Start Your Passive Income Life

2021 showed us the start of the Great Resignation, a mass move to work from home jobs, and a general unrest in traditional employment. Most of us would love to live off passive income and just escape from the shackles of work altogether.

Everyone wants to be totally financially free, but there is a difficult truth to why most of us are not.

You want money but ignore it when it comes your way

If you pass up opportunity because it won’t get you rich quickly then you will likely never actually get rich. Opportunity knocks constantly, but since it’s not Publishers Clearinghouse, most people don’t open the door.

My point is, that the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. The first steps are usually the slowest and hardest, but I’m wanting to get you started today with a free $30+ and a diversified portfolio.

I’ll wrap up with a few ideas to supplement your income and grow your investments & passive income even faster.

Real Estate Investing

By far one of the most common and easy ways of becoming wealthy and creating income is through real estate investing. The catch is that its usually only easy if you are already very well off, and at that point you don’t really need it anyway.

Thankfully, it has become easier and easier over the years to invest in real estate. I’m sure if you’re reading this then by now you have at least heard about crowdfunded investing. Well, I’ve been using Fundrise and I do really like it, but another platform has joined the scene.

HappyNest if you sign up using my link then you get $10 added to your account when you deposit $10. Now this may seem like a shameless plug to get my own referral bonus, and to some extent it is. BUT I really have found this to be a good app, otherwise I risk losing all my credibility for a couple of bucks.

The thing is, Fundrise is good too, I get a little bit on referrals if you use my link there, but you don’t and last I checked you needed $1,000 to get started.

My goal here is to help you build a small foundation with money you got for free. So, about HappyNest:

Pros

-You can start with just $10

-You can link a card and do roundup investing on all your purchases

-Dividends are calculated daily and distributed or reinvested quarterly

-Compound interest

Cons

-It can be time consuming and difficult to cash out your principle (as with all real estate)

-Automatic round up program $1 per month after trial (program itself is totally optional)

Lending your money

Everyone knows about P2P lending by now, but not everyone is privy to the world of crypto lending. The technical aspects are a bit complicated, but here is a thousand foot view. You deposit USD in your savings account and someone else deposits Bitcoin, or some other crypto. Their crypto serves as collateral and they can borrow USD for short term loans (30, 90, 180 days). They pay interest and the holding company distributes that interest to you. It works in reverse as well, i.e. you can deposit or borrow crypto.

The platform I use is MyConstant. The rate of interest is 4% compounded constantly. If you choose to commit your cash for up to 180, meaning you wont be able to withdraw for that period of time, you can earn up to 7%.

If you sign up using my link you can get $5,000 as a trial balance to earn interest for 15 days. Note, that doesn’t mean you get $5,000. That means that you account will grow as if you are earning interest on $5,000.

That means that if you sign up with my link and deposit at least $10 then you get roughly $8.33 in 15 days plus the interest on your $10.

Dividend Investing

I absolutely love dividend investing. I think it’s because it’s a little more of a wild card. I try to choose mostly stocks that I have a great confidence will continue to pay a stable dividend and grow, but sometimes they surprise you. One example is ARCC which is a REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust). When I found them and bought in just under 2 years ago the price was sitting at $17.10 per share with an incredible dividend of $0.39 per share per quarter, or $1.56 per year. At the time of this writing the share price is $21.01 and the dividend is $0.41 per quarter or $1.64 per year. So not only did the value of my holdings increase, but so did my passive income!

I can’t promise that will happen to you, do your research and invest wisely. But if you do sign up for Robinhood using my link, or anyone else’s (they’re everywhere), you will get a free share of a random company. 98% of the time is value is between $2.50 and $10, but you could get something as high as $225.

Where does that leave you?

If you do all that you should be better off than you were yesterday. You won’t be rich. Not even close. But you should have close to $30 you didn’t have do work for, a diversified portfolio, and about $0.19 per month extra in the form of passive income.

What am I going to do with that?

Nothing. You can do basically nothing with a 19-cent monthly income. But if you never take that first step you are going to find yourself 10 years down the road browsing the internet trying to find a way to get rich overnight, so you don’t have to go back into work. And you will be no closer to making that a reality.

You can however, make that future self’s wish come true today. Interest compounds quickly. There is a reason for the saying “the rich get richer”. The more passive income you have the more you can build.

Make your money start working for you so you can stop working for your money

Once you get started earning passively you will see how addicting it is. Putting money back every week, even as little as $5 can make a huge difference in your future income.

Every time you add to your investments you give yourself a raise.

Bonus

I’ll save the in depth analysis for another day, but there are many ways to increase your free cash that you can invest to boost your passive earnings. (links included).

Swagbucks — Est about $20 per month for casual users

Usertesting — up to $40 per hour but qualifying tests are sparse

Premise- Est $12 per month, but $50+ is very doable

Slicethepie — About $0.2 per review, basically unlimited earnings if you have time

Reklaim — App in app store, $4 per month

Current — Est $10 per month

Ibotta — Est $20–50 per month, but higher earning is possible. This one is a spend to earn situation so more of a discount app

Fluz — Est $10–50 per month, potential is unlimited however

ATM- Available in app store, Est $5–10 per month

What Now?

Get to investing, earning and repeating. If you use all of these you could make an extra $100 or more in your spare time. Investing that could quickly grow your passive income and get you to financial freedom fast!