The Silver Bloggers community and Dreemport have a new initiative out for this week, in which we are to write about passive income:
Well, this got me to thinking, what is passive income in the first place? So, I looked it up:
According to this definition, passive income is finances of some sort that we have to do little or nothing to receive. Interest is an obvious form of passive income, and the only income I would say I do nothing for. Bank account yields have been insignificant for years and years now, so I don't think those few pennies I make a month are going to change my lifestyle. The interest that I make and look at every single day is here on Hive; I make a whopping 67 cents a day in interest here.
Social security payments is another passive income for me, although I believe it comes from taxes I paid on my income while I was working, so I'm not sure it counts, but I'm including it anyway.
I invest some in tangibles. Real estate mostly, but I have a few valuable musical instruments, some original art, and a tiny bit in precious metals. These, hopefully, will all appreciate, resulting in passive income.
A couple years ago I removed all funds that I had invested in stocks long ago, because I no longer wanted to support that scam of a system, nor the entities mutual funds invest in, which are nearly all connected in some way to war. I bought a house with the money instead.
I am a NYC landlord. I own an apartment building in Brooklyn NY, and have for nearly 30 years. The building started making more than its expenses twenty two years ago, when we sold the business that we had operated there for fourteen years. When we sold that business, stopped working like fools, and charged rent for the commercial space instead, we suddenly had income that seemed passive in comparison. But I gotta tell ya, as good as that money is, I don't do nothing for it. I have to fill out reports and returns regularly. I have to arrange and pay for expensive repairs all the time. I have to pay bills bills bills. I have to write out leases, and annually inform the tenants that there have never been bedbugs, but that there is definitely lead paint, in the building. I have to go to court to contest pedantic and unknown violations, I have to file the apartments with the rent stabilization agency every single year, and I have to keep abreast of new regulations which is no easy task in today's regulations-for-regulations'-sake society.
So that got me to thinking about what the meaning of "passive income" really is here. If rental income is passive, then passive really means some way to make money without earning it as an employee. Or better yet, money earned or saved via pleasurable activities. In addition, saving on expenses is the same thing as income when you look only at your bottom lines. If we augment the definition of passive income to include money earned or saved via pleasurable, non-mandatory actions, we open up a whole lot of opportunities to make passive income. I am adding a few methods to the definition:
- DIY tasks
- Value added activities
- Foraging
- Growing your own food
- Blogging
- collecting tangibles that will appreciate in value, such as real estate, instruments, art, and precious metals
Here are a few examples:
@thebigsweed and @farm-mom earn passive income by milling their own wood. Many of us have our tree guys carry off the wood that has to come down on our properties, burn it, or turn it into mulch. Those of us who can mill our own wood will save a tremendous amount of money!
Cheese or yogurt made from raw milk before it sours and needs to be discarded.
Publishing poems on Hive. OK maybe not poems, they tend to make very little sadly, but blog about your yummy meal, or your spectacular walk, or what you bought in a market or heard in a club, and you get triple your pleasure: you enjoy the event, you get to relive it by telling us about it, and you earn rewards. That counts as passive income to me.
Waiting to thin your peas until the shoots are 5 or 6 inches high so you can eat them! This is some passive income I hope to earn in the next couple of weeks.
We focus so heavily on simple dollars and cents, that we miss the bigger picture here. Passive income in its purest sense - increases in finances that require no effort at all, is not all that easy to earn because we need money in order to make that kind of money. But those of us who have skimpy funds need not despair! There are many many ways to increase value if you just put it out of your head that value is determined by exchanges of money.
Of course, I am hoping to make millions on various crypto investments, but that remains to be seen.
This is my entry to The Silver Bloggers community's recent collaboration with Dreemport. Come tell us how you plan to make money from nothing!
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Why thank you!
I would love to have a passive income, all of my money involves lots of labor.
And I know how hard you do work. Hive may make us rich yet.
I wish I could understand more about how to buy Hive and Tokens, I read about it but can not connect the dots on how to do it. I do not think I am going to get rich by my posts. Maybe it will work better for you.
lol I have no idea what I am doing either. I just hit publish and hope. I know folks sign up with ecency and partiko and actfit and what not, but those baffle me. I just started on leofinance today, and I've made 2 cents in leo lol. I'm not going to get rich here either!
Interesting point about passive income (putting it in italics is starting align it dangerously close to passive aggression in my head. Perhaps there is a relationship) 😁
I think everything has some work involved somewhere, even if it's only filling in your tax return (that can be more work than it sounds) and handing over your cheque.
I think curation rewards are passive income under those rules - I see it more as pleasure: two or three times a day, I'm having a cup of tea and spending ten minutes having a look to see who is writing about what. It's not really work, is it? More like reading a magazine, which so far no one has rewarded me for.
I get some income from property. Under a certain threshold, you're not required to either report or pay taxes on it, but there is definitely work involved and sometimes it's emotional labour.
Even crypto, well, you have to keep checking the prices, don't you? 😂
Every single day, it's an obsession. Same for looking to see if there has been any action on my posts, like addiction. There are days I wish I would stop! I've been sitting here for 90 minutes this morning already. But it is pleasurable, so it counts as passive income in my book too.
Funny about passive aggressive, how we now almost conflate those two words, as if being passive is an affront.
😍
This is absolutely true and I like that approach.
It is true that some incomes that seem passive end up not being so and others that seem to give us work end up being passive because the work we do to obtain them is pleasurable.
Hive has the advantage of not only generating some income when we receive the rewards but also in the long term with the curation rewards, which could be passive if we forget about manual curation, but then we would miss the fun of reading other blogs, right?
Me too 😂🤣
May we all find ourselves rich in Hive.
Yay! 🤗
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Thank you so much Ecency and @coquicoin!
You are welcome 😊
That's one of the wonderful things about being in crypto. Not that I think money equals contentment or anything but it sure does help!
I can't think of any source of passive income that doesn't require some effort, even with investments.
That is my understanding/ interpretation of the term, with the addition of earning from assets that would otherwise be wasting away.
Thank you for a great response to this week's topic @owasco.
My pleasure! Thanks for stopping by!
The situation with your NY rental property requires so much. Regulations abound and additional ones are always just a few steps away.
I like your take on additional ways to add to your bottom line, especially the idea of reducing expenses. Bartering is a great way to do just that. I don't think we've bought a dozen of eggs since we moved here. We exchange goods with Robin's cousin that lives up the road a piece. We call her the egg lady, she drops off a few dozen every couple of weeks. In exchange, we'll give her a few different items including Maple syrup, Pickled beets, Pickles, and extra seeds we have saved from last year.
In the end, we both save some money. A penny saved is a penny earned.
Good job on this one, thinking out of the box, I love it.
Oh that's another great way to make passive income - bartering. Yes indeed. I need to find something I can barter. I made a second post with my favorite idea in it, becoming your family's bank for mortgages. This keeps all the money in the family, and benefits everyone involved from day one, not down the line when the royalties start coming in.