Earning money while working just a few hours per week or even sleeping does sounds like a dream come true.
I want to help you achieve complete financial freedom in your life, and developing streams of passive income is the key to building your wealth.
You’re never too young to have a side hustle or too old to pick up a side job to generate passive income!
In this article, we will look at what is passive income and the best passive income ideas for you to get started with.
What is Passive Income?
According to Investopia, passive income is “income that requires little to no effort to earn and maintain”- meaning we make money without constant effort!
Usually what we do is go to work for a certain amount of hours and are compensated for those hours.
This means that if you want to earn more money, you will have to work more hours.
If you have passive income, however, you will not need to exchange your time for the money that you are earning.
The money will keep on coming in regardless of whether you have shown up for work or not.
You can increase your income while you sleep! Yes, it’s almost like free money once you put in the upfront work.
Why Build Passive Income Streams?

You probably don’t want to have to work more hours to earn more money, and it’s nice to have some time off too!
If you have money coming in from various sources at all times during the day, this means that you have the freedom to do other things.
You can use this money to fund your retirement (either the money you save, or as an income when you are retired), or as an income whilst you’re going around doing whatever you want to do!
The best thing would be for us all to have several passive income streams because this means that we are covered in case anything happens with one of the income streams e.g. with a job loss.
This also means that we could scale back a bit and work less. If you have passive income streams this means that you can take a break if you need to such as on maternity leave or if you are poorly.
The dream that is sold to a lot of people is sitting on a beach with a cocktail in your hand whilst the money rolls in – but it tends to require a lot of effort before you get near that point.
The truth is, we don’t know what the future holds and we need to prepare for things as well as we are able.
This means making sure that if we have a dip or something goes wrong, we will still have the money needed to live our lives.
They can be great side hustle ideas as well and you can scale up as needed.
What Does It Take to Earn Passive Income?

To earn the passive income you will need to understand that there is generally a lot of work that is required upfront before it gets to the ‘passive’ stage.
We will cover how to generate passive income in this article, but let’s first look at the difference between passive and active income:
Passive Income
Passive income is where the money is continually coming in despite you not having to exchange the hours of work for the money.
This will require effort upfront to put the passive income streams in place but you can reap the benefits in the future.
Active Income
Active income is what we are used to in the more traditional sense of exchanging time for money. When you go to a job for 9-5 you are paid for the time that you are there.
The Best Passive Income Ideas That Require an Upfront Monetary Investment
Not all passive income ideas require money to be put into them from the start so don’t let that put you off.
If you have some spare cash then you may be happy to put some money upfront into a passive income stream.
There are so many options for investment opportunities that will make you money!
We will look at how to make passive income with some extra cash below:
1. Investing

Investing your money is one of the best passive income streams out there, that we should all be doing.
Investing $1,000 in stocks, funds, or even in your own professional development can give you a hefty return on investment.
Then there are investment platforms like Robinhood, which is more hands-on and includes cryptocurrency opportunities.
If you are feeling a bit nervous about what to invest in and you feel as though it’s holding you back, robo-investing could be for you.
Robo investing is where you will invest your money and the robo-advisor will allocate the funds for you. We like companies like M1 Finance, which has premade pies with dividend-paying stocks and reinvests your money for you.
We also recommend Betterment as your go-to robo investing platform.
2. Passive Real Estate Investing

Want to get into real estate without all of the hassles? Real estate investing could be a viable option for you.
REITs are Real Estate Investment Trusts where you can invest in real estate – they are investment vehicles that hold property in them. You will get to benefit from all of the ups and downs with the properties.
This can be the perfect option for you if you are a bit apprehensive or nervous about getting into real estate but still want to get a taste of it.
3. Buy Rental Properties
Rental properties are great sources of passive income because you should have rent payments coming in from your tenants each month.
Rental income is another way to dabble in real estate, but be more hands-on than REITs.
It’s obviously not as easy as just buying a property – you will have to save up for the down payment and make a proper business plan.
Hopefully, you will have other passive income streams to tide you over in case something happens such as a tenant not paying rent. Always pays to have a backup plan!
Once you’ve got the finances worked out, it’s time to find the right building! You’ll want to do your research, maybe have a real estate agent along for feedback, and don’t forget to be very critical when viewing properties.
Now that you have the house and it’s all ready, you can get tenants in and earn passive income easily per month.
To be even more hands-off, you could hire a management company to deal with the tenants. If you wanted to do it yourself this could still be a fun work from home job.
4. Open a High Yield Savings Account

This one is a bit of a no-brainer in terms of earning money on the money that you already have.
It’s not somewhere that we would recommend putting all of your money as there are places that offer you more interest over time (e.g. through investing) but it’s still a good passive income stream to have.
The interest rates for each bank change all of the time so it’s worth doing your research and finding the best one for you.
5. Invest in Dividend Stocks

When you buy stocks you can choose to get paid via dividends.
This means that you own part of a company’s stock and they will pay you a small part of their earnings in the form of a dividend.
The amount that you get paid will depend on the amount of the stock that you own and how much the company decides to payout.
6. Invest in CD Ladders
CDs are certificates of deposits from banks whereby you can be paid in certain increments which will allow you to earn a better rate of return on your investment.
Something to note with CD Ladders is that you will not be able to withdraw the money until the account has reached maturity.
When you set up your account you will choose the maturity of it. It’s up to you to decide how long you wish to do this for, with it ranging from a few months – years.
7. Peer-to-Peer Lending

Peer-to-peer lending (p2p lending) is a great way to get some passive income if you have some money that you don’t need immediately.
You will be acting as the lender for the individuals or businesses that require a loan.
The benefit of doing this is that you will receive the money back with interest.
One of the most popular p2p lending sites is Lending Club. The minimum deposit on there is $25 and the average return is 4 – 7%.
8. Pay Off or Reduce Debt
One of the best passive income ideas that you can do for yourself and your family is to get rid of the debt that is hanging over you.
We know what it’s like to have student loan debt hanging over your head, and it’s got to go! Having thousands of dollars go to interest over the years is a waste, that money should be staying in your pocket as much as possible.
If you aren’t in a great place with your debt right now don’t worry – there are lots of things that you can do to get a grip on your debt.
To start with you need to write out all of your debts – including the total balance, monthly payments, interest rate, etc.
The next step is to figure out which debt you want to start with first. Two main debt payoff strategies are widely discussed – the debt snowball method, and the debt avalanche method.
The debt avalanche method is where you start with the debt with the highest interest rate.
The debt snowball method is where you start with the smallest debt and then once that is paid off you put the amount that you were paying off into the next debt.
Once you have paid off your debt you will have all of that money that you were putting into debt to use for all of these other passive income streams!
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