Students always look for a way to make money, as sometimes the allowance they get is not enough for what they want to buy in the future. Most students make money by selling t-shirts or food, but there is one side hustle that is gaining a lot of popularity as it has become really accessible to do, and also it is a great way to save money for an eventual big purchase in the future. 

Jacobo Beyer, a senior, started investing “in February 2025”, which is more than a year and a half ago. Jacobo started investing because of a single idea that convinced him that investing was for him, which was compound interest. He explained that he “figured out that if I started investing now, even if it wasn’t a big amount of money, I would build momentum towards the day when I did have more capital to invest.” 

 But this was only the beginning; one of the most important things to invest is to know exactly how much you are going to invest, which normally translates to a percentage of your income. For example, Jacobo saves each month “20% of my money and dedicate it towards my investments”, which is a really reasonable percentage, as it leaves 80% of his earnings for weekly and everyday purchases. 

But this discipline is normally not attained from the start. For example, for David, a senior student who has invested for about 2 years,  like many others, it came from being wrong at first. “I started with a course but it didn’t help that much,” David highlights. 

“I learned more from YouTube and from making countless mistakes just trying and trying and making mistake after mistake until I started understanding it better”, which highlights that this side hustle demands a lot of patience and time.

 One of the most important things in investing is having a clear process when investing,  taking into account the price history of the stock and public sentiment before a single dollar moves. David, for example, has a clear process when buying a stock. He looks for a good stock that is in a bad moment but is reliable, looks at the graph to see the general pattern for the past 5-10 years, and finally looks at the public opinion. If he is not sure, he puts in a small amount and “wait until I get sure” because with that amount he “can see the movement of the stock more easily without risking the money”. 

Even with this careful process, David has also made various mistakes when investing. One key aspect of investing is diversifying the portfolio by not putting all (or most) of the money in a single stock or area, and one time David made that mistake. “One really big mistake that I made was putting more than 30 percent of a portfolio in a single stock,” David said. This was a known company which had a lot of potential and it was Duolingo.

“Duolingo, and like a week later they fired a CEO and made a lot of new policies, and it got really messy.” he lost a lot of money and then sold because of fear. 

David and Jacobo had different experiences when investing,  but both arrive at the same conclusion. Investing as a student can be hard, but if you organize yourself and have a clear process when investing, it can get the student really ahead financially. In investing, staying safe matters more than trying to be right and win big all the time. 

Many students have doubts about how to start investing as they are not adults. Nicolas Garrido, another senior student with a vast experience in the technical aspects of investing, solved this problem as he started investing once he was 16 and “brokerage account in my father’s name, as I couldn’t legally open one due to my age.” 

Students also do not want to lose a lot of money, so they invest in a safer way when they are starting. Nicolas Garrido recommended ETFs: “ ETFs are a single fund that holds a basket of companies; this reduces the volatility and decision over what to invest. They are an effective way to invest your money without having to constantly manage a portfolio of stocks.”

For investing, one of the most important virtues is to have a lot of patience. “Patience means acting with restraint; it involves knowing when to buy and sell, but most importantly knowing what a stock is worth and avoiding emotion getting into decision-making.” Even though patience can increase your chances of success, Nicolas Garrido also acknowledges that “nothing is assured in the stock market; you could be doing everything correctly, but if there is a bearish (declining) market, you most likely will underperform.”

 Investing is a good option for a side hustle for students who are patient and take time to organize themselves to dedicate enough time in order to be successful. It also has the option of playing it safe and growing, or risking more depending on the personality.