Is passive income possible?

Passive income is the idea for many people. It sounds great doesn’t it, to earn money with no effort really, just sit on the beach and watch the sunset. For income to be truly passive you need to not have worked for it, so if you inherited a bunch of shares and received dividends or something like that, that would be true passive income.

Most people’s idea of passive income is income which was worked for initially, then became passive. This is the passive income I am talking about in this post. Some think this is unachievable; others are just going for it. Me, I am going for it!

I have discussed passive income on here a little before, including my ideas and what I am doing. You can check my previous passive income posts here and here for ideas.
I want to know what you think.

One comment on one of those posts really resonated with me “No matter how much money you make, if you are a slave to money, I would still consider that as being poor.” – Mike from Adstalker. I totally agree, which is why creating streams of income, particularly passive income is so important to me.

I think it is possible, but I know so many people who do not.
Why do I think it is possible?
Because I know people who are doing it!
I know people who own businesses and barely have to do a thing with it. They run themselves, which is how a good business should be. They get the profits, and hardly have to work. It took a long time to get to that point and yes, there are issues every now and then that need to be dealt with, but on the whole, it is a relatively passive form of income now.

I know others who have written books and still collect the royalties’ years later. You need a really good book for this, but it is possible.
I know landlords who own enough homes to live more than comfortably. They selected them, and then go agents to manage them and they hardly have a problem. Yes, there have been times where repairs need to be made, or problem tenants, but the pros have far outweighed the cons.

Passive income is possible. A lot of the time the issue is the work needed beforehand to create the stream of passive income that puts people off. Putting in the hard yards before reaping the benefits can seem like to much work.

I am at the stage where I have been putting in a lot of work and things are starting to pay off. I have a long way to go, but I have a couple of small passive income streams which I plan on growing and other income streams which are not passive, but the money I make through them will be invested to create other streams of passive income.

What are your thoughts – is passive income (the type you work for first and turn it passive, or almost) achievable or even realistic?

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Kylie