I don’t know why I didn’t do this before. But I’m glad I’m doing it now. It takes a lot of money to make more money. But I think it’s necessary these days to have more than one income stream. If you’d have told me I had to save $25k to earn $100 dollars a month, I’d have laughed in your face. That sounds ridiculous. Approaching it slowly, and outside of the income from my job, has changed my perspective.
I’ve been trying really hard to earn, save, and invest money outside of my normal job for two years now. I set a small goal of purchasing one dividend paying stock every week. My goal was a monthly, passive dividend income of $100 dollars a month. I’m at a little over $85 dollars a month in passive dividend income after two years. Two years. I think the approach had everything to do with it. It felt like money I didn’t need to use on anything, not real, like play money. It was also an easy enough goal to hit so that I didn’t get too stressed. It didn’t take much thinking. I usually exceeded my goal. Sure, I could have gambled it on crypto or options, but I wanted a solid base to build upon. Something that would be there later. It feels good.
I want $1,000 a month, but that will take a lot of time and I’m not setting that goal for myself yet. Instead I will likely continue doing what I’m doing, set smaller goals, let what I have compound, drop a few investments like PSEC and NVDY, and maybe even take a break when I hit $100 a month in passive income. Maybe I’ll celebrate with a beer.
This is the first year I won’t hit my goal for churning or earning from survey and task-based sites. That’s okay. I know how to do it and I will always have those if I need to leverage them again. I didn’t use my windfall from last month in this portfolio. Instead I invested in a CD. I don’t know if that’s the right choice, but at a 4% return I can’t complain. Something in my gut told me to do it and unless inflation goes crazy it won’t hurt me.
If I could go back and tell my past self anything it would be this: Just do it. Just start. Do whatever it takes. Enjoy yourself, but prepare. Keep going. It’s not as difficult as it seems and your future self will thank you.