Passive income in 20s

[stopwatch]

Hi guys,

How important do you think it is to start your passive income streams young?

I'm 24 and been working on it for the last six months, and hopefully by thirty I'll be very successful at it!

My sister is 17 and hoping to get her involved too soon.

What do you guys think on starting young? How much of a benefit will this be in later life?

[invisiblehouses]

Unless you're very, very good right away, you're probably going to fail a few times before you hit upon something that works. By starting young, you'll get those failures out of the way faster...definitely the way to go.

I just started getting into this idea in the last year or two. I'm 34 now. If I had it to do over, I'd have started trying back in 1996. It would have saved me a lot of years of screwing around with jobs I didn't like.

You're doing it exactly right starting young. By the time you're 30, you could be raking in some serious bread.

[HiImJeremy]

I'm almost in my 20's and i'd love to look at passive income as serious option for bettering my life and all the rest. Does anyone have some good information on how i can do this and try to understand it more?

EDIT - actually, i'll make a thread.

[SnerpGoodWord]

Overall I think passive income is a misnomer in that it's rarely actually passive. For example, I get the feeling that many people doing income generating websites put huge amounts of time into them for fairly meager return.

That said, certainly start early. One of the advantages of college and your early 20s is that most people have a lot of free time. That's pretty much a requisite for starting a business. That said - expect your first venture to fail or languish for a long time. For starters, very few teens and 20-somethings have the capital to build a worthwhile business. That doesn't mean the experience isn't worthwhile, but success isn't very likely.

[SatvikBeri]

Originally Posted by SnerpGoodWord

Overall I think passive income is a misnomer in that it's rarely actually passive. For example, I get the feeling that many people doing income generating websites put huge amounts of time into them for fairly meager return.

Agreed. Personally, I think it makes more sense to start with active income via consulting. This way you can experiment and get a sense of what's valuable. Then once you have something that people really want, you can make products that will generate income passively, and you have valuable, hard to duplicate skills. Plus you can always raise more money by consulting if you need to. Whereas if you start with passive income, you run a big risk of producing a lot of content for something that no one really cares about, and not having as much to show for your efforts.

[stopwatch]

Thanks for the feedback - I actually have a full-time job which pays very well for my age based in digital marketing, so what I build in my spare time with passive income (websites) will actually help my credibility to start consulting I hope

The plan is to leave work as quickly as possible, making sure my passive stream covers my cost and the consultancy can really kick off

[mainstreetcm]

Well I'm going to be 25 this year and I have several "streams" of passive income that continue to grow each and every month. I chose the "build a list" method and market physical products to said list with my affiliate codes embeded.

It's nice to have some extra cash every month, especially in addition to my 9 to 5 j.o.b (which I love btw).

[lycan]

There is no such thing as "passive income". What exists is work that yields high profits, and work that yields low profits. Taking a million dollars and buying shares of Coca-Cola is pretty easy, and yields considerable and reliable profits (hopefully!), but to perform said work you need a million dollars. Working as a cashier yields low profits, so you have to do a lot of it to get the same end result as buying a million dollars worth of stocks.

[SnerpGoodWord]

Originally Posted by lycan

There is no such thing as "passive income". What exists is work that yields high profits, and work that yields low profits. Taking a million dollars and buying shares of Coca-Cola is pretty easy, and yields considerable and reliable profits (hopefully!), but to perform said work you need a million dollars. Working as a cashier yields low profits, so you have to do a lot of it to get the same end result as buying a million dollars worth of stocks.

What you're getting at is the distinction between capital and labor.

[Curtis2011]

Originally Posted by SnerpGoodWord

What you're getting at is the distinction between capital and labor.

Not to mention the presence and quality of "human capital" which is usually skills or education.

[lycan]

Originally Posted by SnerpGoodWord

What you're getting at is the distinction between capital and labor.

Capital is simply that which facilitates labor. Your body is "capital". To an investor, the cash he may invest is capital that facilitates his labor. If his labor is unproductive (if he invests that capital badly) the "capital" does not grant him an automatic (passive) income. It's just that investing can be so productive as an activity that it takes very little actual effort to produce massive income. Most professional investor's biggest time drain is inspiring trust from people with money to invest.