Income from a full-time 8am to 5pm job may not be enough and you may have thought of a part-time job to earn more.
Some of the popular part time jobs today are Grab Driving and Grabfood Deliveries.
I'm going to do an analysis on them in this post and what you need to know to get to financial freedom!
Interesting fact: Why so many in 20s and 30s drive with GRAB?
Do you realise a lot of young drivers these days?
You may be a millennial and thinking about it also.
This is because many of the jobs that employ our NITEC and Poly Diploma holders pay comparably or worse than the earnings achieved by driving with GRAB or other gig economy jobs.
Since there are looser requirements to drive full-time Grab than taxi, many in 20s to 30s have opted to become GRAB drivers instead of taxi drivers.
Some reasons were
- To earn a secondary income/ supplement their incomes
- Underemployment
- Flexibility of the working hours (Own time own target!)
- An interim job option
Of course, each job comes with pros and cons, which will be stated below.
Do you really get a high income driving with GRAB?
There are currently two GRAB payout system; by hourly and by number of trips.
Both present a high gross income or gross hourly rate!
How this system works is that, as long as you drive for a required minimum number of hours and completed a certain amount of trips, you'll be guaranteed a payout of a certain sum.
This is illustrated in the chart above.
Source: Grab - Earnings Guarantee
The second system is pretty straightforward, as long as you completed a minimum number of trips, you'd be guaranteed a certain sum of payout.
This though, is accompanied by long hours of driving.
If you work as a part-time GRAB driver everyday (3 hrs/day). The estimated gross income is around $600/week.
What if you work as a full-time GRAB driver with normal office hours shifts from Monday to Friday (8 hrs) Based on the Grab Income Calculator, your gross income is around $900-$1000/week.
If you're a weekend part-time GRAB driver, driving 3 hours per day, you'll earn a gross income of $186.
GRAB Driver pay rate: Estimated net rate of up to $15.32/hour
Mothership ran an article on a GRAB driver who went ALL out to clock possibly the maximum of what a driver can do.
He earned $12,469.50 in 5 weeks! You may check here
Since he cleared most (if not all) of the incentives, we can estimate the maximum NET per hour rate.
Let's put in some assumptions
If his petrol, parking cost, ERP charges, occasional fines incurred, miscellaneous costs amounted to $2,000 and if car rental cost was $2,000, total net earning for the driver would be $8,469.50.
He would also have to less $2,494 because Grab takes 20% as platform fees.
Hence, the NET earnings in the 5 weeks could be $5,975 (without factoring income taxes)
The featured driver clocked a RIDICULOUS total of 390hours in 5 weeks.
Hence, at $5,975/390hr, the NET hourly rate would be around $15.32.
This is not a very high amount.
If you want to achieve this, you'd have to have a good driver rating, a low cancellation record, a high rate of accepting trips, and of course long hours of driving.
Hence, the biggest misconception about being a Grab driver is probably the high earnings.
In my opinion, being a GRAB driver gives you flexibility, freedom and income in the short term.
It is ok if you are waiting for the new school term or a call-up for interview for a new job.
But if you are a working adult looking for a part time job to improve your finances, driving with GRAB may not solve the situation fully.
The net hourly rate is not that high.
Working and developing to advance your full time career may be the better option.
GRAB driving on weekends vs weekend Relief taxi driver?
You can try becoming a weekend relief taxi driver instead! It's not a commonly heard term but it literally means taking over a taxi driver's duties when the taxi driver is away.
The daily rate of renting a Taxi for relief duties is around $30-$50, as it's negotiable.
Renting a GRAB car is a bigger commitment with leases usually in months.
However, do note that the minimum age to drive a licensed taxi is 30 years old. So if your age falls below 30, GRAB it is then.
You can check out this forum that hires relief taxi relief drivers: http://www.cabby.com.sg/H/Hirer.htm
What about doing Grabfood Rider on the weekends?
Below is a table comparison of different Food Delivery companies for both weekdays and weekends:
Source: Food Delivery Riders (2019) – How Much Can You Make as a GrabFood, Foodpanda or Deliveroo rider?
Does delivery job suit you?
Possibly yes if you are a student.
For Deliveroo, most of them are under 30 years old, consisting of students, part-timers, and professional athletes.
As for Foodpanda, most of its riders are students, and between 20 and 32 years old.
Grabfood Rider Pay Rate: Estimated Net Rate Of $12-$15/hour
So far from researching, you'd be lucky to do 2 trips in 1 hours.
Those are short trips. But mostly you will get long trip which typically take about 45 min to complete which mean 1 trip in 1 hour and different zones may differ.
Short trips also do not guarantee short delivery because of....
- Merchant who delay the food preparation
- Customer who delay food collection
- Customers who have entered the wrong delivery address
There is much less variable cost than doing GRAB. However, energy is really required.
Youtuber Jackie Toong answers some of the questions on how much can be earned based on his experience. I've also formulated the estimated $12-$15/hour based on his sharing.
Source: How much does GrabFood driver get paid
This $12-$15/hr require quest bonuses and other bonuses to be attained.
It is not always about how much you earn. How much you save is just as (if not more) important.
Video about is a quick sharing to know more.
Cons of working as a GRAB driver and Grabfood rider
I believe driverless technology is coming sooner than later.
Hence, this is really a job with no long term prospects and a looming obsolescence to it.
In addition, there is no medical leave and no CPF.
If you rent to drive a GRAB car, there is fixed cost and this could mean losses on non-working days. I know of a friend who has gotten into financial strain because he is on a 6month vehicle lease and was unable to work for 2 weeks due to a health reasons.
For Grabfood delivering, bad weather also impacts income.
PMD Grabfood riders who break rules to rush orders also are at risk of LTA fines.
Lastly, accident risk cannot be understated. Some examples are below.
In summary, my financial suggestions for you...
As shared in the post, the NET per hour rate for both Grab driving and Grabfood delivery is NOT high.
That is why most who are looking in that direction are not in white-collar occupations.
1) If you are a student or looking for a job then driving with GRAB or doing Grabfood works. What you also need to do is to find a way to save up that money earned to change your financial future.
2) If you are working but your finances are good that's why you are looking for a part time job, my suggestion for you is to find ways to save more. A dollar saved is still easier than a dollar earned. A part time job may not solve the problems that are related to habits.
Looking to learn more on How To Save Money in 3 Simple Steps, click to find out more here!
3) If you're a working adult with some spare time, I believe the best suggestion is to look for freelance work that have a similar per hour rate than your current job!
In addition, consider doing a post-grad course to further your career and focus on building passive income with investments.
Looking to learn more on Financial Independence And The Secret To Achieving it, click to read this post here!
Join our Facebook group here: https://www.facebook.com/TheAstuteParent/ as we will next be discussing more on freelance jobs, passive income and investment ideas.
Last updated on January 29th, 2020 at 07:28 am