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!

• Calm Before the Storm? What You Should Do With Your Money While Markets Are Still Up Today's guest post is by MoneyEnergy. Unless you’ve been on vacation on one of the earth’s poles for the last month, you’ll know that the last few weeks have been great in the markets.  More than four straight weeks of gains have led many commentators to begin asking whether we’re......
• Should Congress Bail-Out The Auto Industry? I got into a lively debate yesterday with a fellow student about the bailout of the auto-industry. He said the social ramifications of letting them fail were too high. The impact on the local communities would be too high and so they should be bailed out by the tax-payers. I......
• All Intelligent Investing Is Value Investing Today's post is courtesy of Wealth Building Lessons. This past year, the stock market has seen incredibly volatile swings. My non-retirement portfolio has been up 20% and then down to 0%. Twice. Of course, my portfolio doesn't have a direct correlation with any of the indices but it just as......

• Make Money without Another "Job" Last night, DJH had this great question in the comments of one my older posts: Hi all, I just wanted to say, THANK YOU! for showing me all sides of making this decision, I have been in several MLMs [Multi-level Marketing] and never found one that worked for me, I......
• 7 Ways to Get Rich Quick These are trying times for our economy. The money in my 401(k) is going nowhere, my high-yield savings isn't yielding very high, Bill Gates isn't the richest in the world, Bear Stearns basically evaporated... What's a person to do?!? I propose seven ways for you to get rich quick! Stock......
• I Share My Asset Allocation (as do 7 other Money Writers) The Money Writers is having a group writing project. Each of us have decided to share our asset allocation and performance from the first of the year to last Friday. You might want to put the children to sleep, this could get ugly. Asset Allocation I would like to say......

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