5 Income Streams to Retire Early Before 50
This article will serve as a starting point and checklist to tell you what Income Streams are out there for you, how to get started with them, and the Income potential that they can bring.
Retire early with at least 5 passive income streams producing sufficient cash flow that will let you retire as soon as you leave your full-time job
Retirement may occur sooner than you think. I turned 32 last November and I plan on retiring from my regular job (on my own terms) when I am 45 years old .
It’s going to be a hard life, but the freedom will be worth it.
I got my first income stream when I was 18 years old. That’s right—when I started a job with benefits is how I got my first source of passive income.
Ever since then, 10% of all of my net-income from any and all sources has been directed to investments through systematic investment plans (SIPs) whenever possible. (You’ve probably seen these if you have an IRA or 401k.)
Now that pensions are becoming obsolete, those who are willing to retire early need Income Streams to replace them in order to live comfortably in retirement. But Income streams aren’t something you can just start overnight.
The Income Streams listed below are currently my Income Streams and I am using them to replace at least 50% of my Income that I would have earned if I were still working a job. I’ve found through experience that it’s not enough to just work hard at a job anymore. Nowadays, we need 2 incomes in order to live comfortably; one primary income from a full-time job (or multiple jobs) and second less reliable Income Stream (secondary or passive income) which comes from other sources such as
5 Income Streams I am Doing Right Now
- Start a Website/Blog for Monthly Income
- Start Investing in Growth and Dividend ETFs
- Create a Digital Course to Promote and Sell on Autopilot
- 401K and/or Roth IRA for Retirement
- Start a SEO/Digital Marketing Side Business
- *Bonus – Start a YouTube Channel
How Income Streams Work
Income streams can make you money over time. The more stable, long-term ones like owning income properties or 401K (or better yet – having your employer contributing to it for you) will produce reliable cash flow every month. Income streams that are less reliable and harder to maintain such as starting a business or getting recurring customers for a digital product have more up-front costs but once they’re set-up, they’ll continue to work for years to come even if you don’t work on them at all.
You Get Rich by Making Your Money Make More Money
We should not just look at investing simply as something that can create the necessary emergency fund. While this is important, looking at
Different Income Streams that Can Be Used in Combination
Start a website/blog for monthly income
Some people are successful right away with their blogs, while others need to write for years to build an audience. Still, others might give up after a few months and never try again. Whatever your interest in blogging is, you can start it as just a hobby that can generate some extra cash on top of your day job income. You get the idea: even if this blog doesn’t turn into something that replaces 100% of your job income, it’s still worth doing because of all the other benefits like networking and building experience in writing and tech topics.
While these are examples of creative ways to make money online, they require you to actually provide valuable content to customers or network connections (blogging). If you are not concerned with creating digital products
Start investing in growth and dividend ETFs with the help of Vanguard
Investing in the stock market is easier than most people think. Especially with Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), ETFs are a collection of individual stocks that are managed for you, and even better, they usually charge you less than %1 to manage your portfolio for you allowing you to get the full benefits of compound interest without the hassle and risks of managing your own portfolio and risks.
With Vanguard, they manage your portfolio for you for as little as less than %0.10. With this low of a managed fund, it has never been easier to start investing in the stock market.
Vanguard ETFs that I personally invest in are VUG and VYM.
VUG is the Vanguard Growth Index Fund and seeks to track the performance of the CRSP US Large Cap Growth Index. This ETF collection of stocks is mostly tech stocks and has done very well in the last set of years earning well over 10% each year. Not a dividend ETF but it does have a small dividend paid out each quarter.
VYM is the Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF that aims to keep your money mostly safe while giving you a payout each quarter which you can then use to invest right back into the stock automatically. This allows you to take full advantage of the power of compounded growth. Warren Buffet and Kevin O’Leary believe in this form of investing and I agree with them that this is a powerful way to invest your money.
Earn Income from Online Courses (Creating and Selling Digital Courses)
I personally love this Income Stream because it doesn’t require any upfront money. It’s also an easy way to create passive income as well. I am currently creating a Digital Course on the topic of Stock Investing and selling it for $300/month, but there are other ways to earn more money such as doing mini-courses or extended courses with lifetime access. Income from Ads through Affiliate Marketing – You’ll get paid when people click on the sponsored ads along the sidebar to direct them towards various websites. This Income Stream is a combination of Income Stream #2 and Income Stream #3. It can be difficult to get people to click on the ads, so you’ll need to constantly experiment with Google Adwords in order to get the right clicks for your website (this Income Stream also takes time since it depends on how long type-in traffic from Google will stay). Income by Selling Your Own Digital Products – Similar to Income Stream #1 where you create digital courses, but this Income Stream focuses more on physical products that require minimal work such as PDFs or eBooks. You can sell these online using services like Gumroad or Publishizer. The best part? Sales are completed immediately (no waiting period) and most of the profits go to you.
401K and/or Roth IRA for Retirement
Start investing in your 401K and/or Roth IRA so you can start building wealth for early retirement.
See to get an employer who matches your 401K contributions, that is free money helping you every month towards growing your wealth. Better yet, it is pre-tax money that is being invested and can be used to lower your taxable income thus having you pay fewer taxes at year-end.
Roth IRA contributions also help you as another way to maximize wealth building. A Roth IRA is a special retirement account where you pay taxes on money going into your account, and then all future withdrawals are tax-free.
Start an SEO/Digital Marketing Side Business
There are many free courses and low-cost certificates to acquire in order to get qualified as a Search Engine Optimizer (SEO), Search Engine Marketer (SEM), and Digital Marketer.
Such places as Udemy, LinkedIn, Google Academy, and even YouTube is a treasure trove of online knowledge to kick off this side hustle and start making some extra side money.
*Bonus – Start a YouTube Channel
Adding this income stream as a bonus because not everyone feels comfortable in front of a camera or narrating on a YouTube video but you can create the YouTube channel and pay someone to step in front of the camera or narrate the video for you.
Think about becoming an influencer or a YouTuber, not as lucrative as it once was, but there is still a lot of money to be made here.
