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Financial Samurai

Slicing Through Money's Mysteries

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Should You Write A Book? Pros And Cons Of Being An Author

Updated: 03/06/2023 by Financial Samurai 43 Comments

So you want to write a book but aren’t sure if it’s worth your time. As a published author of both an ebook and a traditional hardcover book, let me share with you the pros and cons of being an author.

Given the success of my Wall Street Journal bestseller, Buy This, Not That, I’ve been given another book deal by Portfolio Penguin Random House. Therefore, this post will not only help you decide whether to write a book, but it will also help me decide whether to write another book too!

It’s funny, but the whole premise of Buy This, Not That is trying to decide between two difficult choices. With careful analysis, my goal is to help readers make optimal decisions to live their best lives and minimize regret.

So here goes another thought exercise for creatives willing to put themselves out there.



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How To Make Over $100 An Hour Driving For Uber

Updated: 02/11/2022 by Financial Samurai 112 Comments

Uber $100 an hour wage

Driving for Uber is one way to earn extra side hustle income. After all, the more income you make, the sooner you can reach financial independence. Side hustles are a part of the post-pandemic era of making money.

Uber is currently DESPERATE for drivers again as the economy rebounds from the pandemic. A lot of drivers quit driving in 2020 for safety and lower pay reasons. Drivers are coming back, but not fast enough.

For those of you who would like to join the Six Figure Club (SFC), it’s relatively straight forward. Charge $50 an hour for 40 hours a week for 52 weeks in a row and you’ll get the SFC invite in the mail! Of course, you’ve first got to develop some valuable skills, but that’s what college and all those extra hours side hustling were for.

If you make $100 an hour working 40 hours a week, you can make $17,333 a month and $208,000 a year. That’s when you’ll really be able to live comfortably in any expensive city in the world.

With my most recent Uber pay stub, I just might have found a way to get there after only three months of driving. The great thing is that if you have a car, a relatively clean record, a smartphone, and a willingness to hustle, you can probably earn six figures from Uber as well.



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The Freelance Writing Lifestyle: An Easy Way To Make Money Online

Updated: 08/03/2021 by Financial Samurai 44 Comments

Club Thrifty Freelance Writing

The following is a guest post by Holly, a freelancer writer and blogger I’ve known for over five years. I’ve seen her grow her side-hustle, ClubThrifty.com from a tiny site to one that has allowed her and her husband, Greg to quit their day jobs.

Freelance writing is the easiest way to get started making money online. I did some various freelance writing after I left my day job just to make sure I wouldn’t starve to death. Despite receiving a severance and having passive income streams, I’m never 100% sure I’m doing the right thing until a long enough time passes. 

Freelance writing is also one of the main reasons why I’ll never be scared of running out of money again. I know that if all else fails, I can tap my network of startups I’ve cultivated since 2012 for writing assignments. Once you become an established online writer, you can easily make more than the median household income earns a year. Take it away Holly!

As someone who gets paid to create interesting content for the web, I recognize writing talent in everyday people all the time. Sometimes it’s a thoughtful and poetic Facebook post crafted by someone I know. Other times, it’s a witty email, a clever take on an issue, or a handwritten card filled with all the right words.

That doesn’t mean everyone wants to write for a living, but some people absolutely do. Over the years, I’ve watched several of my friends take up blogging to express themselves and (hopefully) begin a digital career. Unfortunately, far too many never blog long enough to build anything meaningful. It’s hard at first, they’ll say, and there are few rewards for someone just starting out.

One of my friends, Karen, is the perfect example of a would-be writer who couldn’t hang in there. After brainstorming passionately for months, she started a blog of her own and poured everything she had into it. But, just a few months later, I noticed she, too, sputtered out.

She worked in a grueling job with hectic hours and desperately needed a change, yet she couldn’t juggle both the blogging and the career. Frustrated, she chose to settle on her regular, 9-5 job. For all the talent she had, giving up was such a shame.

Then again, I totally understood where she was coming from. I could have ended up just like Karen. In fact, I was Karen at least five or six times. When my husband and I started our blog in 2011, I quit at least once per month. I had a full-time job that consumed most of my waking hours, and seemingly, my life force. Oh, and I also had two kids under the age of three.



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Are You Too Proud To Be Rich? When Uber Drivers Make More Than Most Uber Employees

Updated: 02/20/2023 by Financial Samurai 87 Comments

Elroy, a top Uber referrer

Most people dream about getting rich. Yet, many of those people aren’t willing to put in the work. Are you too proud to be rich? I hope not!

Let me share with you some great insights I learned from a visit I had to Uber’s corporate office in San Francisco years ago.

I, along with several other drivers met with Uber’s marketing and operations team in their offices for being the Bay Area’s top referrers.

