Understanding Passive Income Streams

Written by Rebecca Diaz on May 1, 2010 – 12:25 pm

Experts agree, one of the best ways to secure your financial future is by adding as many passive income streams as possible. However, there is a lot of confusion over what is meant by passive income streams, as well as how to go about it. Let’s take a look at the definition of this term and how anyone can easily implement a few techniques to start bringing in this kind of income.

What are Passive Income Streams?

The term passive indicates that you won’t be doing any work, but you’ll be making money. While some work is necessary at the outset, once that is completed, you can basically sit back and watch the money roll in. To illustrate this point, let’s look at an example.

Let’s say that you write freelance articles for a living. You get paid both for the article, and then a set amount each time the article is read. Once you’ve done the initial work of creating the article, the active phase, you can sit back and let the passive phase kick in. You’ll keep earning money on that article through page views, but you’ll never have to actually write it again to keep making money. That’s how passive income works.

Another example would be a stock purchase. You initially spend money on the stock, the active phase, but then it keeps earning money for you without requiring any additional effort, and that is the passive phase. Anytime you have something that returns money, without requiring any additional effort on your part – that’s passive income.

How to Set Up Passive Income Streams

Now that you know how passive income streams work, let’s look at how you can create them. The above examples work very well, but there are millions of other ideas that can be implemented to the same effect. Whether it is through an investment that brings in a return, or a savings account that pays you interest, the key is finding ways to have money coming in that do not require any additional effort on your part.

Stay away from opportunities that will require work in order to keep that money coming in. An example of this would be a rental property. While you do get an income stream coming in, the property must be maintained, the rent must be collected, etc… That is more of an active income stream and while it works well, it is not ideal if you are only interested in passive streams.

If you are uncertain about how to set up passive income streams on your own, a financial advisor can offer you assistance on this point. Just remember, even though you may have to initially work to set up a passive stream of income, once that initial phase has been completed, you won’t have to do anything else. If you have enough of these in place and they are diversified, you can do quite well for yourself, particularly if they increase in value.

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