Which Is Your Best Income Source?

I was recently at the library when I stumbled upon Sean Toh's 4 Steps to Financial Freedom.

It was a pretty easy to read book and in it, I was reminded of the Rich Dad Poor Dad book that I read when I was in the Army and later on in university....

After reading Rich Dad Poor Dad and his advice to increase my income sources, I embarked on a journey to increase my portfolio and passive income so as to achieve financial freedom

Based on Rich Dad Poor Dad, one can earn an income throught the following methods:

1. Earned income
2. Portfolio income
3. Passive income

Earned Income

This is basically income which you earn using your sweat and toil be it at the desk or in the field growing tomatoes. Earned income is what most people are familiar with and many people stick to this source of income for their entire lives.

In my opinion, earned income is perhaps both Overrated and Underrated at the same time.

There is nothing wrong with focusing on this income source ALONE if you are certain that it will keep increasing and there will not be a day when this income will vanish and disappear.

Unfortunately for most people, earned income is no longer something that is guaranteed especially with the amount of retrenchments, compulsory retirement age and outsourcing that is taking place to countries like India and China.

On the other hand, some rich and well-to-do people get rich just be earned income alone. They get good jobs and get promotions and get paid higher salaries year after year.

I quit my $5K per month job this year and have thus suffered heavily in terms of my earned income. I find that I have less money to pour into my portfolio of stocks to increase my portfolio income which is what we will discuss next.

Portfolio Income

Porfolio income is earned from dividends that comes from one's stock or bond portfolios. Dividends are basically cash that is paid out to shareholders. The amount of dividends serves as a constant stream of income based on the porfolio of one's stocks.

I know of people who are able to earn sufficient portfolio income to retire because they have amassed a large portfolio of stocks that pay healthy dividends each year.

I started out collecting real estate investment trusts (REITs) because of their high dividend yields. Hopefully, this source of income will continue to rise over the years especially if I managed to re-invest whatever dividends I receive.

(I just collected a few hundred dollars in dividends for the month of November but it seems that this money will now be used for a short holiday trip instead of being reinvested...am I being wise?)

Passive Income

This can come from book royalties, renting out of houses, online income, etc. The magic of this income is that it requires little or no effort on your part and that is why it is termed "PASSIVE" income.

With this sort of income, you will be able to continue doing your daily job while earning an additional income that comes in day after day without you needing to working for it.

I started out some blogs to increase my online income as a source of passive income. I have been able to earn quite a steady and decent stream of income using Google's Adsense. Lately, I have been exploring Amazon's Associates Program too. Hopefully, this will start contributing to my passive income for the year 2010.

Conclusion

I am not on track to achieving my goal of $400 per month passive income. I admit that I have failed and that I will have a much higher and steeper slope to climb for year 2010 where I should hit a passive + portfolio income of $600 per month. May God Be With Me.

What are your income sources? Which source of income provides you with the biggest income? Are you focusing only on Earned Income while neglecting your portfolio income and passive income?

This Blog is Worth US$1803.10

I usually get to my own site by googling it using the keyword sgfinancialfreedom.

I was pretty surprised to see that there was this returned search from this domain websiteoutlook that apparently values this blog at US$1803.10

Websiteoutlook basically contains a collection of actual number of pageview from other websites. The visitor dat is combined with information about number of links that point towards the site, country, Alexa ranking and other data that is available on-line. All this information has been used to make a formula that estimates the number of pageviews, its worth and the possible daily income that the site has.

I captured a screenshot and placed it below. Firstly, I must say that I am glad that this blog is actually recognised in the first place as being worth something. However, if it was only worth US$1803... then that's a bit too little =) I certainly wished that it was worth like a cool 1 million dollars.

7 Reasons Why I Started the $50 Contest

I guess a lot of you must be wondering why I started the $50 Contest.

(For new comers, you can view the $50 Contest here)

I guess the following are the 7 main reasons why I started this prize money giveaway:

1. I felt generous and just wanted to spread the Christmas joy around.

2. To reward readers of this blog who have been following and reading my sometimes mundane postings and putting up with all the stuff I blog about.

