, some a little less, but because I was paying the average every month, it worked out pretty perfect.
I took that up a notch and wrote out every bill on my calendar. If I had an expense outside of a bill, like a trip, the individual expenses relating to that weren’t on the calendar but the event was and a set budget attached to it. I had a deeper breakdown of the event’s expenses in a separate spreadsheet on Google docs.
The other calendar additions – upcoming dates I was working, the amount that shift was paying, and pay dates.
I took the yearly estimated average of my bills that I was aware of, any upcoming events, and the amount I wanted set aside for savings and that is how I determined how much I needed to make each month. I broke it down by the hour to know the minimum a shift had to pay for me to take it. I usually went for shifts that made more, so I could work less.
Other Workers Can Cost You Your Money
One of the main reasons gig work is so appealing, is because you feel in control. You’re picking when you work, where you’re working, and deciding if the rate attached to that job is something you’re interested in accepting. How can someone else fumble your bag? By lying or simply being a horrible human being.
In one of the places, an individual ended up getting upset after a phone call, which lead to them cursing out a regular store worker and getting violent with the delivery man. Instead of banning that individual, the business took all their postings off of the app. In another situation, individuals were lying about completing shifts, and that business phased out shortly after as well.
In both situations, a lot of the shifts I took came from those businesses, so it had a huge effect on the number of hours I was able to get unless I wanted to go to a different location that was farther away or just choose something else altogether. Luckily, it happened at the end of my 3-month experiment but it was still a bummer.
I Don’t Want My Insurance Tied to My Employment
This is my last lesson but my biggest one by far. In a previous full-time job, health insurance wasn’t offered as a benefit. It was a start-up with a very small amount of employees and employer-provided insurance wasn’t mandatory or in the budget. Instead, we received an additional 5% of our pay to put towards our own purchase of insurance. We had sessions with professionals where we learned about the healthcare marketplace and various subsidies that we may qualify for. I had NO idea.
I’ve always felt if I didn’t have a full-time job, I wouldn’t be able to have health insurance. It’s so expensive and I’ve definitely been guilty of going without it, especially in a situation where I’ve been laid off and my alternative was COBRA … who can afford that?!
I used the marketplace knowledge I’d gained in that previous position and applied it to my new situation. I wasn’t sure if I’d still qualify for a subsidy or if my options would be as good considering it was gig work, after all, and not a more consistent, regular job but it worked out just fine.
After completing the application with my information, I found I still qualified for a subsidy and chose a plan that not only kept me with my preferred providers, it completely covers telehealth visits and provides coverage for mental health.
I can’t express how amazing it feels to get over that toxic feeling of needing to stay with a mentally draining employer for the sake of health insurance.
Is It Feasible to Be a Full-Time Gig Worker | The Wrap-Up
This was a huge learning experience for many different reasons and, ultimately, I definitely feel like doing gig work full-time is feasible if you’re looking for an alternative to traditional full-time employment but don’t quite want to go the entrepreneur route. With Snag, you’re actually an employee of Snag, so you get that happy medium of flexibility with the comfort of someone else pulling out taxes.
For me, it helped me hone in on my budgeting a bit more, built my discipline (which I hope translates into other areas of my life), and got me out of my scarcity mindset revolving around an employer and insurance.
Have you ever considered being a full-time gig worker? What’s stopped you? If you ARE a full-time gig worker, how has your experience been and what lessons have you learned that you’d pass on to others? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
