Like many people, I love the idea of a second income but hate the idea of a second job. And making a bit of extra dough on the side does tend to mean a lot of extra work.
Renting a spare room? Using the internet to build a ‘side hustle’? Those sound like fast ways to turn my life into a non-stop juggle of stress and responsibilities.
On autopilot
This might be why so many now dabble in the stock market. The number of UK adults who own stock in a company’s now 27 million, believe it or not, and it’s not hard to see why.
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The shares in listed companies present a golden opportunity to earn that second income stream without having to get your hands dirty. Once they’re set up, they run more or less on autopilot.
The challenge of investing in stocks isn’t so much hard graft but careful choices. For example, I might start investing and turn to the FTSE 100 and the biggest businesses in Britain.
The index boasts a hundred proven business models that make a ton of money and are known for paying out some of the world’s best dividends. That’s great if you have a wad of cash already, but early on we need growth.
Grow like weeds
If I look further than the FTSE 100, the London Stock Exchange is home to around 2,000 different companies from 60 countries around the world. A hundred new ones or so are added each year too. Many of these firms will go bust but many of them will grow like weeds.
Ashtead‘s (LSE: AHT) one of the latter cases. At first glance, the business is nothing to write home about. It rents out industrial machinery like diggers or forklifts, making it easy for construction projects to get the tools they need.
Such simple operations might make for dreary dinner party conversations, but that hasn’t stopped the shares going on a tear. The share price of just 37p in 2009 rocketed to £51.65, as I write. Such growth’s the exception, but it does show what’s possible.
Ashtead’s now a FTSE 100 giant and has scope for growth ahead of it and priced accordingly (trading at 19 times earnings) – a decent premium which means it’s not a stock I see as suitable for my own portfolio at this moment.
Just the ticket
But if I really want that second income then stocks like Ashtead or the many thousands of others on the LSE might be my ticket to get there. It’s a well-trodden path that has made plenty of people rich in the past. Best of all, it offers wealth creation and a second income without feeling like I’ve got a second place of employment.
