1 Tech ETF Could Turn Your Side Hustle Money Into $500,000

Why do you have your side hustle? For most people, the answer is to make ends meet in this challenging economy. For many of these same people, however, the ultimate answer is to make sure they are able to tuck away enough to secure a decent retirement.

Having a side hustle, of course, likely means you don't have much time to monitor a portfolio of individual growth stocks. This might actually work to your advantage, though.

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Without the time to keep tabs on a bunch of individual stocks, your best bet is longer-term, passive positions in exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that don't require much monitoring, and don't lend themselves to the active trading that often undermines investors' long-term results.

And the best first ETF to own for growth is arguably a technology-focused fund like the Vanguard Information Technology ETF (NYSEMKT: VGT), which -- just as the name suggests -- holds tech stocks like Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), just to name a few. As the chart below illustrates, this exchange-traded fund has outperformed the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) for the past several years, extending market-beating leadership that's been in place since the fund's 2004 launch. Indeed, the ETF's logged an average annual gain of a little over 13% since then, versus the S&P 500's average yearly gain of around 10%.

This makes sense, of course. While the ETF's top holdings come and go, the technology sector is driving some of the biggest and most rewarding sociocultural changes, like the advent of mobile connectivity and artificial intelligence. This isn't likely to change in the foreseeable future.

A $40,000 investment made in VTG 20 years ago would be worth about $500,000 today, by the way, although with its average rate of return, you could have also reached the half-a-million-dollar mark by investing about $450 per month in this ETF for the same two-decade time frame. Most side hustles should be able to put at least that much in your pocket every month, and if you don't need your side hustle money for other things, it could go to investing.

James Brumley has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.