So, it’s been a short while. I took a holiday. Though while up the great ocean road, posing in MacKenzie falls, or exploring the quaint Adelaide (and obviously visiting Scary canary while in Sydney, everyone’s favourite trashy night out), my head was still turning with ideas.

How would I create sustainable income? How much would I need to be making per week? Is this really what I want?

I questioned myself, so I had to answer.

I’m no genius, so winning the money game was going to have to be made simple. I need to spend far less than I earn, and with the money saved, it should be generating passive income, or invested into skills that can create active income.

For example, whether I’m earning $300 or $3000 a week, my goal is to have my weekly expenses less than $230 a week. Many would say that’s impossible, especially as I’m living in Melbourne right now.

Let me break it down:

I currently pay $130 rent in a sharehouse, and if I cook every day of the week, and bulk meal prep Woolie’s finest tuna pasta, instant porridge and even more tuna and sweetcorn sandwiches, I could eat for $50, as a overestimate. About 30$ transport, that leaves me 20$ for a bag of goon and an uber from the Lucky Coq on Chapel St, if need be, or an interesting book, depending on my mood.

Some may say that doesn’t constitute a happy life, but I would disagree. I believe when confining someone to very strict rules with how they can waste their money, they will become more apt at finding ways to maximise their time, and creativity. I also would argue RnB tracks, 1AM on a friday, half a bag of goon down is really as good as it gets.

…S0, what will I do with that money saved?

This is where I guess the ‘hustle’ comes in. I want to develop professional, transferable skills. I want to learn how to invest, how to spot a good opportunity for growth. This I will do by reading and researching. There’s no point having thousands of dollars sitting there, it should be invested in something that gives back. Hopefully, eventually, my passive income will exceed my expenses and then I’m golden.

I also want to develop skills that will be able to generate me active income with the free time I have on the side of my full time job, such as website development skills, coding, marketing and writing.

This sounds like a lot, and it is and I’ll have to focus it all down. But you may have gathered by now I’ll probably just try and do it all anyway.

So, the next step in the quest is to figure out what the prize will actually cost.

University in Australia is not cheap, with Melbourne being the best, it is also the most expensive. It costs 42000$ per year in tuition fees alone. Melbourne is expensive to live in too, with my weekly living expenses ranging from $250 p/week, to 500$ depending on where I am staying, what extra curricular I purchase and my lifestyle choices. Assuming I live in Australia for 49 weeks p/year, and including initial start up costs (estimating $2500 for flights, furniture, insurance, visa). An estimated price is around 65000$ per year, which for a 5 year study period could reach around 325000$. This is a very pessimistic estimation, it could be 275000$ or even less actually, but preparing for the worst case is the best way to do it.

It’s 5 year for the degree, as I’m planning on doing a concurrent diploma with honours. I’d probably want to start study in 2021, hopefully semester one.

For those who don’t know, Australia universities work a bit different to the UK ones (or at least Melbourne), where intake starts after their summer and winter (Feb and July respectively). This gives me around 2-2.5 years to save, and then 5 years of working while at uni.

I don’t come from a rich family. I’m not a secret millionaire. Even if my parents save up with me and take a loan, it wouldn’t be enough. I estimate over the 7 years I need to have saved up 150-225k of the costs. These are the numbers. Clearly just working hard won’t be enough.

Hence the name of this blog. I’m going to have to work smart and find a way to generate alternate sources of income. I’ll explain all of the things I try, my failures, and hopefully my successes.