Can you imagine a life where you didn’t have to work every day? Instead of needing to work you could work because you wanted to or, you could choose not to work because you wanted to. How? By building passive income that allows you to make $50,000 per year without working!
Conventional wisdom tells you that the path you’re supposed to live looks like this:
- Go to College
- Get a Good Job
- Get Married
- Take out a loan for school, your wedding, a car, furniture, a house
- Work hard for 30+ years to pay off all the debt you accumulated
- Maybe you’ll have enough to retire and then again, maybe not
The truth is that there IS another way to live. You don’t have to go the traditional route. After all, you are the one in control of your life. You can do anything you want.
Isn’t that a freeing thought? To know that you’re in the driver’s seat of your own life? For me it is.
One thing that has been on my mind a lot, and that I have begun to work toward, is creating passive income so that my limited time isn’t constantly being exchanged for money. And because I’ve always had a fascination with passive income I’ve really been drilling down on it lately and not only learning more, but taking action.
I think most people could happily live on $50,000 per year (provided they had no debt) so I thought it would be a good idea for you and I to explore some ways to make $50,000 per year without working.
Note: This article isn't some fluffy thought about never working and simply earning money. This article focuses on potential investment strategies that could net you $50,000 in residual income. It's not an overnight thing - it's a mindset and strategy to build wealth.
First, let’s go over how this whole thing works.
Front Load Your Life
The entire process starts with my my favorite financial hack - front loading your life.
Front loading your life is working hard now so that you don’t have to work so hard later. It’s kind of like making a snowball. At first you’re packing the snow and rolling the ball around to make it bigger. After a little work your ball starts to roll down a hill and gets bigger and bigger and bigger, all on its own.
At this point the momentum of the snow ball rolling starts to work in your favor.
That’s what front loading is all about. And that my friends, is exactly how you can earn $50,000 per year without working.
You have to work hard upfront and then in anywhere from 10-30 years (depending on how much you invest and how smart you are about the way you invest) you’ll earn a good amount of passive income.
Here are just a few ideas for earning $50k per year without working.
Own 10 Rental Properties that Net You $420 Per Month Each
Ten rentals properties that provided you a net income of $420 per month after figuring in things like vacancies, maintenance, repairs, property management, taxes, and insurance would bring you in $50,400 per year in rental income.
Depending on the locations and types of properties you have, it may take more or less properties for you to reach that $50k per year mark.
If rental properties are something you’d like to get into I’d highly suggest that you start doing learning now. Real estate is something that has always interested me and from my research it seems like everyone has different goals and different criteria for how they choose their investments.
That means you’ll need to create your own path and consider your risk tolerance to reach your particular goals.
How To Become A Real Estate Investor
Your parents and grandparents think in order to invest in real estate you need to come up with the money and buy something on your own, right?
They are so wrong. In 2012 Congress passed the JOBS Act which allowed companies to market private investments to the public for the first time. This resulted in a brilliant new industry called real estate crowdfunding.
What real estate crowdfunding companies do is allow investors like you and me to pool our funds and buy multi-million dollar commercial properties or $300k single family homes - whatever we agree on. The returns on these investments are distributed according to how much each investor contributed.
There is no shortage of real estate crowdfunding platforms, so I recommend doing your due diligence and reading my thorough reviews of the most popular ones. If you’re looking for a quick recommendation, however, check out these guys:
1. Fundrise - This company is one of the original online real estate investing platforms, and they only require $10 to get started. Read the review here.
2. Roofstock - Takes online shopping to a whole new level. You can buy single family cash-flow positive homes online! This is a great way to get started owning your own rental property. Check it out here.
3. EquityMultiple - Invest in larger residential and commercial properties. This is for accredited investors only, but has a large variety of properties. Open an account here.
4. FarmTogether - FarmTogether is a platform that allows you to invest in US Farmland. This is a great way to diversify your real estate holdings. Open an account here.
Accrue $1,250,000 Worth of Dividend Stocks with a 4% Yield
This particular method appears, at first glance, a little harder to achieve than the rental property scenario, but stick with me please. The thing is, this method is actually very similar. With dividend investing you’re still buying an asset that provides you cash flow.
Dividend stocks are great because while these stocks pay dividends they can also appreciate (or depreciate) in value. This means that you’ll still get to take advantage of compound interest of the value of the stock. Plus you can reinvest your dividends until you reach your desired amount.
The cool thing about dividend stocks is that when it comes time that you need the dividend checks to live off of you don’t have to touch the underlying assets. In other words, you don’t to have sell your stocks in order to get money. The value you have in stocks still has the chance to compound and grow without you ever adding anything else to it!
And since you get to take advantage of compound interest and can reinvest your dividends while growing your nest egg, you are not actually contributing that full $1.25 million.
Ready to start investing? Check out these top places where you can invest for free, or here's some of the best bonus offers right now to get started:
Charles Schwab - This is a classic brokerage company. Their IRA's have no minimums, and they charge $0 commissions for stocks, ETFs and options. Check out Schwab here.
Related: What is Dividend Growth Investing and How To Get Started
Invest In A Business
I don’t want to sound all 4 Hour Work Week here but outsourcing a business is possible.
My friend's dad owns three businesses – 2 department stores and one greenhouse. He works at one of these businesses. The other two are outsourced. Different family members manage the other two places and there are also managers for different departments and, of course, employees.
There’s simply no way that he could be run all three businesses by himself and quite frankly, he just doesn’t want to.
I’ve tried copying this method into my own online business and so far am headed in the right direction. For instance, there’s a couple parts to my businesses. First there’s freelancing. Freelancing is very much active and requires my direct involvement. I can’t hand this off to other people.
The other side is blogging. Even in this age of AI, creating a website is still something that you own that can generate income.
If you're curious about starting a blog, read this guide. I used Bluehost to get started with a website because it's super cheap - a free domain name and $1.99 per month to host it. I love Internet businesses because of this extremely low overhead and huge income potential. Our Bluehost deal is specific to our site, so if you want to start a website, make sure you get our $1.99 hosting deal from Bluehost.
After around 2-3 years of work on the blog, I was netting $4,000 per month from a business I enjoy running while only spending 80 hours per month on it. That nets me around $50 per hour. While it’s not completely passive it’s headed in the right direction and sure beats my old day job that paid $11.50 per hour.
It is completely possible for you to build a business in any area you enjoy and then outsource once you get systems in place. This doesn’t happen without a bunch of initial hard work. It’s all about front loading.
You Need Time or Money to Get Started
You either need time or money to get started building these streams of income. It will require hard work and sacrifice upfront but will be completely worth it in the end.
This methods are not get rich quick scheme and are not scams. There are people doing this type of stuff every single day. If you take responsibility for where you're spending your time and work hard, I promise you, you can make something like this happen, too!
Do you think it's possible to earn $50,000 per year in passive income without working?
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Editor: Clint Proctor Reviewed by: Colin Graves
Robert Farrington is the founder of The College Investor and is widely recognized as one of the nation’s leading voices on student loan debt and saving for college. He holds an MBA from UC San Diego Rady School of Management and has spent over 15 years researching, writing, and advising on student loans, 529 plans, financial aid programs, and saving and investing for young professionals.
Robert has been featured in the The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, NBC News, and Forbes, where he has been a regular personal finance contributor for over a decade. His work combines both professional expertise and personal experience – he successfully navigated his own student loan repayment journey and has helped thousands of readers do the same.
He is committed to making the intersection of personal finance and education transparent and accessible. You can learn more about Robert on the About Page or on his personal site RobertFarrington.com.