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Ask HN: What passive income investments exist to supplement your salary?

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Re: Ask HN: What passive income investments exist to supplement your salary?

#131

Post by foobiter »

impostervt wrote: post #32

Publish books on Amazon. I've published 4 and make about $3k in profit per month, after paying for ads on amazon. Don't write them yourself, that's a lot of work. Instead, do key word research about what books sell in non-fiction categories (fiction is a whole different ballgame). Look for keywords that 1) auto complete in the amazon search bar, and 2) have less than 4,000 matching books, and 3) have an average Amazo…

I hate everything about this. Every step in this process is about making money and nothing else.

Re: Ask HN: What passive income investments exist to supplement your salary?

#132

Post by HockeyPlayer »

Buying real estate for short-term or long-term rentals is buying yourself a second job.

If you want something more passive, consider investing in several different real estate syndications. You can find them on CrowdStreet or FundRise although I believe you will get into better deals if you join a local investor group and learn from the experienced members. If there isn't a group near you, I'm enjoying participating in www.506investorgroup.com

This style is probably only practical if you already have a net worth of at least $1m. The best book I've found is Investing in Real Estate Private Equity by Sean Cook.

I think it is reasonable to expect a diversified portfolio of real estate syndications to return 10-15% annually although it will be bumpy and your money will be locked up for years.

Re: Ask HN: What passive income investments exist to supplement your salary?

#133

Post by axiosgunnar »

kinghajj wrote: post #79
lend000 wrote: post #45

Truly passive income doesn't really exist (and shouldn't exist, outside of perhaps some type of state sponsored basic income). The exception in recent history is ETF's, which provide a relatively high level of reliable growth due to a questionable tax exception and government monetary policy that favors stock market positions over other economic metrics such as wealth inequality. I believe ETF's are bad for the econo…

Would you mind elaborating on why you dislike ETFs? From my point of view, they provide retail trades the opportunity easily to allocate a portfolio among various sectors. Does your dislike of ETFs extend to "old-school" mutual funds, or is there something about ETFs in particular that turns you off of them?

The criticism is that they do not lead to efficient allocation of capital (the point of the stock market) but rather a feedback loop where the ETF fund has to buy TSLA and AMZN because they are in the top 500, and that makes them worth even more, keeping the in the 500s forever, and not because they produce value and were deemed a good choice by a professional investor that did his due diligence, but simply because of the ETF feedback loops.

Re: Ask HN: What passive income investments exist to supplement your salary?

#134

Post by jimmydorry »

Havoc wrote: post #10

I’ve got a share portfolio that generates a couple bucks a day in short share lending. Literally just tick a box to give broker permission. Nothing is risky free but looked into it and as best as I can tell it’s a pretty good deal. No inconvenience, not much risk etc

The problem with this though is that you are giving ammunition to those shooting at you. If their gambit succeeds (shorting), the value of your shares diminish. The net effect of doing this might not be entirely visible as a "smaller fish in the pond", but it is there none-the-less.

Re: Ask HN: What passive income investments exist to supplement your salary?

#135

Post by nyxtom »

bluegene wrote: post #105
cjohansson wrote: post #100

I use an automatic saving from my bank-account to a investment-robot that my bank provides that automatically buys shares in different funds, I would say it gives 10-20% back and requires zero effort, took less than an hour to setup

Which bank is that? Can you setup a ceiling?

Charles Schwab has these services, fidelity as well. I think most actually provide this but Schwab is the one I use

Re: Ask HN: What passive income investments exist to supplement your salary?

#136

Post by nyxtom »

PiRho3141 wrote: post #59

I see a lot of people talking about rental properties and I don't think there's enough talk in favor of rental properties so here's my shot at it. My philosophy of being a landlord is not to bank on appreciation, but rather find houses where the mortgage is well below what tenants are paying for. How do you find those kinds of houses? You buy dilapidated houses, renovate them and then rent them out. If you don't want…

Graham has a great channel for this. Love his work. This is known as the Brrrr method I believe

Re: Ask HN: What passive income investments exist to supplement your salary?

#138

Post by dangus »

HockeyPlayer wrote: post #132

Buying real estate for short-term or long-term rentals is buying yourself a second job. If you want something more passive, consider investing in several different real estate syndications. You can find them on CrowdStreet or FundRise although I believe you will get into better deals if you join a local investor group and learn from the experienced members. If there isn't a group near you, I'm enjoying participating…

Sincere question: why is this better than going with the vast array of mutual funds and ETFs available? Is it the return rate? Something else?

It seems like your typical ETF or mutual fund is easier to get into and get out of, just a few clicks on your brokerage of choice.

Your answer brought up the obvious general answer: the only way to make passive income from investments is to already have a lot of money. To me there's a point where the method of investment almost seems like an irrelevant detail.

Re: Ask HN: What passive income investments exist to supplement your salary?

#139

Post by atatatat »

impostervt wrote: post #85
stevenhuang wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of topics do you write about? Is it programming/reference material like "Mastering framework X in lang Y"?

I won't say what category I focus on, but I will say that programming books don't sell well, in general. Some do quite well, but most don't.

Dog and bird training, growing plants, etc
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