Anyone into searching and acquiring passive income? I sure am, I cam across the concept earlier this year and I am absolutely facinated with it.

Generally in society, people follow a routine that keeps them reliant on a job for income in order to fund their lifestyle. The go to schoo, then to college, then they look for a job, they get married, they find a house and then settle down and the rest of their lives they spend working 5 days a week to fund two days of rest on the weekend as well as pay for groceries and the mortgage and whatever else they need to spend money on.

Why? Settling down into all this debt and "comfort" will mean that you owe lots of people money + the interest repayments needed to borrow the money in the first place. This means that these people are invisibly cuffing themselves to jobs, they no longer have the opportunity to choose whether they want to work or not, they are compelled to or else they will lose their possessions which they deem so important.

Earlier this year I read a book on wealth creation and the mindset which is required in order to unbind yourself from the thinking that generally keeps people from being wealthy and requires them to work even harder to make ends meet. Sure there are some people who are so well paid that it really does matter and debt is no longer an issue, but honestly how many everage folk can honestly say they are in this situation. How many people with a mercedes are still paying it off? How many people with a $500000 house are still chained to their jobs to make the monthy repayments? Answer is many of them are, and these hallmarks of success are keeping people financially bound and still part of the rat race - the minute they stop working, they stand to lose those material goods they so desperately love.

So then what is the answer for the average folk? Passive income is as close to this answer as I can find.

Being a young university student on the edge of completing my degree, I didn't look very favourably on the prospects of life, since the above mentioned cycle of the rat race was the only sort of life I knew of, my parents lived that life, and my grandparents lived that life and most of my friends and relatives live that life....thats all I knew about. I saw people who were rich as smarter or luckier than others and never bothered to question whether there was some fundamental difference in the way they thought, before this year I never even bothered to look into wealth creation literature believing they were all bull**** get-rich-quick schemes.

Basically passive income is the concept of working once, for a lifetime of return. Interesting concept isnt it? I certainly think so - put in the hard yards today, so that you can rest tommorrow while the money flows in regardless of whether you work, retire, die, etc. There are numerous ways to do this, none of them easy, so don't kid yourself but definitely far from unattainable. If you're interested, you might want to go to the local bookstore and look around the Finance/Wealth sections.

The beautiful thing about passive income, is that over time, as you acquire more of it, the less you have to work to maintain the same level of lifestyle that you have while working full time with the added benefit of not needed to work in that job so many hours, allowing you to scale back accordingly. Some people have acquired so much passive income, that they no longer have to work...to me that sounds like a ****ing dream worth fighting for, getting continuous self-perpetuating income while you sit on your ass doing nothing.

The mindset that you need to have though is to value time more than money, in the employement-income cycle, you value money more than time, hence you are giving up your free time to earn money. Financially freeing yourself from the need to work, operates on the belief that time is more important than money, so having the money to do the things you want is the driving factor. Sure some people love their jobs, but wouldn't you rather a choice of whether you want to work or not? Most people I know would much rather be spending time with their kids, or visiting exotic locations than stuck behind a desk.

I haven't started on my quest for financial independance yet, but will shortly, I finish my degree in less than eight weeks and cannot wait to start the rest of my life. Before, I dreaded the day I would finish since I saw a bleak future of work work work but now with this different mindset the future looks exciting and there for the taking.

With this mindset, I now have the capacity to look for opportunities which i would not have seen before, and I have the open-mindedness to search avenues for information I'd never have looked for before. I've done a fair bit of reading into this stuff now, eliminating certain choices and learning about others, so i can say that I now have the tools to get out of the rat race, if i fail its because I didn't take the opportunities I came across.

I wonder how many people will even read this thread - I sure wished someone have enlightened me on this a long time ago.

- m

SO you're saying to work hard now while living a modest lifestyle so that you can have time to enjoy what you have later on??

if you have as much enthusiasm as you seem to have then you'll have a great start.
and that's awesome that you're making the decision to be your own boss and set your own destiny. just remember that your strength isn't in the decision that you make to START but in the persistence to not QUIT when the **** hits the fan.
and **** will hit the fan.

just don't ever quit. it will not come fast- regardless of all these people who lie about it. it should come over time. if it comes quick then you'll get spoiled, become weak and lose when things get tough.
no matter what, don't ever quit.

good luck mm :)

Originally posted by Curly Howard
SO you're saying to work hard now while living a modest lifestyle so that you can have time to enjoy what you have later on??

well, a little in the right direction Curly - but more to do with WHAT you do with the money you accumulate from living modestly.

With specific regards to passive income, it has more to do with using that money that you have not spend on some useless luxury, you use the money to invest in a money making asset such as real estate but in an educated sense that will bring in the most reward.

There is a lot of reading to be done before you can delve into it - the stats in Australia show that 92% of real estate investors have 1 property or less and make no money from it, meaning that most of this 92% of realestate investors are banking on a capital gains on their property so that when they sell in the future, hopefull the price of the property would have doubled. There are a few things that stop this from being a really good idea - inflation, cost of upkeep in the meantime, the fact that as prices rise they move towards an invisible price ceiling and the fact that housing price movements are not constant nor certain.

- m

ps. thanks purity I will keep that in mind bro - I remember you saying something about being in business right? Tell me about that, I like to learn off people who have succeeded.

good god do you post anything under 10,000 words

Ah I see now. I read about a construction worker who became a self made millionaire by basically living like a bum while buying up old houses and fixing them up to sell.

you know curly, when you look at it, that would be totally workable - his overheads would be next to nothing!

Originally posted by Magic Man
ps. thanks purity I will keep that in mind bro - I remember you saying something about being in business right? Tell me about that, I like to learn off people who have succeeded.

i've been doin real estate stuff for a few years now. i can say that the people who succeed do it real simply:
they pick the right business to be in, work hard, never give up, work harder, and respect their money. it's that simple so don't make it too complicated.
when problems arise, solve em. don't read money-making books cause they're a waste of time. if you wanna read a good book then read a simple and short one called "who stole my cheese". it won't take you longer than a half an hour.