Different ways you can earn money before starting medicine and as a student
As a student, money can often be tight and so finding other ways of earning money on the side can often be very useful to keep your bank balance up and pay for additional costs. For instance, you might use this extra money to pay for a holiday with friends, buy textbooks or even just save it! There are plenty of flexible ways you can earn money whilst at university, which you can fit around studying. Read on for a few examples, including part-time work I have done in the past.
This is an extremely straight forward way to earn money fast. Selling your old clothes, tech, books etc. on sites such as eBay is not only a way of earning money on belongings you no longer have a need for, but is better for the environment because it is being re-homed! I normally wait for eBay to do selling offers such as £1 maximum final fees, although now I think it is £3 maximum final selling fees. In the past, I have sold games consoles, old phones, clothing, football merchandise and books on eBay to name a few. Other sites where you can sell old goods include Shpock, Gumtree and Depop. You can always sell to cash converters and sites like music magpie too, although I think sometimes you can get a better price by selling privately.
If you have an idea for any products e.g. stationary, jewellery, accessories and are able to find somewhere to make your design, you can also sell this online and make a profit. Etsy is a very popular site for private sellers who have handmade goods etc. – it allows you to run a small business on the side.
Selling your old stuff is one way of earning money, but you can also sell a service. If you have a particular skill or course that you can teach, then you can sell this online to people who want to learn how to do that. Skillshare is a website where many creators teach classes ranging from productivity to web design – this can be a great way of earning passive income because it doesn’t require you to do anything after you have uploaded the course.
I have never done this but it is a viable way of earning small amounts of money on the side. Research companies are always asking for people of different demographics to fill out surveys and you can earn a couple of quid per survey. Marketing researchers often use surveys to look for people’s opinions on products, topics or services. There are many out there and you can just do a quick search for paid surveys online. Save the student has a comprehensive guide to the best online paid survey sites.
This is quite a nice way to earn money because you are also helping someone else. Tutoring is very popular among students because more often than not you are teaching a subject you are passionate about and you also get to choose the hours you work. Tutoring can be done in person (although probably not during these times), but also online, with companies such as MyTutor or Tutorful which recruit a large number of students as tutors, although recent graduates can also apply. You can make up to £20/hr with online tutoring and sometimes even more, so even doing a few hours a week can be good income boost. Private tutoring can mean earning more, but working for a company can mean it is easier to find more work.
Something I recently got involved in was investments, particularly investing money in the stock market. For those new to this, stocks are investments that represent legal ownership in a company – you effectively own part of the company when you invest money and buy their shares. Shares are just individual units of ownership. When a company is on the stock market, it means they have gone public and anyone can buy a share of the company.
Investing in the stock market is really easy to get started – Doctor and Youtuber Ali Abdaal has made an entire video about this which is a good watch. There are also useful guides on MoneySavingExpert and Hargeaves Lansdown which explain how to get started with stocks and shares investment.
Companies will issue shares to raise money and you can invest in the company if you think it will do well. When the company does well, the share price will increase – if you sell the shares you will make a profit. This is one way you can earn money by investing in shares. Another way is through dividends – if the company does well, then they may pay some of this back to investors. This is a bit like interest.
The simplest way to get started with buying stocks and shares is opening an account with an investment platform that allows you to buy and sell shares. As long as the company is listed, you can search for them and buy their shares. You can search different stock market indexes, for example the Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 Index (FTSE 100), which shows the 100 largest companies in the UK by value. There are many investment platforms out there and many banks also offer the option of opening investment accounts or stocks and shares ISAs.
I use Hargreaves Lansdown, a company who are themselves on the FTSE 100. I opened a stocks and shares ISA with them, which you can do with £100. The limit on the amount you can invest in a single tax year is £20,000. When choosing an investment platform, it is worth considering the charges they have for buying/selling shares, a platform/account fee and a fee if you want to transfer your investments. Some other investment platforms I looked at were Vanguard and Charles Stanley, although it is worth doing your own research before opening an account. Since opening my account, I have done more research into the shares and companies that I would like to invest in, perhaps now or in the future.
I wish I had done this earlier, so I would urge anyone with even a spare bit of money to open an account with an investment platform, as it is really easy to get started and can be a good way to earn money over time. You should be careful to only invest money that you don’t need, because investments are always long term – often you will have to keep the money invested for 5-10 years or sometimes longer before seeing any reward.
Another investment you can make is in cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is a form of digital currency which unlike normal currency, does not move between banks – it is transferred directly between individuals. Transactions are recorded on a blockchain (a public digital ledger), which is encrypted using cryptography. You don’t have to understand the ins and outs of cryptocurrencies to buy and sell them though, but here is a useful guide.
