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Ask HN: What is your best passive income 2019?

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Re: Ask HN: What is your best passive income 2019?

#71

Post by countryqt30 »

I've co-founded (CTO) AlleAktien.de (https://www.alleaktien.de) 4 months ago, writing unseen high-quality and professional long-term stock analyses online. Capturing ~400 subscribers a EUR 20/month so far. The entire platform is in German, focussing on the Germany/Switzerland/Austria market :).

Disclaimer: it's a side-project, but not passive. Writing high-quality analyses is extremely time consuming (30-500 hours each) for ourselves, and our analysts - but it pays off in compound terms. I personally worked only on weekends for 4 months on this.

Before that, I was at MIT, UBS bank and McKinsey. Currently, I'm also looking for additional CTO co-founder opportunities globally (I'm co-located in SF and Switzerland) - please reach out to jakobm@mit.edu if you want to launch an own online product or course in a matter of days, and reiterate at an insane speed (only if you have a solid pitch or massive online followership, OR: if you know sb. who has such, there's a HUGE finder's fee of several 10k USD).

Re: Ask HN: What is your best passive income 2019?

#72

Post by beatgammit »

Spooky23 wrote: post #66
mikekchar wrote: post #34

This might sound strange, but I don't like the term "passive income". It sounds like a scam. Probably some people actually want a scam, but I think there is a better way of putting it. Profit is roughly "sales - costs". Normally costs are scaled by labour. The higher the volume, the more labour and therefore the higher the costs. You can categorise the shapes of these curves. In a really dysfunctional company, the am…

Passive describes the level of effort, not the investment. Usually passive income is rent-seeking. Property management is a great example. I can buy a cheap house in a lousy neighborhood, make a modest capital investment, sign up with Section 8 and get pre-screened tenants with guaranteed cash flow. My marginal work output is very low - a few hours a month. I used to lease a few acres of land to a farmer. The only wo…

And your work per month could be contracted out, so you don't actually need to do any more effort than meeting with your account periodically to make sure you're making money.

Re: Ask HN: What is your best passive income 2019?

#73

Post by siruncledrew »

throwaway98121 wrote: post #35

No side projects. The little time I have outside of work and family, I read or browse hacker news before falling asleep. I did take vacation recently and play The Witcher 3, which ruined gaming for me. I have about $200k spread thoughout some index funds and individual stocks that all pay dividends in my post tax accounts. I reinvest all that income and the taxes are kind of annoying to deal with, but’s it’s better t…

Putting money in holdings like stocks, funds, and other investments seems like the closest thing to “passive income” based on how I would expect “passive” to be defined. It’s getting paid to park money in something for some time. If it’s simple investing like in mutual funds and ETFs, then almost anybody could handle the level of personal resources that goes into maintaining that source of income which is mostly just checking the performance and filing taxes once a year (pretty much this could be accomplished with price notifications and something like turbotax).

I don’t know, maybe that kind of “passive income” is no longer cool or desirable.

Every form of passive income requires periodic blips of input, but the magnitude and frequency of those blips could vary a lot depending on the business. There’s some forms of passive income that are really like part-time jobs or require a full-time job worth of effort to launch something. These don’t seem very passive to me.

I see people preach on the internet how they found some golden opportunity that lead to raking in thousands of dollars on a monthly basis with minimal oversight. I’m sure instances of this exist, but frankly I think there’s a lot that is still unsaid about what was required to pull it off. There’s a group of people that are instead looking for the snake oil fountain that allows someone to live like their retired in their 30s but without doing any work. This is no longer “passive income”, and is instead just another “what’s the easiest way to become rich” search. The reality is that identifying and executing a high-ROI opportunity that recurring brings in money with low input is not as easy as following an A->B->C guide or else every market entrant would have like a 90% success rate and everyone would already be doing it.

If people genuinely want passive income, then financial investments or monetizing hobbies (to the extent it’s still enjoyable) seem like a good place to start for providing a good lifestyle/income balance.

Re: Ask HN: What is your best passive income 2019?

#74

Post by Spooky23 »

beatgammit wrote: post #72
Spooky23 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Passive describes the level of effort, not the investment. Usually passive income is rent-seeking. Property management is a great example. I can buy a cheap house in a lousy neighborhood, make a modest capital investment, sign up with Section 8 and get pre-screened tenants with guaranteed cash flow. My marginal work output is very low - a few hours a month. I used to lease a few acres of land to a farmer. The only wo…

And your work per month could be contracted out, so you don't actually need to do any more effort than meeting with your account periodically to make sure you're making money.

I know of a guy who has 3 employees who coordinate aboit 800-100 properties.

He probably turns over something like $20M, and can use the portfolio to write off profits from other businesses.

Re: Ask HN: What is your best passive income 2019?

#77

Post by shanecleveland »

siruncledrew wrote: post #73
throwaway98121 wrote: post #35

No side projects. The little time I have outside of work and family, I read or browse hacker news before falling asleep. I did take vacation recently and play The Witcher 3, which ruined gaming for me. I have about $200k spread thoughout some index funds and individual stocks that all pay dividends in my post tax accounts. I reinvest all that income and the taxes are kind of annoying to deal with, but’s it’s better t…

Putting money in holdings like stocks, funds, and other investments seems like the closest thing to “passive income” based on how I would expect “passive” to be defined. It’s getting paid to park money in something for some time. If it’s simple investing like in mutual funds and ETFs, then almost anybody could handle the level of personal resources that goes into maintaining that source of income which is mostly just…

"Investment income" is certainly a good example of "passive income." But it seems when investment income is touted as the only true form of passive income, it is forgotten that, in most cases, some outlay of effort was required to first generate the initial investment.

Likewise, many projects that require some initial effort upfront may eventually produce income with little to no continuing involvement. Passive income.

Re: Ask HN: What is your best passive income 2019?

#78

Post by marktangotango »

Spooky23 wrote: post #74
beatgammit wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And your work per month could be contracted out, so you don't actually need to do any more effort than meeting with your account periodically to make sure you're making money.

I know of a guy who has 3 employees who coordinate aboit 800-100 properties. He probably turns over something like $20M, and can use the portfolio to write off profits from other businesses.

Is that 80-100 or 800-1000? I have one single family rental and a new roof(hail damage), busted water pipe, and toilet wax seal cost me $5000 this year and that was with insurance covering 2/3 the roof) That was my profit for several years. Ie I don’t see how this is profitable to anyone.

Re: Ask HN: What is your best passive income 2019?

#79

Post by marketgod »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #75
tluyben2 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which you should...

Then you end up with very little (if any) income :-)

Not really. Look up lazy portfolios by Bogleheads. If you continue to invest it can grow for you. I mean not at insane levels but definitely a decent return for many.

Re: Ask HN: What is your best passive income 2019?

#80

Post by 40something »

marktangotango wrote: post #78
Spooky23 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know of a guy who has 3 employees who coordinate aboit 800-100 properties. He probably turns over something like $20M, and can use the portfolio to write off profits from other businesses.

Is that 80-100 or 800-1000? I have one single family rental and a new roof(hail damage), busted water pipe, and toilet wax seal cost me $5000 this year and that was with insurance covering 2/3 the roof) That was my profit for several years. Ie I don’t see how this is profitable to anyone.

It’s because most “gurus” don’t actually own and manage properties. The only way I can make a double digit cap rate in the hood is by doing all the maintenance and labor myself.
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