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Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016?

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Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016?

#301

Post by stana »

xapata wrote: post #261
mxschumacher wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

then again: beware of averages. Historical PE ratios are quite high (though EV/FCC would be more instructive) - so it is unlikely that the next couple of years will bring 7%. We're living in a world of free money: if central banks change interest rates the party could come to an end.

Not necessarily. If the interest rates are reduced because the economy improved, then the growth could stay similar.

Aren't interest rates reduced to stimulate a struggling economy, and increased if economy improving?

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016?

#302

Post by biznerd »

refrigerator wrote: post #28

My brother and I have built a couple of test prep sites for UK medical school entrance exams: https://www.bmat.ninja , https://www.ukcat.ninja . BMAT Ninja made about $25k this year (up from $16k last year) and UKCAT about $10k. Didn't do any work on marketing really so it is pretty much passive, but I think with a bit of work they could both do a lot better. It's a very seasonal market - we only get customers for ab…

great site! if you didnt do any marketing, how did your customers find you?

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016?

#303

Post by icebraining »

durkie wrote: post #294

i own a decent amount of tesla stock and 2016 was a great year for lending it out. since tesla is such a controversial company, lots of people want to own the stock (expecting it to go up) and lots of people want to short sell it (expecting it go down). if you're a stock holder, certain places (like interactive brokers) will let you lend your stock holdings to people that want to sell it short. you earn a premium on…

its basically risk-free since the brokerage bears the counter-party risk.

Well, unless the brokerage itself goes under, no?

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016?

#304

Post by karolisram »

[deleted] wrote: post #62

[deleted]

Would you consider your trades luck that won't last? Also I am curious what's your background that made you so successful in trading? I personally had 10x gains on crypto market but it was a 1 year investment, (no speculations) done with some research but I'd say I mostly just got lucky.

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016?

#306

Post by closeparen »

jrheard wrote: post #13

Young hackers who have a surplus of income and have funds to spare that aren't being channeled toward debt / family / donations, heed me: save as much of your salary as you can, and put it in boring investments (index funds / etc), probably through vanguard.com (no affiliation, I just use them and have heard nothing but good things from people I trust). You can pretty easily set up your job's direct-deposit system so…

... otherwise known as a 401k.

Probably don't do this (use taxable investment accounts) unless you have at least 15% going to your tax-advantaged retirement account(s).

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016?

#308

Post by kohanz »

This was pretty accidental, but to motivate myself to complete the arduous application process for my professional engineering license, I creates a WordPress blog documenting the process. Also because I thought I would learn something new (setting up WP blog) and this seemed very "shippable". I completed the application process over the course of a year and haven't written a blog post in over a year.

Thanks to a complete lack of material in this niche, the site (http://pengapplicant.ca) gets a decent amount of organic search traffic given the niche size (2k page views per month) and I make about $15/month in Adsense. Recently I was also contacted by someone who sells materials for the application and exam and have become an affiliate for them. It's only been one month, but i've already made one referral which netted me $100. So passive income on this after hosting costs is probably $220-ish and will be more in 2017 hopefully with more affiliate sales. Obviously very small potatoes, but I never set out to make any money for this and it looks like now it will at least cover my yearly professional dues ;)

To be honest, the best part is the messages I get from people saying how I helped them get their license. That's a much nicer feeling than the $.

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016?

#309

Post by qwrusz »

hackerboos wrote: post #241
yonibot wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This book taught me the fundamentals of passive investing ( https://www.amazon.com/Random-Walk-Down-Wall-Street/dp/03933... ) and this website is THE online community for Bogle-style, passive investors ( https://www.bogleheads.org/ ), once you understand the basics.

I read that book this year. The entire book can be summarised as. Don't attempt to beat the market. The market cannot be beat (many examples in the book). Invest in index funds long term which is the right mix of risk/reward for most people. It does have a chart in the back which tracks your age and situation. For example as you approach retirement you should start to liquidate your funds and buy government bonds so…

That's a great summary and advice!

It's crazy there is this giant industry of overpaid people that exists only because people don't listen to that advice.

Disclaimer: I work in said industry.

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016?

#310

Post by stevenmays »

jrheard wrote: post #13

Young hackers who have a surplus of income and have funds to spare that aren't being channeled toward debt / family / donations, heed me: save as much of your salary as you can, and put it in boring investments (index funds / etc), probably through vanguard.com (no affiliation, I just use them and have heard nothing but good things from people I trust). You can pretty easily set up your job's direct-deposit system so…

I put 25k into my investments this year, and I made 40k in unrealized gains, following the above strategy. It works folks.

My blog post about financial independence: http://mays.co/why-financial-independence/

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