As a “reward,” they fed us some Delfino’s pizza and picked our brains on how we were able to get to the top. Then, they pitched us on their new referral system to potentially make all of us more money.

Top Uber Drivers Are Not Too Proud To Be Rich

Having already partied w/ Travis Kalanick, Uber’s billionaire co-founder, at The Foo Fighters concert, I figured I might as well check out the rest of the staff even though I knew this would take a couple hours.

I wanted to know what type of people are able to get jobs at Uber because I certainly couldn’t. What does the corporate employee demographic look like and how do their minds think?

Unsurprisingly, the marketing and operations team members were on the younger side. Seven were Caucasian, two were Asian, six were female, and three were male. All were very nice. From what I could tell from their LinkedIn profiles, none of them went to public universities either.

Then there were us top referrers, all minorities, all from public schools, mostly first generation immigrants, and all but one making way more than our Uber corporate counterparts. An interesting contrast!



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Why Would An Aerospace Engineer Want To Be An Uber Driver?

Updated: 01/05/2023 by Financial Samurai 39 Comments

Uber Driver
Harry Ubering

Previously, I had written about my struggling friend Jabir who was unemployed for a couple years before he discovered Uber. He drove for Uber for a year before switching over to be a dedicated hotel driver. In this post, my other friend Harry shares why he drives for Uber even though he’s financially thriving. Enjoy!    

Normally when I’m out putting around in my SUV driving people around for Uber (or Lyft – I do both), the first question they ask is: “So do you do this full time?”  Reluctantly, I usually tell them, “No, I also work for an engineering company as an aerospace engineer.” (odds are, if you’ve ever flown, you’ve been on one of our planes). It’s not that I’m embarrassed to be a full time engineer/part time Uber driver, but it always elicits a very strange reaction from my passengers.

Why would anyone who has a perfectly good job want to drive around a bunch of jokers during his free time? They don’t outright say it, but I’m sure that’s what they’re thinking. But there are actually a lot of reasons why I enjoy it and as you may have guessed, it’s not just about the money. Well a big part of it is about the money, so let’s explore that a little more first:



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Negotiate Better Deals With BATNA: A Winning Uber Transaction

Updated: 01/14/2021 by Financial Samurai 65 Comments

Negotiating using the BATNA technique is huge for saving you money or making you more money.

Last year, after playing an afternoon tennis match at my club, I decided to switch on my Uber driver app to try and catch a fare heading home. Making money by going in a direction I planned to go anyway feels great if it works. This was before Uber came out with their new tool to allow for direction-based rides based on a pre-inputted destination address.

My tennis club is in the middle of the city, so I knew my chances were less than 30% to head back west since 70% of the population of SF lives on the eastern half. I’m a gambling man and this time I lost. I picked up a mother daughter couple close to my club who were headed northeast to their hotel at Fisherman’s Wharf. Oh well, at least I’d make about $15 and perhaps catch some surge fares down there heading back west.

The daughter told me she just started attending Cal Berkeley, my business school alma mater, so we got into an engaging discussion on the importance of figuring out how to leverage the internet to make a a better living if she learned only one thing in college. She agreed. 



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What’s It Like Driving For Uber? Mixed Emotions Of Hope And Sadness

Updated: 01/14/2021 by Financial Samurai 91 Comments

Joining Uber As A Driver With $50 Gas Promo
Rhino getting lured in to join Uber

Today, driving for Uber sucks. The pay is too low and the customers are not great. With the global pandemic, business is down a lot. This post highlights what it was like driving for Uber back in 2016, when it was all the side-hustle range.

I never planned to drive for Uber. It just happened. When I pulled up to a gas station to fill up Rhino, my 2015 Honda Fit, there was a fella setting up a tent that promoted a free $50 gas card if I signed up to become a driver.

“No obligation to drive!” he tempted me, so I figured why not. With gas prices rebounding from their lows, what used to cost me only about $26 to fill up now cost $35. Moose, my old 2000 Land Rover Discover II sucked down $80 – $100 a tank, so in comparison $35 isn’t so bad.

After uploading my driver’s license, registration, and inspection form, I waited to get a confirmation via text or e-mail. Twenty-four hours later and nothing. I went back to the nearby gas station the next day and asked what was up? He said he didn’t know, and that I should e-mail support. So I did. He gave me another $50 gas card for my troubles. And then another $50 gas card for referring my friend in my passenger seat. YES! Who doesn’t love free money baby?!

Several days later, I finally heard back from Uber via e-mail, and they said they had wrongly entered my information. But if I simply logged in and re-uploaded everything again, all would be fine. When I logged into my account via my laptop it said, “Get a $100 bonus if you go down to the driver center at 130 Vermont Street to get everything set up.” So instead of re-uploading everything myself with no guarantees, I just went down to the driving center given I planned to be close by anyway.

