An Introduction to Passive Income
We’re all intimately familiar with the rat race. Working 9-5 in an office or a job site to make a living. Meetings. Memos. Coffee Breaks. Some of us love our jobs…some of us don’t.
Since the industrial revolution, humans have lived to work. We’ve gotten into massive college debt and put all of our energy into our careers. We identify as the jobs we have — “what do you do?” is the first thing we ask new friends. We’ve glorified “working hard” and “being busy”, we’ve gotten used to working more than 40 hours a week and still living paycheque to paycheque. We hold out hope that someday it will all pay off.
Active income, a direct connection between time spent working and money earned, has been our way of life for centuries.
But there’s a fundamental shift happening. The shift is partially due to automation (yes, robots are taking our jobs) and new technologies, but it’s also due to evolutions in thinking about how we live our lives.
We’re starting to spend more time working from home. We’re finding ways to make money doing things we love. We’re putting less emphasis on a structured, active income lifestyle and more importance on family, mental health and mindfulness. We’re caring less about “things” and more about experiences.
At RVTravelCentral, we love the change because it’s reminds us of what’s actually important in life. But the fact that we need money to survive hasn’t changed. We still have to buy groceries, we still need clothes and shelter.
Introducing Passive Income.
Passive Income is not a new thing. But to a lot of people it feels uncertain, mysterious, even scary. Some even think of it like a scam; like those “earn $30,000 a month working from home!” ads we’ve all seen. But the truth is, passive income is a legitimate, powerful way to take your life into your own hands and earn the financial freedom we all want.
Over the next few months, we’re going to de-mystify passive income and shed light on some tips & tricks to make it a key part of your life. The first step is to define it.
Passive Income means any money you earn that you aren’t actively working for. Bank account interest, rent from a real estate property, pension, ownership in a business that you don’t work for, these are common sources of passive income. Dividends and earnings from stocks and bonds are sometimes considered passive income, though they’re often categorized as “portfolio income”.
The first step in earning a passive income is looking at the assets, tools and skills at your disposal, and thinking about how you can leverage them to earn a passive income. Do you love to write? Maybe start a blog and set up online ads. Do you have some savings that you won’t need for a while? Consider a long-term GIC or even the growing P2P Lending market. Do you own a travel trailer? List it on RVTravelCentral and turn it into an asset that earns you money!
It’s important to note that very few things we consider passive income are 100% hands-off. Real estate requires management, business ownership requires keeping tabs or attending meetings. Investing in stocks can easily become a full time job. But if you do the legwork upfront, set up your sources to be as automated as possible, and diversify your sources to provide a more stable income, you’ll be well on your way to spending more time doing the things you want to do.
Like making s’mores.
The possibilities are vast, and we’ll get into more nuts and bolts in future journal entries. In the meantime, start thinking about passive income as a real possibility in your life, and remember that you should be working to live, not the other way around.
♥RVTravelCentral
