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Buy payphones and retire

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Re: Buy payphones and retire

#91

Post by bbarn »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #19
Scoundreller wrote: post #4

> And what income is more passive than vending machine coin revenue? Automated vending has had a bit of a renaissance, with social media influencers buying old machines and turning them into a business. Iunno, where I grew up, vending machines were controlled by the mob. Up to mob hits in the HQ’s parking lot. Makes me wonder if pay phones are the same after the telco offloaded them.

I have also heard that vending machine locations are highly contested. You can buy the machine, but you are not going to have the pull to deploy it at the airport. Those contracts were signed long ago.

I have a non-technical friend that runs a vending machine business. He targets exclusively small locations like gas stations, bodegas, etc. He makes a great living, but he's also started farming out filling and collection to employees now because it's a lot of driving and work to do it.

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#92

Post by m463 »

notatoad wrote: post #65
andrewla wrote: post #57

The concept of "passive income" is almost a scissor concept. Or maybe only if you couple it with the categorical imperitive. On the one hand, it's so obviously true that it would be great to have passive income. Draw the salary you're drawing now, with some growth, and not have to work. On the other hand, if everyone had access to this capability then society and civilization would grind to a halt. People make things…

"passive income", in it's original iteration, wasn't the idea that you could make money by doing nothing. The idea was that you made something or did something that you were uniquely able to make or do, and then the result of your labour would make money for you while you put in minimal continued effort. the version of passive income where you don't do anything productive at all, ever, and just put up some initial ca…

I think "passive income" is ambiguous, and people will sell it one way, and buy it another.

wikipedia seems to have a broad definition of it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_income

I see people saying passive income is not always hands off.

I wonder if they are right or the "hands off" definition doesn't fit their situation.

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#93

Post by vaidhy »

I think we are use passive income to mean different things. One of the meanings I tend to use it is capital preservation. I have worked and created savings for $x. What can do so that I do not lose that money and make it work for me? Index funds, 4% withdrawal rate, becoming a landlord are all some kind of answer to that question.

Another meaning is something like "get rich quick" schemes. There is a overlap between the previous one and this, but here the focus is on outsized return and not preservation.

A third one that people tend to associate with the term is about going from almost nothing to a large something - either by "working" the system, people etc or through generous social net. The difference is your starting point between this and the previous one. The second kind of thing targets people with money while this targets a much younger crowd.

After reading through the article, it seems like the author mixes up 1 and 2..

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#94

Post by PaulHoule »

I was a coin phone phreaker in the late 1980s as a teen. I had a notebook with phone numbers for hundreds of coin phones and was particularly a fan of COCOTs because most of them were poorly designed and you could make free calls using tactics like: hit the switchhook quickly ten times and complete a call by talking to the operator. (I practiced and was good at that)

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#95

Post by TheRealPomax »

dleink wrote: post #16
TheRealPomax wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that there are loads of things that you can't keep working on after you retire. If your company had you in a position where you ran really interesting projects, all of those are the company's projects, not yours. You got to work on them because you worked there, and once you retire you can't just keep working on them, you can't even do the same work on your own because your contract made that pretty clear: now y…

The things I love are broader than "IP controlled by my company." I can see that if the thing you love is massive financial institutions or defense contracting or something?

Or, you know, you're a specialist who worked their way into a career at anything that produces hardware. Philips, Samsung, heaven forbid you work for a larger corporation, how many of those people can there possibly be, right?

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#97

Post by __turbobrew__ »

SirMaster wrote: post #90
markus_zhang wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, nowadays "passive income" is basically debt interests (like bonds) or rental income, both of which actually need a lot of work. I rarely traded financial instruments so cannot say for that, but as a small landlord I wish I never entered the business. Like, all businesses need initial investment AND a lot of continuous effort and learning, and are probably boring (or VERY barricaded) because otherwise people are…

Rental income doesn't need any work if you are just an investor though. I don't do a single thing. The people who are managing the deal are the ones who do the work and hire the workers to work on site and such. They of course get an even better return during the sale, but I am happy with what I get for doing nothing. My rental properties are paying me a decent passive income of about 6%, and additionally the total i…

> and additionally the total investment about doubles in roughly 5 years

That is a big assumption. What happens during the next real estate bust and your real estate value goes down to 1/4 of its prior worth? You are now set back 10 years.

I think residential real estate is a bad bet long term. As real estate gets more expensive and more and more young people cannot afford to buy there is going to be more political capital to change the situation. You are basically betting that the next generations are going to be fine with being priced out.

I don’t believe we have seen the full repercussions of the housing affordability crisis, it hasn’t even been going on for that long. As gen Z comes to house buying age I think there are going to be changes.

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#98

Post by nyc_data_geek1 »

andrewla wrote: post #57

The concept of "passive income" is almost a scissor concept. Or maybe only if you couple it with the categorical imperitive. On the one hand, it's so obviously true that it would be great to have passive income. Draw the salary you're drawing now, with some growth, and not have to work. On the other hand, if everyone had access to this capability then society and civilization would grind to a halt. People make things…

Passive income for all is post scarcity, luxury space communism, ala Star Trek.

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#99

Post by jcrawfordor »

Scoundreller wrote: post #4

> And what income is more passive than vending machine coin revenue? Automated vending has had a bit of a renaissance, with social media influencers buying old machines and turning them into a business. Iunno, where I grew up, vending machines were controlled by the mob. Up to mob hits in the HQ’s parking lot. Makes me wonder if pay phones are the same after the telco offloaded them.

It is a rather interesting question if organized crime got into the payphone business. Not that I know of, and something that I didn't get into (because it's kind of a tangled patchwork and not really that relevant) is that states do generally regulate PSPs, although that regulatory scheme is often very lax. Still, it might deter organized crime that in most cases they would have to register with the state as a PSP and file reports.

Of course, I know that some places imposed similar regulatory regimes around vending machines and other coin-op businesses, in part because of issues with fraud and crime.

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#100

Post by rlayton2 »

hifromwork wrote: post #78
notatoad wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"passive income", in it's original iteration, wasn't the idea that you could make money by doing nothing. The idea was that you made something or did something that you were uniquely able to make or do, and then the result of your labour would make money for you while you put in minimal continued effort. the version of passive income where you don't do anything productive at all, ever, and just put up some initial ca…

>just put up some initial capital in exchange for even more money back, is always a scam. some people might come out ahead sometimes, but more people will lose than win. How so? My all-world index funds are doing pretty well. For more risk averse, almost every buyer of USA governmental bonds gets "even more money back" in exchange for the initial capital. I don't think that's a scam either.

There is a risk, however small, that your bonds won't be paid back leading to a large loss.
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