From hemorrhaging money as a full-time indie hacker to side-hustling: A peek at an indie hacker's finances

It's not often that we get to peek behind the curtain at a person's finances. In this series, we'll be doing exactly that with fellow indie hackers.

We're starting with Jevon Shaw. Like a lot of indie hackers, he's working full-time while building his side-hustle, Metracker.

The hard numbers

Here's what he brings in:

• Revenue: $0
• Full-time salary: $85,000/year
• Profit from rental property: -$200/mo
• Money in the bank: $5,072.90

Jevon's rental income is negative, because his mortgage is higher than the rent he's able to charge. Luckily, his business expenses are minimal:

• Bubble: $30/mo

However, his personal expenses are higher:

• Total: ~$6,496/mo
• Housing + utilities: $1,760/mo
• Rental property mortgage: $1,836/mo
• Food: $550/mo
• Insurance: $730/mo
• Transportation: $220/mo
• Leisurely activities: $1,200/mo
• Church giving: $200/mo

With the numbers out of the way, let's see what he had to say about his finances.

From teacher to full-time indie hacker

In 2018, Jevon started teaching on-level algebra and PAP/AP classes in the inner city. He struggled with how severely lacking his students were in foundational skills like integer rules, fraction rules, multiplication facts... Some of his colleagues just accepted this. But Jevon didn't.

By this point, he'd been teaching for two years. It was fall of 2020 and the world was shutting down.

Jevon decided to create an app that would help his students fill in the gaps. He'd learned how to code in college, but only for small science-related purposes with MatLab and Python. He made it work anyway and the kids who used it benefited from it.

💰 "The process of building something that genuinely made an impact on someone's life really made me joyful. I started to do research on various companies and their founders, and I got so enthralled that I made the decision to quit my job and really learn how to code and try to build a startup!" —Jevon

From full-time indie hacker to side-hustler

So he quit in 2021.

By 2022, he got a job as a Salesforce consultant.

Why? He was tired of hemorrhaging money.

If we're being honest, he isn't overly enthused about the position. His goal is to eventually get income from two sources: His rental income and his indie hacking projects.

To feel comfortable making that leap, though, he says he'll need those streams to at least match the $85k that he currently makes.

How to budget, and what to do when you go over budget

Jevon budgets for everything, but sort of mashes together his business and personal funds. There’s no separation between budgets or accounts.

He uses the Bank of America app to help him budget, setting caps on different categories.

But just because he budgets doesn't mean he never goes over-budget. He went way over it recently when he purchased his rental property. Whenever this happens, he does a post-mortem and assesses why he went over. In this case, it was pretty clear.

💰 "Real estate is capital-intensive and you can go broke really easily if you don't know what you're doing." —Jevon

Jevon also likes to save money where he can in little ways here and there. Sharing passwords for streaming services. Walking instead of driving or ridesharing — in fact, he made sure that he lives near a gym, restaurants, and bars so that he could walk.

Avoid consumer debt!

Jevon is anti-consumer debt.

That means he keeps a $0 balance on his credit card. He paid for his vehicle up front. And yes, he does have a mortgage, but that's on a rental property, so he views it as investment debt; not consumer debt.

He doesn't own the home that he lives in - he rents.

And he actually kinda loves renting, but he said he definitely wants to buy a home eventually so that payments will stay the same (and eventually go away) instead of continually increasing.

💰 "In general, I think debts that a person knows for sure will result in the accumulation of more capital are good. So student loans can be good, investment debt can be good, and I've even seen stories of people acquiring businesses on Acquire.com using debt and it working out well for them. It just depends." —Jevon

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Use real estate as a retirement vehicle

Jevon has about $1,000 tied up in the stock market right now. That number was once much higher, but he wasn't joking about the whole "hemorrhaging money" thing. Now that he's gainfully employed again, he's trying to build it back up by investing $250 every month.

While he loves the thrill of investing, he does it the "boring way" by using Betterment's robo-advisor to pick stocks for him.

He also invests in real estate, as mentioned above. He's currently in the red, but since he's using it as a retirement vehicle, he's ok with that. He sees this loss as nothing more than a contribution to his retirement fund. Makes sense, as his employer doesn't offer any kind of retirement benefits (and neither does indie hacking).

Notably, the rental property is leveraged on a fixed-rate mortgage, so in a few years, rent payments will be higher than the mortgage payment. And if he holds onto the property for the full term of the loan (30 years), it'll eventually provide cashflow with no expenses other than taxes and upkeep.

VC funding is like... a yacht?

While he likes investing, he has no interest in getting funded.

💰 "I will always be a bootstrapper. It's kind of like captaining a boat: A large ship is impressive. Grandiose. Conspicuous. But you can easily lose control. It's hard to steer. It's hard to get people off if you need to. Small boats are fun. Easy to maneuver. Easy to get people off/on if you need to. Easier to sell if you want. You get the metaphor." —Jevon

Think about your retirement. Seriously.

Start thinking about your retirement. That's the biggest piece of advice Jevon has for indie hackers.

💰 "The older you get, the more of a home run you'll need to retire. If you're 32 and don't need to retire soon, selling an app for $15,000 is a great win. If you're 45 and retiring in the next 20 years, selling an app for $15,000 is still a great win, but you'll need a lot more than that." —Jevon

What financial tools should you be using?

Here are the tools mentioned above that Jevon uses to help manage his finances:

• Bank of America app: He uses this for budgeting by setting caps on different categories of expenses.
• Betterment: He uses Betterment and uses its robo-advisor to select stocks for him.

Jevon is building a following in the personal finance/real estate space. You can find him on Twitter @jevon800.

And if you'd like to be featured as a guest in a future interview for this series, let me know in the comments!