I’ve taken on a second job at 39 – I get to spend MORE time with my kids

SLUMPING down on to her sofa at the end of a 37-hour working week, mum Liz Taylor felt exhausted and sad that she had very little time to spend with her sons.

The 39-year-old maternity support worker was struggling with long shifts and juggling looking after her children, but she couldn’t afford to cut her hours.

Liz, who lives in Oxfordshire, wasn’t left with any money to enjoy time with her kids after she’d spent her roughly £1,200 earnings on bills.

“After two years [of maternity support work], I was really struggling with the long shifts I was working and wanted to reduce my hours,” she said.

“I wanted more time with my growing boys and also be able to say ‘yes’ to more [outside work].”

Last year, Liz started searching online for other jobs that she could take on alongside her full-time job if she reduced her hours slightly.

She stumbled across a part-time marketing role for a beauty company, Forever Living, which said it would let her work remotely.

She figured out that if she could reduce her hours in her current role and replace them with the marketing job, she’d actually be considerably better off long-term.

So, she agreed to reduce her hours as a maternity support worker to 15 hours a week, and began working as a marketing rep for the beauty company for the remaining hours.

As a result, she has boosted her take home pay by over £800 a month to £2,000 – closer to £27,000 a year – and gets to spend a lot more time at home with her sons.

The move towards moonlighting

Liz is one of millions of workers taking on two jobs at the same time to boost her income, known as “moonlighting”.

New research by consultancy LCP, provided exclusively to The Sun, has found just over a quarter of workers (26%) – equivalent to around seven million people – are considering taking on a second job this year.

After interviewing over 10,000 employees in the UK, it found a quarter of lower earners – those earning between £20,000 and £30,000 a year – are considering taking on extra work.

This number surprisingly swelled among higher earners – those earning more than £100,001 a year – with 45% saying they are contemplating a second job.

And over a third (34%) of private renters said they were planning to take on extra work to pay for their soaring rental costs.

Wages rose by an average of 1.6% in the year to February 2024 when adjusted for inflation, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Yet over the same period, rents typically increased by 8.8% in England, 9% in Wales and 10.9% in Scotland, it said.

Heidi Allan, head of financial wellbeing at LCP, told The Sun: “We know that the cost-of-living crisis has been impacting people for the last couple of years, but these figures show that a significant number of people are considering taking a second job to ease their financial burden.

“More employees are finding it difficult to make ends meet between pay cheques even though they are taking steps to cut back on everyday needs.

“As money gets tighter, companies have a critical role to play in ensuring workers’ pay and benefits are attractive and in line with inflation to retain talent.”

Side-hustle syndrome

Millions of people are also taking on “side hustles” to boost their income.

Research from comparison site finder.com earlier this year found almost half (43%) of UK workers were supplementing their main income with a side hustle.

The research found those people were earning around £10,800 a year as a result.

We recently revealed one accountant makes £70,000 a year after launching a side hustle alongside his job.

Many people are cashing in on clearing out their wardrobes, with millions of Brits using second hand selling website Vinted to flog old clothes, with 16million users registered in the UK as of this year.

We recently spoke to some Vinted “super-sellers” who gave us their tips on how to make the most cash from your second-hand wares.

What are the rules around working two jobs?

There are no laws preventing you from taking on a second job in the UK.

But before agreeing to anything, make sure you know what your existing employer’s rules are.

Even though it’s not illegal, some companies write in your contract that you are not allowed to work for anyone else, even outside your working hours – and these contracts may be legally binding.

In other cases, you may just have to let your employer know you want to take on a second job.

Employers have every right to do this. According to lawyer Davidson Morris, this may be because employers want staff to devote all their time to one business.

Read your contract carefully to make sure you aren’t breaking any rules.

There are also laws around how many hours workers are allowed to work in a week.

By law, most workers are not permitted to undertake more than an average of 48 hours a week.

So, if you are taking on too much extra work, it could create a problem for your employers.

Make sure you are only working the equivalent of a regular working week or slightly more.

Most people work around 37.5 hours a week.

Some contracts may prevent you from working for a rival firm, but it’s worth discussing it with your manager.

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