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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?

#471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gotta appreciate sarcasm in this answer, take a [+]

Note it's not necessarily sarcasm. Personally, I've been working as a developer for years (15+), and I 'quit' a couple of years ago. What do I mean by 'quit'? I've been working in large corporation bouncing from team to team. I only write code if I absolutely have to. So in practice I end up actually "working" a few days a month. I don't do shit at work. I just deliver something every so often, and with my experience…

But what do you do instead? Hours must seem long without work!

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

#472
It seems like the vast majority of employment contracts prohibit side projects like this, or at the very least, require explicit company approval. I'm interested in hearing strategies on how to best pursue side projects without violating one's employment contract.

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

#473
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…

Mr Money Moustache has 2 or 3 rental properties which are wealth appropriating not wealth creating. He's using the wages of other families. He goes on about how $10 is a lot yet takes far, far more in rent each week.

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

#475
post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to remember that this is putting all of your eggs in one basket to a certain extent though. Your income, your 401k match, and your ESPP are all tied to your employer, so as long as things are good, ESPPs can be a great way to make easy money, but if things take a stark downturn, you can find yourself with ESPP you lost money on, a slouching 401k, and no job. The chances of that happening are fairly low…

That's true, but I always sell my ESPP as soon as it is purchased. That is an immediate 15+% return. Our ESPP is 15% off of the lower of either the beginning or the ending of the offering. Of course the hope is that it will be the lower at the beginning of the offering so that the sell will be 15% + the amount the stock has risen since the beginning.

Well it is 15% but you are paying income tax on it because you aren't holding it for a year. So depending on your tax situation, it may be closer to 7-10%. Still good though.

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

#476
post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you choose Wealthsimple and Questrade instead of Vanguard like a lot of people on bogleheads recommend?

You can't buy directly from Vanguard in Canada. Questrade is essentially a very low cost broker (low as in free for ETFs).

You can buy certain Vanguard Funds from Canada. For example: VAB, VSB, VCN.

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

#477
post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be a better idea to invest in bonds or more stable sources of investment for the next few years until we can make sure of the impact of Brexit-Trump? I wouldn't be surprised if AAPL and other giant third sector companies fall in value right now.

I hope you do that. That way you'll be able to quantify your liberal hubris.

How is the comment you replied to liberal hubris? There is uncertainty with regard to Britain voting to leave the EU. Since the U.S. election the bond market in the U.S. has fallen quite a bit. This is unusual given that the only new information comes from the election. Clearly there are impacts from the election that an average person wouldn't be aware of. Hence the comment about adopting a wait and see attitude. While this may not be a good strategy it hardly qualifies, necessarily, as liberal hubris.

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

#478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

7% in the long term, but with big fluctuations.

Which fund? According to whom? SPY / VFIAX / S&P 500 has a CAGR 4.9% from Nov 2000 to Nov 2016.

Not too long ago the long term rolling returns for the S&P 500 where still somewhere around this number. This article [1] is from 2012, not much has changed in the last four years.

"The average 30-year rolling total return for the S&P 500 starting with 1926, is 2,478% or 11.21% annualized (geometric mean). There were several 30-year periods that had annual returns between 8% and 10%."

Having said so, past returns don't guarantee anything for the future. They might give you an indication though.

[1]: http://allfinancialmatters.com/2012/08/29/sp-rolling-total-r...

Edit: Here's [2] a better (?) graph of the S&P 500 with the 30 year rolling returns, inflation adjusted and dividends reinvested. Source[3]

[2]: http://imgur.com/Ja1xOcA [3]: http://redd.it/3fsdex

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

#479
post #308

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 comp…

You should offer paid content through Gumroad or something. That said, the PE exam was a breeze for me (took computer engineering exam). I'm slightly horrified that the failure rate is 50%.

Thanks. The affiliate that I work with offers paid content that is miles better than something could come up with over short period of time, so I'm happy referring business his way. Pouring more hours into this project isn't really worth the opportunity-cost for me at this point (consulting + bootstrapping a startup).

In my jurisdiction (Ontario, Canada), if you graduate from an accredited engineering school and gather the requisite work experience, there is no technical exam, it is the same ethics and law exam for all disciplines (PPE or Professional Practice Exam). Documenting your work experience is probably the most work-intensive task as they want you to lay out what you did and how it qualifies as engineering in great detail. Probably the biggest reason for my traffic is that I published my (anonymous) experience record, since real life examples of this document are nearly impossible to find on the web. For the exam, I basically studied for the better part of a week. It's a 3 hour exam where your answers are typically paragraphs or pages long. I get the sense that some engineers struggle with it due to language issues more than anything else.

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

#480
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have read a lot about passive investing (The Intelligent Investor, Mr Money Mustache etc.) but I live in France and it does not seem as simple as in the US to invest in a SP500 index fund for example. Especially if you want something that is quite tax efficient. Does anyone have any advice?

Open an investment account in the USA - it's fairly straightforward. I don't know your tax system in france, but you can invest in the US as an individual or an entity, probably worth talking w/ a tax attorney about how to do it - it's certainly done by others.

Don't think it's that straightforward. Probably need a SSN and there will be tax withholding of earnings
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