I’d like to share my private income strategy and philosophy with you.
Why Share My Private Income Strategy?
There is enough for everyone, I do not have to be ultra secretive, however I do choose to remain private. Privacy is priceless, so is a private income. Real wealth is not flashy – it’s private.
I believe that building and maintaining a private income is at the peak of becoming a mature adult.
Having a private income means we cease to become reliant on a job for our basic needs in the same way a child grows to no longer rely on their parents for food, clothing and shelter.
Try Googling Private Income
These days, if you google “private income” you’ll not get too many useful hits.
However, the internet is jammed-packed full of other modern financial terminology like passive income, FIRE, FI, earn-while-you-sleep, value investing, wealth via frugality, or trading futures or some other commodity, leverage, stock market, mutual funds, ETFs, crypto …. The list is endless. Some of it very useful, some of it snake oil, much of it written by someone funnelling us to purchase or just plain not qualified to comment on the subject from a experiential premise.
Whilst there is certainly some excellent facts out there, much of it is noise – noise that changes its pitch and tune depending on the prevailing news. I’m certain I’ve read most of it over the last 20 years …. well at any rate, it sure feels like I have!
The Meaning of Private Income
A private income is not a single definable thing. Yes, it incorporates the concepts of true passive income, yet I hesitate to label it as just passive income simply because the modern meaning and application of passive income is swiftly morphing into something unwholesome that smells of get-rich-quick and no-effort-required. A private income is certainly not that, it is SO much more.
The meaning of a private income is to be found in the lives, businesses, investments, causes, money habits and life views of unassuming old-money individuals. These old-money people and families rarely write blogs, publish books or give lectures about their private incomes. Why not? Because nobody is interested! At first glance, the concepts of creating a private income look utterly unsexy, mundane and plain boring – boring like the ugly rough shell of a pearl oyster, dull and dusty like the uncut opal, muddy and dirty like gold lode or inaccessible and full of sludge like an oil well.
Most people will walk on by.
The fact is, that private income people and the knowledge about how to create and maintain a private income are hidden in plain sight. It is likely to remain that way too, because most people are not willing to shuck the oyster to harvest the pearl.
Most just want to buy the pearl for money they earned at a job.
Private Income – The Benefits
In essence, a private income gives its holders the following:-
- A steady reliable flow of real cash from more than one source, with little to no ongoing input from us.
- This cashflow covers all our basic needs and living costs as a minimum.
- A cashflow that outlives us and will continue in perpetuum and nurture future generations.
- The freedom to no longer have to think about where the money is coming from.
- Assets in the background that quietly hold or increase their value in perpetuum, whilst still creating tangible liquid profits.
- The freedom to spend our life in a meaningful way that improves our families and society.
- The freedom to purposefully follow a career, or build business, or create a product, or develop a service that directly contributes to society.
- The larger the cash flow from a private income, the wider its uses besides just our own needs.
- Makes possible an environment to create a mature purposeful life, without the bulk of our time dedicated to working to pay the bills and fund our spending habits.
- A private income allows us the priceless commodity of personal privacy.
I discovered the actual practicalities of creating a private income later in life.
Yes, if these practicalities were discovered earlier and applied at the time, my private income life would have happened sooner. However, I fully believe the benefits of a private income, even in part, are deeply meaningful and worthwhile.
That’s why I’m sharing what I know freely.
Most will walk on by the topic of building a private income, I know that, but the information is here in my website and website articles free for all regardless.
What Is My Private Income Strategy?
My private income strategy is to create regular monthly income from diverse income-producing investments, service-based businesses and online content platforms.
The income needs to be the natural free-flowing profits from these assets, which requires little to no involvement from myself for them to pay me. (e.g. no active trading or market watching/buying/selling on my part)
This leaves me free to live the life I want to live instead of being a wage slave. I was an unwitting wage slave for many decades until the penny dropped and the concepts and practical solutions to creating a private income became clear to me.
It takes upfront work to create a private income – so I figured I would be enslaved to work all my life anyway, so working on building a perpetual private income would eventually buy me my freedom. And it did.
Firstly, I started by investing money earned as a wage slave every month into income producing assets like REITS, Dividend ETFs, High Yield Corporate Bonds and Covered Call Index ETFs etc to create immediate passive cashflow.
Every payday, a portion of what I earned was mine to keep and invest consistently in this manner.
Next, (whilst I was still working as a wage slave) I started building online content on platforms such as YouTube, website blogs and the like. I also set up a small one-person digital agency, building websites for small local service-based businesses using the skills I taught myself when I built this website.
The content on all my online platforms simply does two things:
- Answers questions
- Creates solutions to problems
Whatever we put online MUST either create a solution to peoples’ problems or answer peoples’ questions. If it does not, nobody will notice or find your work – simple as that.
In short, your online work MUST give value that is accurate, genuine and truthful.
You earn money from your online course revenue, online advertising revenue and from some online work offers (website builds and mentoring). The money earned is mostly passive income.
Finally, I started investing all my extra income earned online into assets that provide increasing income – you can read about this more here. This ensured that my private income kept up with inflation. Inflation is a big killer of income – please don’t ignore it!
Life on a Private Income
These days, we devote our time to our family, being creative both at a personal level and also with our online offerings and sharing our processes and knowledge here on this website freely.
This did not happen quickly. It took effort and work – albeit enjoyable work. However, we are now free.
Yes, one of us still works part time in a government organisation because the work is still very meaningful for society (health sector related) but the income from the work is a bonus, not a necessity.
amongst many other things, we travel regularly, spend quality time with our family, do regular road trips in our trailer, mentor others, renovate our old home slowly, read voraciously and give generously to causes that we deem ethical, well administered and meaningful.
We are private people, so we do not draw attention to our private income or our accumulated wealth. We live in a nice, safe, yet unpretentious neighbourhood. We drive reliable, quality Toyota cars. We wear quality fabrics in timeless fashion styles but rarely any fashionable labels. We holiday in good-value-for-money hotels.
Money is our quiet servant, not our source of self actualisation.
We are living the life we choose to live instead of swapping our life hours as a wage slave. It was all made possible by understanding the concepts of private income and by creating a private income strategy that worked for us. Now, it’s your turn.
Cheers
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