So, today I wanted to show you something that may revolutionize the way you look at increasing your current passive income (it has for me). See, I’ve been addicted to two major things that have been disastrous to my passive income. These two areas have literally sucked thousands and thousands of dollars out of my budget for nearly five years.
Frankly, I was never really aware of the devastating consequences of my two bad habits until I took a closer look at how much money I’d spent! The thing is, most Americans are addicted to these things, too. My two daily habits would probably be accepted by almost anyone around me (except the one’s who have already figured this out). It’s not like I have never heard anyone talk about cutting these things out of my lifestyle… I guess I just never really took it that seriously until now.
Ok, the two things… are you ready? COFFEE and EATING OUT.
You might say, “harmless” or “awww, come on,” but seriously, I looked at my budget over the last month today and calculated I had spent over $200 on coffee for the month of March! I was like, “Whaaaa?” Naturally, I figured if I was willing to spend that much on a cup of “Joe,” who knew where else I was hemorrhaging money? I decided to take a closer look at my other expenses and came to the conclusion we had also spent about $500 on eating out and more money on unnecessary groceries. Ok, now I was really worried. I started thinking about everything we spend our money on also realized we spend over $215 a month for two cell phones and another $66 a month for our internet connection at home. Seriously? This stuff is adding up fast.
Drastic times call for drastic measures. I considered throwing my family into the “dark ages” for a brief moment (which probably would have happened if I still had bachelor status) but, if I turned off our internet and phones my wife would probably kill me. Anyway, I figured I could at least decrease our costs for the services significantly… say $100 a month.
If you look at one of my recent posts I talk about an online company I’ve relaunched called “Complete Auto Loans“. I was able to generate about $1500 in the first two weeks of relaunching my website. That was hard work! $1500 of generated revenue that I put hours and hours of time into. When I ran the numbers of how much money I realistically could be saving (without sacrificing too many services) I was shocked that I could be increasing my passive revenue by at least another $1500 by disciplining myself and my family to a real budget. That’s a lot of dough!
Let’s take this mindset to the next level though. Think about what the discipline of budgeting will do for the rest of my cash-flow. If I can pull in about $2200 from my side work plus save $1500 from my current income, that’s a whopping $3700 per-month of passive income!
Have you ever had those moments where you’re tired of driving your clunker, or tired of the fact you don’t have enough money for a down payment on a reliable family vehicle? I know I am! I hate debt! But, I can’t save money to replace our current SUV with a reliable mini-van! Obviously, I’m in quite the quandary here. My wife and I just had our third baby, and I want to get on of those Honda Odyssey’s because they are really safe and are about the best looking mini-van I could find (they are all ugly, have you noticed that?). Well, with my new passive income, I should be able to save enough for a mini-van in about 6 months and pay cash! This budget makes too much sense. I wish I had thought of it sooner.
Lightbulb moment! Did you know wealthy people struggle with debt as well? Yes, I was just looking at a study last week that showed the demographics of wealthy and poor people who are looking for debt relief or who borrow huge amounts of money against their current incomes. Suffice it to say, the results were astonishing to me. Rich people actually tend to borrow more money! We need to talk about what being rich really is. Being rich is having a continuous flow of passive income! Income is key here, because wealth requires little outcome. We focus mostly on creating huge incomes streams so we can increase our outcome and be happier… that’s not true wealth!
I’m looking forward to budgeting my finances. I’ll keep you posted here on my budgeting journey!