I get requests for this quite a bit for some reason and this past week seems to have increased the interest for one reason or another. Basically, people encourage me to try wacky or outrageous things in order to create say this cash cow, for a lack of a better word, as they think it would be so cool to do so. Speaking for myself, for the most part I personally adopt the “if you do it just for the money you will fail” approach as there has to be a better underlying reason to do something like that I’d say. Like a business, obviously at the end of the day you have to make a profit otherwise it is not really a business. Usually though, there is a goal behind it such as wanting to fill in the needs of people or making something better as that is what helps to keep you going.

So, I was just sitting there and thinking “just what exactly could I do where the main purpose is to generate money while at the same time accomplishing a worthwhile purpose?” Reflecting back to some of my recent posts in regards to making streams of income and some of the comments, that got me thinking on how while there are a ton of ways that people can make an income, we tend to only stick with the things that we know we can do as oppose to exploring new ideas and ways of doing things. I guess in many cases it can either be too risky or scary to go beyond your comfort zone or that people simply can’t find the time to dedicate in learning to do something new.

Then I thought “wouldn’t that be something interesting and fun to do”. Like everyone else, there are still a lot of things I wouldn’t mind learning or trying out in terms of generating an income. So I thought “what if I started with zero dollars and from there I tried various things to make money while also trying to use that same money to generate more as an educational and informative experience that I would document?” The more I thought about it the more I liked it as maybe it could introduce me to things that I would have never thought of doing while at the same time maybe it can help others as well.

The first thing that came to mind in terms of how I would document this is to simply create a new category section on my blog for it as I thought this would be the perfect platform to document everything while making it accessible to a lot of people. Was kind of fitting I thought too considering the theme. So, now I just need to think of a name for it and some guidelines. Should be an interesting addition to my blogging activities.

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Someone was telling that money is such a difficult thing to deal with and that it demands too much from you as you need to make so much just to get by which basically puts you in this never ending cycle of financial worries. On top of that, he gets a little frustrated when he sees how others have everything under control. The majority of the people I talk to seem to be more along the side of it’s not hard to make money, but rather it can be kind of difficult to find something that you like to do while being able to generate a decent income from that.

From my personal observation, I think most of the time the stress in regards to making money is self created as people tend to expect too much in the most ideal way. At the same time, I think worrying about it too much distracts you from actually doing the things that are necessary to bring yourself to the position that you want to be in. I guess it is like seeing people do sales. Ever notice how so many times the people that try so hard can’t seem to get anything while saying it is such a stressful ordeal yet the ones that seem so casual and relaxed get all the results? While obviously there can be a lot of factors for that, the one common trait that I see is that the successful ones don’t focus so much on making money in that case, but rather doing a good job in turn creates the sale.

I always find it funny with things like prizes too where so many time it seems like the people who need it less or could care less ends up winning it. While none of this should be taken in a direct literal way such as you should just throw away your bills now and not worry about them which in turn will make it go away, I guess the thing to take away is that there is some truth to the whole notion on how if you focus more on the essence of your goal the results will come.

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Today at went to the mall as I decided to buy a new Sonicare toothbrush since the one I had was currently one of older original models that seemed to be showing its age. Before taxes it was about $150 and of course I used my credit card for the purchase. While proceeding to pay for the item, the cashier asked if I wanted to save an additional 10% off my purchase. At first I thought there was something special about the product as the person in-front of me purchased a ton of stuff and wasn’t asked the same thing.

She then explained how all I would have to do is sign up for the store’s credit card and that she could process it right away. I politely declined though as for one thing I can see having a bunch of credit cards as a being a bit redundant. Another reason why I don’t sign up for store credit cards is because, from what I was told and read, opening too many credit card accounts like that can also hurt your credit score, so I figure that I may as well not get into the habit of it at all in the first place.

I know from a business point of view it’s a great thing as the company can save a lot of money from the card transaction fees by getting people to use its own store credit card. I only know about two people who sign up for virtually every store card as long as it gives them some kind of a discount. I even read how some people suggest that you should simply sign up for the card and then close it once you pay off the balance. Sounds like too much of a hassle to me and not having like say 10 different credit cards has personally been a great way to stay organized financially when it comes to using credit cards responsibly.

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It’s such a nice weekend so far, at least here it is, and yet it seems like so many people that I have talked to are dreading over the market slumps recently. So, I’d thought I’d help to balance everything out by being one of the people who are in more positive mood. Here’s a completely random clip that I was shown which I thought was very cute and funny where there is this baby that couldn’t stop laughing at his dad while he was playing Wii Golf on the Nintendo Wii. Some may have seen it before, but if not enjoy and hopefully this will help to lighten up your day if you are feeling down:

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This is kind of a follow up to yesterday’s post about how some people see $100,000 as the magic number to enable them to sustain a comfortable lifestyle. Just to make sure we are on the same page, the previous post isn’t about “retiring” where you don’t have to do anything anymore, such as having a few million dollars. Another way to look at it is how much do you need in terms of an income pool to place yourself in a very good position where you can simply create streams of income to sustain a lifestyle while not having to “work” in a conventional way? I guess you can call it passive income if you want.

With that in mind, these numbers are completely made up just to get the general point across on how some people approach it. For example, let’s say with the $100,000 figure, for the whole year our expenses for an individual is $30,000. Now let’s say the person is into real estate and purchases this nice small office space for say $50,000 and now leases it out to someone for $1200 a month. So now essentially you have $50,000 left while generating $14,400 a year. Now with a $30,000 a year expense and bringing in $14,400, that means the person needs to pay $15,600 a year. With $50,000 remaining that means you have about 3 years and 2 months to be able live your life assuming the worst case scenario that you still couldn’t generate new income sources.

Now maybe this person wants to do some venture capitalism and funds this new business that looks promising for $15,000 while getting 10% ownership of the company. It happens to do well which gives us an additional $1000 a month in income. Now that means we have $35,000 remaining while generating $26,400 a year. That translates to the person now having to pay $3,600 a year and with $35,000 remaining we have about 9 years and 8 months to keep going at that rate. Again, these numbers are fictional as you have to factor things like taxes while at the same time you can do some creative things to make your expenses lower. With looking at that though, you can kind of see how it can work where your income and expenses are basically kind of like on auto pilot to allow you to do other things.

Depending on your background and expertise, there are definitely other ways to yield better return on investments as well. Another way to think about it is if you had say $100,000 and your expense for the year is $30,000 in total, can you think of a way to use $100,000 to generate $2,500 a month in total? You can even go higher and say that if your yearly expense is $40,000 in total, can you find a way to use $100,000 to generate about $3333.33 a month for you? So really, you are still kind of like most people in terms of how you manage your finances such as you can buy a home by getting a mortgage. The main difference is that you are kind of letting your money/investments go out and work for you instead.

How much you need initially and how much one actually needs per month is obviously on a case by case basis depending on your current lifestyle choice and situation. It’s an interesting choice and direction I think because as mentioned before most people only think about saving that much so that they can “retire” in the sense of not having to do anything. On the other hand, some people use it to generate a continuous stream of income to create a lifestyle where they don’t have to be physically tied down in having to work all the time.

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