What is Passive Income? Is it the best type of investment?

When kids are learning about the world, pretty quickly they get a sense about what jobs are hard and easy, glamorous and boring, well-paying and not.

When I was growing up, there was a conventional attitude that the smart kids from wealthy families would become doctors or lawyers. After all, their parents were doctors and lawyers, and they lived in the biggest houses in the best part of town. The occasional business owner had a mansion, but to me, that seemed even less attainable than those other fancy professions says, David Lindahl.

I grew up around a business, but it was the opposite of glamorous. My grandmother owned a fish market, and my mom cut fish for many, many years. Dead fish are among my earliest memories. 

Piecework

I learned a term for the sort of work my mom did: piecework. You cut a fish, and get paid a few cents for that work. If you’re out sick, or have to care for a relative? Sorry, you didn’t produce today so you’re not getting paid. The same was true for people in the garment industry and for my later “profession” as a landscaper: if it snowed and I had no lawn to mow, I didn’t get paid. Ugh.

But here’s the thing: it took me many years to realize that those fancy doctors and lawyers were doing piecework, too! If you don’t perform that heart-bypass surgery, you don’t get paid. If you’re a big-city lawyer, you might charge $500 an hour, but if you don’t work that hour, you don’t get paid.

I Discovered Passive Income

It was also many years later that I learned about the concept of passive income, and it blew me away. I remember thinking: Are you telling me that I can do work once, and be paid for it over and over? Where can I get me some of that action? 

David Lindahl: Discovering passive income was a major turning point in my life. I had done a few house rehabs but that was a lot of work, for one payday. When somebody put me on to apartment investing, my eyes were opened. I could do the work once to find, analyze, and buy the apartment, and tenants would pay me month after month.

At first I did the property management myself, but probably around the 20th time that I was bent over some toilet, unclogging it at night that I swore to myself that I’d gladly pay someone to do that work for me. It was then that apartments became truly a passive-income generator for me.

I could go on about my own story, but let’s instead step back and look at a way to think about the many investment options you have relating to passive income.

More Info: https://rementor.com/articles/what-is-passive-income/