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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?

#221

Post by axiosgunnar »

dangus wrote: post #145
axiosgunnar wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

Maybe this is just a pedantic terminology thing, but what you're talking about is much narrower than the ETF. I think the image of an ETF you're seeing is of the S&P 500 index fund or total stock market index fund. However, an ETF is just a method of exchanging securities. There are thousands of ETFs in all kinds of different categories: https://etfdb.com/etfs/ I personally subscribe to the idea that the fears about…

Ah yes you are absolutely right. I meant „stock index ETF“ when I said „ETF“. But then I believe the parent posters were also referring to index ETFs when they said „ETF“, so it‘s just us normies polluting the name spaces again :-)

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

#222

Post by sadfasf122 »

throwaway088 wrote: post #7

So, about renting, I bought a single family home for $500k in bay area. It now is worth $1M. Gets me rent before expenses of $40000. So far, I have spent about $5k per year on. Repairs etc. So effectively, I make about $20k after taxes, repairs, mortgage interest etc. Overall, I spent $350k by way of downpayment, mortage interest payment, etc. No major tenant issues. Hence, I would peg my return on investment of 5% i…

Huh? FAANG has give much more than 10% returns...

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

#223

Post by adamhp »

giantg2 wrote: post #219
adamhp wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chances are, you're not thinking about it hard enough. If you truly think you have nothing to offer, then start acquiring something to offer. Put in the hard work and thought into acquiring specialized skills and relationships with people. It takes time (usually a lot of it), but it is not complicated.

Eh, I've done that in the past and it didn't mean anything. They just outsourced the tech/system that I became an expert at. You need luck in addition to expertise, and that's something I can't control.

Yeah, nobody can control that, so you can either give up or keep working hard at things until you "get lucky". One has the possibility of success and one doesn't.

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

#224

Post by codegeek »

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…

Now you have given Instagramers the secret sauce to "How to Launch a book on Amazon without any work and make a killing". Be ready for the Tsunami of these creators who are charging money to teach others how to do it.

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

#225

Post by awillen »

reasonabl_human wrote: post #159
awillen wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can hire a property manager who will take a percent and turn it into almost entirely passive income. This is what I do with my properties, and all I do is approve expenses over a certain level and forward tax docs to my CPA at the beginning of the year.

Do you have any tips on vetting property managers, or an appropriate going rate for such work?

I pay mine 7% of rent - you can definitely find lower rates if you're dealing with large buildings, but I'm at 7 units total and I really like the guy.

In terms of vetting them, first thing is to check licenses - most states require them to either be a licensed real estate broker or working under one.

I prefer to work with someone who matches me in scale/style - my guy is a broker and runs his own PM service. I deal directly with him. I'd be hesitant to use a larger PM company (even if it might be a bit cheaper) at my scale, because I'm small enough that I'll be a very low priority and will have the most junior employees dealing with my properties. That can be an issue, since they're not necessarily going to have the expertise to do the long-term stuff like knowing when to get the roof inspected. When my wife moved out of her last apartment before we got married, the rep from the PM company refused to do a move-out inspection, since there was still furniture inside that could have been hiding things. Had they charged my wife for anything, we would've taken them to small claims since PMs are required by CA law to inform the tenant of their right to a move out inspection and then to perform one and provide written feedback on request. That's what happens when you're dealing with someone in their early 20s who just passed the real estate agent exam (which I have passed... it is not hard) and doesn't know what they're doing.

Also, look for companies that serve your kind of property - dealing with a property that has an HOA is different than one that doesn't. Dealing with a single family home is different than dealing with a condo. Dealing with a whole apartment building is different than dealing with a single apartment.

And lastly, references. You should be able to get a bunch of them from the PM. Try to get tenant references in addition to owner references - if the PM is ignoring or mishandling tenant issues, the owner probably doesn't know.

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

#226

Post by ryanlol »

cosmodisk wrote: post #203
stevekemp wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Finland you don't buy apartments/flats, instead you buy a share of the company that owns the block. The housing-company takes a fee every month which is used for common-repairs, replacing the roof, etc. If you rent out your flat the tenant pays for their own insurance to protect their possessions, and the housing-company takes care of things like leaks, broken windows, etc. So being a landlord is mostly hands-off.…

I loved our rental apartment when I lived in Finland! For those who had never been there, here's what we had: Studio flat with a kitchen and decent size bathroom. Nothing special so far. There were 2 storey basement: 1 floor for bikes, some bulky stuff, while the second,much colder,for food storage. There was also a laundry room: semi-industrial washing machine, thumble drier, some ironing device and a spacious cloth…

> while the second,much colder,for food storage.

That’s definitely unusual.

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

#227

Post by dariusj18 »

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…

Where do you go to hire the ghostwriters, or did you find one that you go back to each time?

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

#228

Post by impostervt »

dariusj18 wrote: post #227
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…

Where do you go to hire the ghostwriters, or did you find one that you go back to each time?

I tend to use hotghostwriters.com. The output isn't bad, but I still end up paying quite a bit for editing.

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

#229

Post by giantg2 »

adamhp wrote: post #223
giantg2 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I've done that in the past and it didn't mean anything. They just outsourced the tech/system that I became an expert at. You need luck in addition to expertise, and that's something I can't control.

Yeah, nobody can control that, so you can either give up or keep working hard at things until you "get lucky". One has the possibility of success and one doesn't.

Not necessarily. You get hit by a Mercedes while crossing the street and you could just luck into money without hard work.

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

#230

Post by lend000 »

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?

To add to the sibling comment, not only do they result in huge amounts of capital being spread evenly across an index instead of efficiently to deserving companies, but they inflate the entire equities market, even when it's overheated or drowning in debt, as a consequence of the "buy and hold forever" mentality. I think we will see result in larger bull runs and larger eventual bear markets (while it will take a bigger dip to get people to sell, there will be a ton of relative household net worth available to sell when there is a strong enough impetus).

Instead of laws enabling ETF's and long term capital gains discounts, I'd rather have a government with a less inflationary monetary policy, where the key to wealth for the average person is saving.

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