Is anyone making more money than what they're spending, saving up and having time to spend on a side project/hobby?

I really like programming, but I also want to be able to do other things. It appears that it can be a job that can make one comfortable financially to be able to afford to do other things. Way better than working for McDonald's or some other job.

Is anyone doing this now? Or is everyone working all the time and always stressed??

My earnings are higher than my spendings, but I dont eat out and don't go out almost at all. You must love programming to be successfull. At first, for like a year when I started watching various tutorials I didn't understand anything. However i persisted and learned a lot, and it's getting better every day. It's a good profession. But as I mentioned you must like it. Programming to me when i was young seemed like a superpower, and it still seems to me that way to an extent. That helped me motivate myself

I'm currently unemployed so I have to constantly mind my spendings, but it's not as hard as I thought it would be. I don't go out and shop at discount stores, allowing me to have a rather expensive hobby - electronics 🙂

Come to think of it, I do make more than I spend. In retrospect, this comes from quite poor growing up, I think, o I obsessively make new budgets and try out several methods of saving up more every time I get paid.

I have only invested little in my hobby because little is what I think I deserve, based on my salary and I expect myself to spend more on it when I will make more money, but up to a point.

What I find myself in the position of buying something, I tend to be overly rational and always end up saying "I don't really want that right now" and start a virtual savings account where I collect little by little and, eventually, maybe I'll get it.

TL;DR: yes, but I'm tricking myself into not indulging at all most of the time.