After about 10 minutes of paperwork, the inspector said I was good to go. “All you’ve got to do is download the Uber partner app, take a selfie, and Go Online! After your 10th ride, you’ll get a $100 bonus for coming down to the driving center, and another $300 bonus after your 20th ride for signing up via our gas station promotion.“

Wow! $400 worth of bonuses plus another $150 in gas cards. So that’s where Uber is spending all their billions raised. The offer was too tempting to not try things out. Now let me share with you my first Uber passenger experience, some earnings figures, and the emotions I experienced over the next couple of weeks driving. 



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Before Requesting An Uber – Things To Know And Do To Keep Safe

Updated: 11/10/2018 by Financial Samurai 45 Comments

Let There Be Peace On Earth by Kristin ElmquistHow safe are we really? It’s hard to know when you hear about an Uber driver gunning down six people in Kalamazoo, Michigan between rides. He had a 4.73 rating out of 5.0, and had zero traffic violations since 2006. Granted, he did have six speeding tickets before 2006, which should have raised eyebrows, especially if one’s function is to move passengers in a vehicle.

I’d like to give some perspective from a driver’s point of view regarding what could have made the Kalamazoo killer go postal and what you can do as a passenger to stay safer. There is nothing that can condone murder, but perhaps more human kindness and improving the way we interact with one another could help prevent a tragic event like this from happening again. I’ve got over 400 rides under my belt and experienced a lot of bullshit that tested my patience. The widening gap between the rich and poor is one of the most important problems we face today.

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Are You A Morning Person Or An Evening Person? Discovering The Early Risers

Updated: 04/30/2019 by Financial Samurai 26 Comments

Get up early, get things done

Morning from A Year In Space

One of the ways to make more money is to work while others are sleeping or playing. You don’t have to be smarter than anybody else. You just have to do things other people aren’t willing to do, like get up before the sun rises to work on your side hustle.

Because in NYC I was required to get into the office by 5:30am, or in San Francisco to at least be awake by 6am to get smart before the US stock markets opened, I’ve found it relatively easy to carry on an early morning routine since leaving my day job in 2012. My body is accustomed to about six hours of sleep. So no matter when I go to bed, I’ll wake up ~6 hours later.

One evening, after a particularly long session of tennis, I passed out on the sofa at around 10:15pm while watching the TV program, The Blacklist. Like clockwork, I woke up at 3:30am and decided to write a post until 5am. I then wanted to use this opportunity to see who else was up during the wee hours of the morning. The easiest way to find out was to simply switch on my Uber driver app and drive from 5am until 7:00am.Inline image 1

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Free Uber Rides! Changing Lives By Disrupting The Rules

Updated: 01/04/2023 by Financial Samurai 44 Comments

Uber App Dashboard
Uber App Dashboard

Free Uber rides are great. Let me show you how to get free Uber rides in this post.

For the past several years, I’ve seen Uber grow from a scrappy startup to an enormous success based right here in San Francisco. In the Fall of 2013, the company was “only” valued at $3.5 billion.

As of 2021, Uber is now valued at roughly $70 billion! Instead of driving for them, the best way to get rich would have been to work for Uber when it first started in March 2009.

Free Uber Rides For All

Jabir, the “richest poorest person I know” actually became an Uber driver a couple years ago. He was unemployed for almost three years with a wife and daughter to support. It didn’t matter what time of day it was, he was always available to play tennis. We’d also drive all around the Bay Area to watch struggling professional players battle up the ATP points ladder for eight hours a day sometimes. As tennis junkies, we were in heaven!

Then one day Jabir stopped being available. No longer could he play pick-up tennis at Golden Gate Park at 2pm. No longer could he be my pal when everybody else had to work, so I had to find a new friend to pass the time after my morning writing was done. When I asked him what was up, he responded that he decided to drive for Uber.

For the next 12 months, I didn’t see Jabir at all. He drove ~10 hours a day for six days a week like a mad man. It was as if he was making up for lost time. When I asked him how much he was pulling in, he said well over $7,000 a month. Not bad coming from $0.

Uber allowed my friend and many other unemployed or underemployed people to find a way to earn some money and improve the inefficient taxi system in San Francisco. The disruption has been huge. I was even considering driving for them during my spare time, but Moose was too old as a 2000 Land Rover Discovery.

Starting in early 2014, Jabir began to come out and play again. When I asked him how were things going, he said that he was no longer driving for Uber, but driving a black SUV for a specific hotel instead. “Sam, I was getting too tired driving all those hours. Hotel driving is so much easier. Also, Uber kept cutting its prices so I was only making like $3,500 a month. It wasn’t worth it to me anymore.”

Jabir actually started outsourcing his car to his brother to drive for Uber so he could start collecting a percentage of his earnings and free up time for him to drive for the hotel. Smart man. There’s passive income opportunities everywhere!



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