3. I wanted to know whether people would actually comment to get the prize money.

4. I wanted to know how long it would take to get 50 comments. I thought I would get it within 2 days. But I was wrong.

5. I was interested to see if people would actually collaborate to get the prize money.

6. I wanted to see who would sacrifice and post the 49th comment.

7. I wanted to see whether this would be a good viral marketing tool.


Of course, I did not come up with these reasons and start the contest. Instead, I started with reason #1 and #2 and the rest of the reasons came along as the competition progressed.

I hope to do something even more crazy and whacky next time!

A Picture of My Ideal Life

"The clearer your vision of what you seek, the closer you are to finding it."

Why use pictures to draw a picture of your ideal life?

Apparently, using pictures and symbols bypasses the left side of the brain (the safekeeping self) and speaks directly to your right brain (experimental self), whose job is to engineer change.

The picture of the life you really want has the power to bring about the change that you desire.

So there you have it above, the picture of my ideal life. (As you can see, I am not much of an artist)

Penguin Book Fair & $50 Competition

Penguin Book Fair at Singapore Expo (3 Dec 09 till 6 Dec 09)

I visited the penguin book fair at Singapore Expo and the only thing I can say is that if you LOVE books and you really want to find good deals, make your way down to the Penguin book fair.

Books are going for as cheap as $3 (they mentioned $1.00 but I couldn't find those books). I checked and realised that certain books which I bought for $20 to $30 at normal bookstores are going for as cheap as $8 to $10. That is a lot of SAVINGS if you are an avid book reader.

I saw some people pushing around like carts of book so I guess that they must be shopping for their entire year's worth of book there.

Seriously, if you have a budget of $100 to spend on books each year, just drop down to the Singapore Expo and you can easily buy 10 books! That is enough books to read for a year.

I myself bought over 10 books (including children books)

$50 Competition

I started a competition to give away prize money of SGD 50.00 here.

Competitors, please continue to take note of the following pointers.

1. Consecutive postings by 1 user will be considered as a single posting. For example, if User G post 5 comments consecutively, it will be considered as 1 single posting. Users are allowed to post multiple comments but are encouraged not to post consecutively to confuse others =)

2. Only 2 ways to win. First way, be the 50th comment and win $50. Second way, if there are less than 50 comments, be the last person to comment in 24 hours. Based on my last count, there were 38 comments already so somebody will surely walk away with $38 already.

Follow this link to see the competition
http://sgfinancialfreedom.blogspot.com/2009/12/free-50-to-give-away.html

Free $50 To Give Away

Everybody loves free stuff. So as part of the Christmas Celebrations, I am giving away MONEY!

ANYONE can earn it.

Just leave a comment on this post and you stand a chance to win.

I wil pay by Paypal or internet banking (if you have a bank account in Singapore)

How to WIN?

Simply post a comment below this post (no vulgarities and spam please). The prize money starts from $0 and increases by $1 with every comment below this post up to a maximum of $50.

The person whose comment is the last (with no comments in the next 24 hrs) walks away with the prize money. There will only be 1 winner

Multiple postings are allowed but you are not allowed to post consecutively.
*Updated 2nd Dec 2009 2.41pm - consecutive postings if any will be considered as 1 posting. I.e. if a user post 10 consecutive postings, it will only be considered as 1 posting

Example 1: You are the 5th person to comment and nobody else comments after 24 hrs, you walk away with $5

Example 2: You are the 34th person to comment and nobody else comments after 24 hrs, you walk away with $34.

Example 3: The competition heats up and people keep posting comments. As long as you are the 50th person to comment, you win the $50 which is the maximum prize money.

The maximum amount to be won is $50 and there will only be 1 Winner.

The winner is to inform me through my email (sgfinancialfreedom@gmail.com) on the payment method he would prefer (Paypal or i-banking).

I reserve the sole right to determine who the winner is if there is any conflict. Remember the 24 hour rule.

Prize money is in Singapore Dollars.

Brian Tracy - How To Increase Your Income by 1000

Brian Tracy is a motivational speaker and self-help author. In this video, he shares some insights on how to increase your income. Happy viewing!