Twelve hours a week: a second job on a payslip, or freelancing the same hours — which left you with more?

Do the arithmetic before you choose, it takes ten minutes. Take the freelance rate, multiply by hours you realistically bill rather than hours you work, then take off what you set aside for tax and anything you have to buy — software, insurance if your work needs it, an accountant. My freelance rate had to be roughly two and a half times the shift rate before the two came out level in year one. Yours may differ, but if your multiple is only two, the boring option is quietly winning.

Let me defend the boring option properly, because everyone here will push you toward freelancing. A second job on a payslip means no tax return, no invoicing, no client acquisition, no scope creep, no unpaid quoting, and no month where you earn nothing. The two real downsides are that the rate is the rate forever, and the tax on a second job is often wrong at first and needs sorting out. For somebody who says outright that they hate invoicing, that is not a footnote, it is the decision.

I took the shop shifts and they wrecked me, which is worth saying out loud. Standing for five hours after a full day at a desk is a completely different kind of tired from doing two more hours of the work you already do. I lasted five months and my day job visibly dipped in month three. Whichever you pick, try four weeks before you commit to a rota you cannot get out of.

Freelance rate is not three times the shift rate. It is three times, minus tax set-aside, minus unbilled hours, minus the two invoices a year that go bad. Run the numbers at half the headline rate and if it still wins, go.

Did both, roughly two years each. The shift job paid for exactly the hours I stood there, which turned out to be the entire point: twelve hours in, twelve hours paid, money on a known date. Freelancing at three times the rate, I billed six or seven of my twelve in a normal week and spent the rest quoting, invoicing, chasing, and taking a client's quick call. On paper freelancing won. In year one it did not, and in year two it won by a mile, because the unbilled hours stop scaling once you have repeat clients.

Middle path that worked for me: take the shifts for three months to get money flowing, and use that stability to build the freelance thing slowly with one client. Then drop shifts as the freelance hours fill. You never have a month at zero and you never have to accept a bad client because rent is due.