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Ask HN: What is your yearly passive income?

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Re: Ask HN: What is your yearly passive income?

#31

Post by michaelthiessen »

I think that "passive income" is a misnomer, or at least, not very useful. I find it more helpful to think in hourly rates, since you're always putting in time for something.

If you spend 100 hours setting up a website, and over the next 5 years you never touch it and you make some money, some would consider that "passive". But really, you put in 100 hours, and made $x from it.

I think people are really looking for high ratio of money to time spent, not something that is truly "passive".

Re: Ask HN: What is your yearly passive income?

#33

Post by volkk »

CryoLogic wrote: post #26
moksha256 wrote: post #6

The more I explore this concept of 'passive income' the more it seems like a unicorn not unlike the Facebooks and Instagrams of the world. Sure, it's possible to generate truly passive income, without any ongoing work to sustain it, but such projects are so rare that it's impractical to pursue them. It's like saying you're going to create the next unicorn...good luck with that. 99.9% of endeavors worth doing pursuing…

It's very easy to get passive income. Just buy high dividend mutual funds. 100k in the market should net you 4-12k per year.

ah yeah, the good ol' 100k i have lying around should finally have some use for me!

Re: Ask HN: What is your yearly passive income?

#34

Post by exitreturn123 »

Making a throwaway for this.

My annual pre-tax income from work is about $2,500,000.

My annual passive pre-tax income is about $1,200,000. This is 100% derived from investment returns from an exit I had a few years ago from a startup I was with.

I spend about $400,000/year (after tax) of that.

Here's the kicker: Nothing makes you feel more poor than being worth about $40m in cash while you hang out with billionaires and live in NYC or SF.

Re: Ask HN: What is your yearly passive income?

#35

Post by artursapek »

moksha256 wrote: post #6

The more I explore this concept of 'passive income' the more it seems like a unicorn not unlike the Facebooks and Instagrams of the world. Sure, it's possible to generate truly passive income, without any ongoing work to sustain it, but such projects are so rare that it's impractical to pursue them. It's like saying you're going to create the next unicorn...good luck with that. 99.9% of endeavors worth doing pursuing…

Passive implies less-than-full-time work, not "no work". It also usually requires a ton of unpaid work invested up-front (hence why most people never try it), and after it's established it should mostly just run on autopilot. There's obviously an ongoing maintenance requirement, as any system has. Often people outsource parts like customer support to further automate things.

Ideally the product is something you enjoy working on though, so the end result would be that

1. you have an income

2. you enjoy the work that you do have to do

3. you have a lot more spare time

Re: Ask HN: What is your yearly passive income?

#37

Post by oblio »

volkk wrote: post #33
CryoLogic wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very easy to get passive income. Just buy high dividend mutual funds. 100k in the market should net you 4-12k per year.

ah yeah, the good ol' 100k i have lying around should finally have some use for me!

Step 1 to become rich: already be rich! :)

Re: Ask HN: What is your yearly passive income?

#38

Post by thatwasunusual »

zht wrote: post #20
thatwasunusual wrote: post #17

I honestly don't know, but I should problably check. I sold a _very_ small IT company in 1998 for $50K when I got a "real job"; the truth is, I didn't earn much on my own company, and it was doomed to fail anyway. I was only 22 years old, and my financially over-protective dad (thanks, though, and RIP) insisted on putting all the money into pretty secure stock funds. I've never needed the money, and after my dad pass…

you should probably check... there may be fees or other things that have happened.

Ah, yes. I forgot to mention that; the "fund controllers" take 1.25% of my portfolio. The last 5 years it seems to have increased 12,6% in average, though, so I'm not that worried. If I had controlled it myself, well, you get the idea... :)

Re: Ask HN: What is your yearly passive income?

#39

Post by catpolice »

Many of the things I would be tempted to describe (and am seeing others here describe) as passive income aren't, at least in the strict sense: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/passiveincome.asp

In the colloquial sense, I made about 18k last year off of money I dumped into Betterment a while before. I don't do anything but periodically check on how much money I've made. I wish I'd started passively investing about a decade earlier. If you have anything beyond an emergency buffer just sitting in your checking account, just do it.

Re: Ask HN: What is your yearly passive income?

#40

Post by School-Cotton »

exitreturn123 wrote: post #34

Making a throwaway for this. My annual pre-tax income from work is about $2,500,000. My annual passive pre-tax income is about $1,200,000. This is 100% derived from investment returns from an exit I had a few years ago from a startup I was with. I spend about $400,000/year (after tax) of that. Here's the kicker: Nothing makes you feel more poor than being worth about $40m in cash while you hang out with billionaires…

Well I can't relate to your kicker at all. I'm worth 200k and my income is 300k pre-tax. I live in NYC on that salary and feel fabulously rich.
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