Earn The Gap: Make More Instead Of Saving Harder
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- —
Asked what someone with no disposable income should do, Mark Tilbury rejects the standard budgeting answer. Saving has a hard ceiling — if you earn £1,000 a month, the absolute maximum you can save is £1,000 — while earning has no ceiling at all. So the move is not to strip enjoyment out of your life by cancelling coffees and avocado toast, but to bolt a small additional income stream on top of your existing work and route every penny of it into investments or debt paydown. The stream should attach to something you already enjoy or already know how to do, so it costs willpower rather than misery. Budgeting still matters, but only as instrumentation, never as the growth lever.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Budget so you can see where it goes
Mark is explicit that you must budget — not to squeeze pennies, but because without one you cannot tell where the money went. Treat it as measurement, not as the strategy itself.
- 2
Accept the saving ceiling
Write down your monthly income. That number is the theoretical maximum you could ever save, and you cannot live on zero. Recognising the cap reframes the problem from cutting to earning.
- 3
Clear high-interest debt first if it exists
If a chunk of your income is being eaten by interest and repayments, you are effectively living on less than you earn and getting nowhere. Direct the new income at the expensive debt before the index fund.
Watch out Investing while carrying crippling consumer debt is a negative-return trade.
- 4
Attach the extra earning to something you already enjoy
Mark's example: if you like being in a pub, work the other side of the bar — you get the social life and get paid for it. Alternatively, monetise an existing skill you can teach or sell online.
Pro tip Overlapping the income with your existing social or hobby time is what makes it survive past week three.
- 5
Set a small daily number, not a heroic one
Mark frames it as finding £5 a day outside your main job — washing dishes, a shift, a small freelance task, copywriting. It is small enough to be undeniable and large enough to compound.
Pro tip Fix the daily target first, then find any activity that hits it.
- 6
Never spend the new money
The whole method collapses if the extra income raises your lifestyle. Treat it as money you never had and move it straight into the index fund on receipt.
Pro tip Send it to a separate account the day it lands so it is never in your spending balance.
Watch out Absorbing the extra income into everyday spending leaves you working more hours for the same net worth.
In the wild
Mark's worked example for someone on £1,000 a month who says they have nothing left to invest: you already go to the pub and spend money there, so take a part-time job behind the bar instead. You keep the social element you were paying for, and now you are being paid for it. The shift income never touches your normal spending — it goes straight into the index fund.
→ The same evenings out convert from a cost line into a funded investing habit.
Someone objects that they cannot find £5 a day to invest. Mark's response is that outside your working day there is almost always £5 to be earned somewhere — washing dishes in a restaurant, a small online task, a bit of copywriting. The point is not the specific job but that the search is for income, not for savings. A plausible run of this: an extra weekend shift produces £40, which becomes an automatic £150-a-month standing order into an index fund without touching the existing budget.
→ A new investing contribution appears without cutting a single existing expense.
Common mistakes
Treating budgeting as the growth strategy
Cutting the coffee and the avocado toast removes enjoyment for a capped, tiny gain. Mark's view is that these debates are about saver mentality, when the real lever — additional income — has no upper limit at all.
Picking a side hustle you hate
An extra income stream that fights your existing life dies quickly. Attaching it to a place, hobby or skill you already spend time on is what makes it sustainable long enough to matter.
Letting the extra income raise your lifestyle
If the new money gets absorbed into everyday spending, you have bought yourself more work and no assets. The extra earnings must be quarantined and invested the moment they arrive.
From the transcript
“Make more money. You can only save so much money.”
“There's no limit to how much you can make. So, make more money.”
“Well, go to the pub, but be the other side of the bar. Get yourself a part-time job.”
From the episode
A Millionaires Masterclass In Business, Side-Hustles and Passive Income - Mark Tilbury
Mark Tilbury