Hey everyone! Sorry I’ve been slacking on the posts. I’ve spent the last several weeks being consumed dealing with banks for a refinance in addition a web app idea. I may discuss those in detail later, but for now, I wanted to introduce a new segment to the blog. In my article The Easy Way To Retire Early, I preach about the power of passive income. I figured I should show you all that I’m practicing what I preach! I plan to start doing these regularly, for readers as well as myself, to help to document my own progress.

Income Streams

The income streams I’ll present are recurring monthly streams that require little to no work from me. Let’s get started.

House Hacking – $400

I go into full detail about this in my article, How I Live For Free. Long story short, I bought a 2 bedroom condo and rented out the second room.

Rental Properties – $622.75

Admittedly, I got absolutely slammed on my rentals this month. Typically, I can expect this number to be about double, but it was one of those months: unknown tenants flushed paper towels and we needed a plumber, had a unit turnover that left food and roaches everywhere, got hit with utility bill from that unit, property management deducted LLC yearly fee(as they are registered the agent), mailbox replaced, and some other small things. Isn’t landlording great??? But actually, I would still strongly recommend. This was a nightmare month and it only cost me 10 minutes in phone calls.

Another exciting development in the rental portfolio! The 4 unit building I bought with a partner in January is almost completely done and ready to be rented out. So this income number should be going up soon(knock on wood)!

Web development/hosting – $40

Interesting story: I had the idea to launch a web development business(just like everyone else and their mother). However, I would charge nothing or very little for upfront design, and just put them on an automatic monthly payment plan via Paypal. I got one client and a second interested, and then decided to put the whole business on hold as I develop an app idea. Hopefully, this app will someday be added to this report, as I plan to make it a monthly recurring revenue model as well. Nevertheless, I finished the clients website last month and starting since May, he pays me $40/month indefinitely.

Summary – $1062.75 

$1062.75 for 10 minutes of time this month. Isn’t passive income great??? Hopefully the rentals behave better next month and these numbers continue to rise. I’m look for another multifamily rental investment as we speak!

Sidebar for any youngsters like me with student loans and in interest in real estate: the mortgage guidelines were just changed last month to give us a huge advantage. To summarize, student loans won’t hurt your debt to income ratio as much as it used to(which is a key metric to qualify mortgages). More information on that here.

Another sidebar for the people wondering where my passive dividend income is: I’m out of stocks except for my 401k and employee stock purchase options. I’ll be selling these in July and be sure to note the passive income in a report. I don’t like the market heights and volatility right now, so I’m basically all-in on real estate. I’m looking forward to a debate on this in the comments.

Well anyway, thanks for listening to me ramble guys! I look forward to your input.