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Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

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Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#41

Post by Confiks »

edent wrote: post #17

* Apps with ads in them. Easy enough to churn out, but decreasing revenues and most of the high earning adverts are the scummiest. Low value and of low moral usefulness. * Solar Panels. In the UK, the government pays you per kWh generated. Needs an upfront investment, but stable income and you reduce your own energy bills. See http://shkspr.mobi/blog/tag/solar * Renting out property. Needs a much larger initial inves…

> Solar Panels. In the UK, the government pays you per kWh generated. Needs an upfront investment (...)

It also required upfront confidence in the sustainability of the government subsidy. In The Netherlands a lot of now-solar panel owners decided to invest because of subsidies, but last year the government decided to stop the subsidy for 2016. Especially with the low energy prices, that makes it a net loss for a lot of people.

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#42

Post by navbaker »

Confiks wrote: post #41
edent wrote: post #17

* Apps with ads in them. Easy enough to churn out, but decreasing revenues and most of the high earning adverts are the scummiest. Low value and of low moral usefulness. * Solar Panels. In the UK, the government pays you per kWh generated. Needs an upfront investment, but stable income and you reduce your own energy bills. See http://shkspr.mobi/blog/tag/solar * Renting out property. Needs a much larger initial inves…

> Solar Panels. In the UK, the government pays you per kWh generated. Needs an upfront investment (...) It also required upfront confidence in the sustainability of the government subsidy. In The Netherlands a lot of now-solar panel owners decided to invest because of subsidies, but last year the government decided to stop the subsidy for 2016. Especially with the low energy prices, that makes it a net loss for a lot…

Nevada just did the same thing.

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#43

Post by shoover »

nns wrote: post #9
33a wrote: post #4

Save money and invest it.

Can you give examples of what kind of low-touch reasonable-return investments you've benefited from?

The Permanent Portfolio [1]. The plan is based on very simple economic theory, and historically it generates market-competitive returns in the long run with much lower volatility than stock indexes or 60/40 portfolios.

As in the peer thread on stock funds, this plan is not a great income generator because it's designed more for capital preservation and long term capital gains. (Unless you have half a million dollars in there and interest rates are favorable for the bonds or cash holdings.) But for me it's a great way to carve out savings and get some real compounding going. The longest drawdown in the past 40 years is 2-3 years, so I'm comfortable using it with any savings I don't expect to need to use in the next five or more years.

Implementation could hardly be simpler for the robustness that it offers. You put the money in and divide it into four parts. Once a year take a look at the balances and rebalance if any category is too far out of alignment.

For resources, Harry Browne's book mentioned in [1] is awesome for general investment sense and lays out the basics of the plan. Another book by Roland and Lawson [2] goes into much more of the nuts and bolts of implementation using different account types, tax status, and many other factors in individual situations.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fail-Safe_Investing

[2] http://www.amazon.com/The-Permanent-Portfolio-Long-Term-Inve...

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#44

Post by cddotdotslash »

I write eBooks for developers interested in using semi-new technologies. Previously, I wrote about developing websites to work with the Chromecast. Most recently, I published an eBook about AWS Lambda[1]. The income is not terribly good, but enough to make it worthwhile. I've been approached by publishing companies who want to raise the price to $50+ per copy, but I prefer keeping them at $2-$4 so they're more accessible for everyone.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B016JOMAEE?

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#45

Post by SilasX »

jstanley wrote: post #10
nns wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give examples of what kind of low-touch reasonable-return investments you've benefited from?

Any low-fees index fund.

In terms of throwing off a lot of passive income, they just aren't very good though. Looking mainly at income-generating investments, the best index one might be Vanguard LifeStrategy income (with provides income and moderate capital appreciation to protect against inflation).

The yield? 2.1% Nothing to write home about. [1]

Is there some high-yielding, regular-income fund I should know about? Even allowing for sorta-irregular funds, you probably can't do much better in this environment, though I'd like to be proven wrong.

[1] https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/snapshot?FundId=0723&...

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#46

Post by fweespeech »

adenadel wrote: post #27
fweespeech wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Default rates on Lending Club are high enough you get ~33% of the quoted interest rate due to defaults.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but do you have data supporting this statement? I've been interested in peer to peer lending for awhile and this turns me off a bit.

Well the person I was replying to was suggesting G notes:

https://www.lendingclub.com/info/demand-and-credit-profile.a...

8.99 / 23.47 = 38%

https://www.lendingclub.com/info/statistics-performance.acti...

Their median return is 7.2%.

The top 90th percentile is 9%.

> For example, if you invested $100,000 in lower grade (C-G) notes on Lending Club with an aggregate 12.0% net annualized return, you'd receive approximately $6,000 in cash payments each month.

That just isn't a situation that happens for 99% of people.

Personally, I've seen worse returns and I know a number of other people that feel the way Lending Club came up with these numbers is fudged a bit since almost everyone I know ends up below the median.

https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/snapshot?FundId=0040&...

The reality is, its returns are reasonably high risk [as you are limited in how many you can invest due to the caps the other guy mentioned] and if you get a bad basket you are screwed.

I'd rather invest in stocks given the real returns for the average person in Lending Club are about the same. Also, literally 0 of its proponents factor in what happens during a major recession [ default rates will skyrocket ] which will make even these modest returns terrible very quickly as loans default.

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#47

Post by jo909 »

What does passive mean to you? 99% hands-off income that just shows up magically without any significant work?

Most schemes I see here and elsewhere require a lot of investment (of time mostly) upfront, and then often also ongoing attention so the scheme keeps working.

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#48

Post by lfx »

jerguismi wrote: post #30

Bitcoin arbitrage.

Correct my if I'm wrong but bitcoin arbitrage doesn't seem like good idea, here is pretty good explanation - https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-price-arbitrage-expl...

I would better put my money in more "real" etf's and start from there.

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#49

Post by beeboop »

phpnode wrote: post #31
edent wrote: post #17

* Apps with ads in them. Easy enough to churn out, but decreasing revenues and most of the high earning adverts are the scummiest. Low value and of low moral usefulness. * Solar Panels. In the UK, the government pays you per kWh generated. Needs an upfront investment, but stable income and you reduce your own energy bills. See http://shkspr.mobi/blog/tag/solar * Renting out property. Needs a much larger initial inves…

In the nicest possible way, your post reads like "Passive income suggestions (2006)" - e.g. I can't really believe that stoozing still works when interest rates are so low, and getting new affiliate sites ranking is very difficult these days.

Using the free credit balance transfer for a savings account seems like a bad use of money. At best you're going to get something a little below the rate of inflation. You're better off investing it into a conservative index fund portfolio, but at that point you may as well just do the same thing but trading with leverage.

Re: Ask HN: Your Passive Income Suggestions?

#50

Post by raesene9 »

edent wrote: post #17

* Apps with ads in them. Easy enough to churn out, but decreasing revenues and most of the high earning adverts are the scummiest. Low value and of low moral usefulness. * Solar Panels. In the UK, the government pays you per kWh generated. Needs an upfront investment, but stable income and you reduce your own energy bills. See http://shkspr.mobi/blog/tag/solar * Renting out property. Needs a much larger initial inves…

UK Solar isn't a good idea any more, the current government has slashed the payments and it's only going to go down more...
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