Uber drivers need to look at their ridesharing as more than just a part-time income. You have the potential to make a lot of money, but if you’re not investing at least a portion of your income, you’re doing it all wrong.
You need to start investing your earnings to start funding an emergency fund, accident fund, repair fund and even a retirement fund.
Invest in Your Customer Experience
Start by investing in your business, or your ridesharing operation. This is actually a fun experience, and one of the things I like to do is to become a customer. Hail an Uber yourself, and see what the competition has to offer.
You can take an Uber and ask current drivers a lot of questions along the way:
- What hours are your busiest?
- What hours do you earn the most?
- What do your customers ask for?
You can also take a look to see what the driver is doing for their customer experience. Is the driver:
- Providing water?
- Providing charging ports or cords?
Find out how others are boosting their customer experience, and then you’ll want to copy what this person is doing. You’ll find that customer experience will provide you with better tips and ratings.
Put Money into a Retirement Fund
Do you plan on retiring? If so, you need to start a retirement fund and continue funding the account. Uber offers retirement funds, and a lot of drivers seem to overlook this benefit. Partnering with Betterment, Uber offers a way for drivers to invest their money.
An app allows users of the Uber app to begin investing.
The first year of the service is free, and with the tap of a button, you’ll be able to start putting money into a retirement fund.
And since it doesn’t cost you anything the first year, it’s a great way to start investing in your future. Rates are very low, well below the industry average, after the first year, too.
If you don’t want to use Uber’s 401k option, you can also choose to open up your own Solo 401k account. These accounts are for businesses that have no employees, so they’re perfect for the self-employed person that has chosen to make ridesharing their job.
Start Investing in Stocks and Index Funds
I’m not an investment guru, but it makes sense to also start investing in an account that you can access if needed. You can open an account with Vanguard or several other sites, and you’ll be able to start investing in stocks and indexes.
Warren Buffett often recommends that new investors start investing in index funds.
Why?
These funds are an investment in the broader index. For example, you can invest in an S&P 500 index. What this does is spread your investment into the broader S&P 500 index. If the index rises 5% this year, your investment will rise 5% this year.
What’s great about index funds is that they aren’t as volatile as investing in a particular stock, such as Microsoft, which may be subject to an investigation or a bad tech sector and lose massive amounts of value overnight.
