I am paying my bills today and figured I’d share my thoughts on passive income. As part of paying my bills, I always PAY MYSELF FIRST. This means that before I do anything with my paycheck, I put money into my savings or investment accounts. I make sure I pay myself monthly, just as I am obligated to pay every other bill collector. But I am the FIRST bill collector who gets paid.
One of the accounts I pay to myself is my stock investment account. I pay myself in other accounts too, but let’s focus on stock accounts for a moment–particularly dividend investments.
Lazy Days
I like paying money to my stock investments account because it will eventually offer a substantial amount of passive income. Passive income is just income that you will collect with little or no effort. I call it lazy income because it’s working even when I’m not.
Dividend Stocks
One of the easiest ways to create passive income is investing in dividend stocks. These are stocks that pay you just for being an investor. Whether the market is up or down, these companies will pay you just for owning a piece of them. Some of them pay me quarterly and others twice a year. I usually just reinvest whatever I get paid into the stock market to increase my shares, and I continue to get more dividend income. And for the most part (from my experience), the companies have only increased their dividends, so I just keep getting more money for just being an investor. I will be doing dividend investing for the long haul.
Minimum Work
Here is my process: Buy the stock; let it grow (or fluctuate); sit back (be chill); let it pay me dividends (quarterly); buy some more (monthly); REPEAT.
Just Start
Start small. Even if you can’t afford a particular stock, you can still fund your investment account (or just set money to the side in your savings account) weekly or monthly until you have enough saved up to make a purchase. Literally just put a few bucks aside until you can buy the one stock or ETF (index fund) you want, and then build from there. Investing is not just for the rich. It is for those who want to become rich.
I personally invest with TD Ameritrade (my online brokerage account), which is now doing $0 commissions for online trading. There are many great online brokerage accounts, so do your research to see what is best for you. The key is to start. Just start small investing with something you are familiar with. I have to dedicate another entire post later on how I personally started investing…but the point is to just START!
Do you invest in dividend stocks? Also, let me know if you have done any other passive income investing…it’s so great for lazy days.
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