If you have been around here long enough, you’ve probably heard of me mention passive income on a few occasions. I’m starting to become a bit obsessed with it so I want to harness that, and try to focus my efforts more on the passivity, and less on “RANDOM WAYS TO MAKE EXTRA CASH!” Examples of random ways I’ve attempted to increase my income that are not passive include putting gigs on Fiverr, UserTesting and other similar testing sites, and selling/reselling items online.
Passive Income: Money that just rolls in while T lives her life to the max.
Going forward, I want to really try to focus my efforts on creating more of this type of income, and less “shit-ton-of-work-and-time income” (official term).
IMPORTANT NOTE: most passive income methods require varying degrees of up-front work to get them going. For example, let’s say you decide to write a book – it’s a ton of work up front, then it becomes a passive income stream later once you’ve finished, published, advertised, and are selling copies of your book. Or, let’s say you want to become a dividend investor. You will need to do lots of reasearch and consult with experts to determine what you need to invest in to achieve your goals. You will also need an existing source of income in order to have the money to invest.
Multiple Streams
I follow a number of YouTubers and bloggers who have mastered the passive income game in various ways. The key strategy I see from all of them is that they have MULTIPLE income streams, not just one. So that’s the strategy I am going to attempt to emulate. However, I will need to focus my efforts on one thing at a time so that I do not get overwhelmed!
But T, do you have any passive income right now?
Yes, a relatively small amount. My current passive income streams are:
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- Dividends on current investments. I have not yet done up a nice spreadsheet to track this, but I’ll probably just copy TAWCAN‘s. Because he’s the master! Tawcan also has a great article on how to start dividend investing, in case you want to explore this method of generating passive income.
- Cash back on my Tangerine World Elite MasterCard. Hubs and I put everything on credit and pay it off right away to make around $40 monthly. Not much, but I’m counting it, dammit!
- Peer to peer lending. So far my investment is very small and therefore the passive income is very small. I am using Lending Loop for this currently.
Unfortunately, I cannot survive on these 3 passive income streams alone as it stands. Plus, I am currently re-investing my dividends while I have income coming in to increase the size of my retirement buckets.
How will I increase my passive income?
Here’s my plan for now:
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- Improve my knowledge of dividend investing and make improvements to my portfolio.
- Research peer to peer lending a bit further. I have a small amount of money invested in Lending Loop which has performed very well so far (currently at 14.8% weighted average gross yield!), however it’s not enough to make a difference. What other P2P lending options are there and which ones are the best? To be determined by T.
- Launch the small “print-on-demand” biz I’m working on with my brother before the end of this year. We don’t expect to make much, if anything, but it will give us experience to do bigger and better things in the future!
- Add at least one more passive income stream that generates something over the next year. I have at least 2 other potential streams that I’ve started working towards but have not followed through on launching them.
But T, how will you do these things when you have to adult/parent/work full time? You know this is a weak spot for you, T. What are you going to do differently to make it happen?
Great question, self. I was thinking that after I finish writing this post, I’ll use my project management skillz and turn this into a real project. There will be a charter! There will be a work breakdown structure! There will be tasks that must be completed in a specific order with dependencies and people assigned to them! Those tasks will be added to my calendar!
I will also commit to writing a blog post about my progress on a monthly basis. Internet accountability is needed to keep me honest. I just put a monthly reminder in my calendar for that. I may also set up a challenge in the SPAR! Habit Building App to help with accountability.
I think that’s enough of a commitment for now. Thinking about it, even once a month, will hopefully get myself into a habit of focusing on improving the current situation.
Do you have any interesting passive income streams you would like to share? Please let me know in the comments!
More about Lending Loop
in this article you will see a few references to Lending Loop, which is the organization I am using to do peer to peer lending in Canada. If you would like to try peer to peer lending through Lending Loop, please use my referral code b23d4e or click on one of the links in the article to sign up. We will each earn $25 for every $1500 you invest!