On the money: Young workers far from frivolous as they take on extra jobs

Working in an auction house isn’t enough for Mardon Dosmukhamedov. On top of his full-time job, the 33-year-old works a further 10 to 15 hours a week building up a bakery business.

He is one of an army of Londoners taking on extra jobs to help them meet their financial goals. Some refer to it as a “side hustle”, but it’s a way to earn some much-needed extra cash or make some entrepreneurial steps towards being your own boss. For Mardon, it’s a mixture of both. He has two children aged just five and three, and the family is renting a home on the Isle of Dogs.

“I want to earn more as we’re not set up yet in terms of property,” says Mardon, who earns around £50,000 including bonuses in his role as an account manager at an auctioneer.

His wife Dinara enjoys cooking and, according to Mardon: “She cooks really well.” Their business, Di Cakes, is a family affair with Dinara producing special-event cakes and pastries while Mardon takes care of the running of the business.

They make about £15,000 a year at the moment but it’s just the beginning of their plans. “It’s flexible for us both and means I can do all the paperwork at the weekends while Dinara can bake in between looking after the children,” Mardon explains. The next step, he says, is to take the business full-time.

One in five workers aged between 18 and 34 has a side hustle on top of a full-time job, according to research from mutual savings society OneFamily. They are driven to work an extra 10 hours a week either to improve their finances or to help towards saving for a particular goal, such as a home deposit.

Nici Audhlam-Gardiner of OneFamily says: “It’s often suggested that today’s younger people are more focused on spending their earnings on frivolity, but they are demonstrating incredible levels of commitment and ambition as they try to get ahead and save for their future.”

In fact, about a third are doing a side hustle to gain greater experience in their chosen industry, with IT and the arts hugely popular for extra jobs.

But anyone thinking of having extra work may be better off choosing design, fashion or retail.

Those who choose that industry can pocket an average extra £537 a month while you’ll make nearer £400 a month in IT or cookery. But that’s still more than £5000 extra a year that could be a great help in saving for your first home or putting towards your own business.

The only question then is where to save the cash. “Anyone with a side hustle should think carefully about where they save this money as there are ways to make this money work even harder and generate more income,” says Audhlam-Gardiner.

A Lifetime Isa, for instance, could earn savers up to an extra £1000 a year from a Government bonus, she points out.