LIVING OFF DIVIDENDS & PASSIVE INCOME

Quite a few readers asked me why I was looking for a job instead of investing full time. There are a few reasons to that.

• The wife is still studying. One of us needs to have a stable job [and health benefits].
• The investments I’ve made have seen mostly capital appreciation. There is very little cashflow thrown off at the end of the month. I need about 5 times that to live-off of [including health benefits].
• If I don’t spend my time at work, I’ll probably spend more time spending money. This means I’ll need even more money!
• Someone mentioned that if I spent my time doing what I loved, it wouldn’t feel like work. While there’s some truth to this, I haven’t figured out how to monetize the things I’d rather be doing. I used to love to program[which is what I currently do] but a few years ago I realized that programmers[& engineers in general] are underpaid for the headache they go through and are also under-appreciated. [Case in point, a CPU which costs years to develop and millions in research costs less than a fancy birthday cake]

What am I doing to boost my cashflow? Nothing right now. I haven’t found a single investment generates a good Cash-on-cash return. I’ve looked at some apartment buildings and found the sellers were just lying about the numbers.

I think I’ll be looking at oil wells for cashflow.[This is not the deal I'm currently invovled in but other companies that raise money from private individuals.] The returns are between 30% and 80% a year. [Of course, theres a 30% risk of hitting a dry well and losing your investment]. However there are some companies that will spread your investments over 20 or more wells, thereby reducing your risk significantly. Of course, these investments have higher barriers to entry.[usually 50k-100k]. I’m still doing my research but I think I’ll be ready to invest in one of these in a few months. I’ll probably form an LLC and get 5 other partners which will reduce our risk further.

Also, I read this article yesterday about people in other countries are living well off of Google’s adsense program. Some dude in India is making $1,000/mo off it and its funding his graduate studies. Stories like this give me hope! Initially I put ads on this blog to see if I could figure out how it works. I’ve found out that some people make a really good living off them. They make niche website with tons of canned content and put up ads which pay them hefty returns.

I read the article yesterday and thought I should put more effort into monetizing my blog. Co-incidently, 2 companies contacted me today about sponsoring my blog! The money is insignificant so far, but I’m learning how to monetize my blog writing skills!

• Escaping The Rat Race Here's another inspiring story on getting out of the rat race.How I escaped the rat raceCarole Dobson as told to Duncan HoodFrom the May 2006 issue of MoneySense magazineI used to work full time at a stressful job making a six-figure salary. Then, about 10 years ago, I started planning......
• Buffet: On Life And Investing Here's some great Buffett philosophy from a recent meeting with college students. Question: How do you define happiness and what about your life makes you most happy? When you make good on an investment, do you allow yourself to enjoy that success by getting excited - and on the flip-side,......
• Asset Allocation with a twist or why you should keep 25% of your assets in cash A lot of professional money managers will quote some nobel prize winning economist theory about strategic asset allocation.[For the record, Harry Markowitz won the nobel prize in 1952 by showing that in the long run, investors make more money by investing in assets whose prices don't have a lot of......

• The Difference Between Good Debt and Bad Debt When you see the word debt, undoubtedly the first thing that pops into your mind is a credit car bill or a car payment. For many, debt means a mortgage or other high dollar expenditures. However, there are two main forms of debt and they are very different from one......
• The Realities of Blogging for Money In the last few years the number of people who are trying to blog for secondary income has increased dramatically. People think that if they can write some letters into a word document and get approved by Google AdSense they’ll make some money. It’s a lot more complicated than that,......
• How To Start Blogging For Money? [ad#adstext1] You must take your approach as a businessman and treat your blog as if it were a company (no matter the size).Blogging for money is possible.If you decided to do Affiliate links on your blog you could make a decent amount of money with google adsense and your favorite......

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