The easiest way to buy cryptocurrency is through an exchange, similar to a currency exchange, where you just exchange other currencies for cryptocurrency. Choosing an exchange is fairly straightforward because there are many out there, although watch out for potential fake ones. A few examples are CEX.io, Coinbase and Coinmama. Once you have chosen one, set up an account where you will essentially have a digital wallet and then you can start purchasing cryptocurrency. There will be an exchange rate between other currencies and cryptocurrencies and after buying you can sell to get the currency back which you bought it with.
The most popular cryptocurrency is Bitcoin, which has made news in recent years due to its huge increase in value. El Salvador was the first country to make Bitcoin legal tender, doing so in June 2021. Tesla also made headlines when they announced you could buy their cars using Bitcoin – although they have since announced they are not accepting Bitcoin due to climate change. Mining cryptocurrencies can require a lot of computing power and is carbon intensive – therefore adding to the climate crisis. For this reason, you may choose to avoid buying any Bitcoin. One of my friends bought Bitcoin just over a year ago and has made a tasty profit during 2020. Early adopters however, would have made hundreds of thousands or even millions of pounds by now. Cryptocurrency is riskier than investing in stocks and shares, so if you were to choose one I would definitely go with the latter.
Of course a straightforward way to earn money is to find a part-time job! You can start working even whilst doing A-levels and it can be anything from working in retail stores to waiting tables. There are always companies looking for part-time workers and you can browse various job sites looking for part-time work. The hospitality sector is often popular among students because the hours are very flexible and it often fits in well with your lifestyle as a student. Many universities also employ students as ambassadors or guides for open days, as well as within the students' union or around the university doing other roles. This can often pay just as well as other part-time jobs and will of course be very flexible with the working hours. One of my friends worked for Manchester university as a student ambassador for chemistry, showing prospective students around on open days and helping the school of chemistry. There are absolutely loads of part-time jobs you can do out there, some of which have already been mentioned, such as tutoring and others which you might never have thought of doing, such as translating. Universities will generally have a careers service to help you find part-time work (as well as advice on what to do after graduating) and employers often look for those who have done other ventures in addition to studying. Indeed, part-time jobs develop so many skills that employers look highly upon, such as communication skills, time-management and teamwork. As with anything, it is important to find a balance between working and studying as you don't want to do too much work and neglect your studies. Part-time work can have the added benefit of funding your day-to-day living and paying for additional costs you may have as a student.
Towards the end of my first year at Manchester, I was introduced to a company called Serve Legal by a friend who already worked for them. They are the UK's leading ID testing company and they recruit many students on a part-time basis, to carry out ID checks on businesses for them. If you are between the ages of 18-20, you can apply to be one of their visitors, which is essentially like a mystery shopper. My role was to visit retailers and leisure operators (such as pubs, bars) and order an age restricted item (this could be anything from alcohol to placing a bet in a betting shop), in order to check if staff were carrying out ID checks. It was usually alcohol I had to buy and the best part about working for them was the flexibility. Serve Legal also operate nationally so chances are wherever you go to uni, you will be able to work for them. Pay was very reasonable, with a standard amount for each visit, but you got to keep the item - this meant any alcohol I bought were mine to drink! Sometimes I visited up to 15 locations in one day and if they are all within the same area, it is very easy to cover the ground in a few hours. They also have roles higher up, which my friend also eventually did - this was match co-ordinating, which involved directing visitors to pubs and sports bars to carry out checks on showing sports. Serve Legal was a very nice way of earning extra money and getting a few bonuses along the way!
National Citizen Service, or NCS, is a government funded programme for 15-17 year olds that runs in the summer and autumn, aimed to provide them with the necessary skills to develop as young adults and empower them to bring about change in their local community. Some of you may have done NCS as a young person, which I did in Leicester, and so will know more than others. It is however, a very worthwhile programme, having participated when I was 16 and working as an assistant team leader once and team leader twice. NCS providers are responsible for delivery of the programme regionally, and you can normally apply to work for them from the start of the year. NCS is primarily about delivering an enjoyable experience for your team, which can be up to 15 young people. Depending on the provider, the model might be slightly different, but generally there are several waves (that vary in size) across the summer and they participate in 3 phases - a challenge phase of outdoor activities, a residential phase where they learn to live independently in university halls, followed by social action, where they plan and deliver a social action project within the local community. Everytime I have worked on NCS I have really enjoyed it and I was always extremely proud of what my teams had achieved by the end of it. It is a fairly demanding job at times, but it is truly worth it and is only for a few weeks in the summer/autumn, depending how many waves you choose to work. It is a nice way of earning some extra money to get you through the summer and you also get to help empower the current generation of young people. I am also going to be working on NCS again this summer, which I am looking forward to!
Posted by Nathan