
Ask HN: How do you diversify your income? - CoreSet
As I get older, I&#x27;m trying to focus less on absolute financial independence than a sort of income redundancy, where I have enough sources of revenue to sustain my barest expenses in case something goes wrong.<p>My dream: four or five streams, requiring different levels of investment and labor, but generally clocking in under 40 hours and, to the point where I could lose one or face a serious cutback in two, and never be in jeopardy.<p>I know this overlaps with the passive income obsession, so I&#x27;m excited to hear HN&#x27;s thoughts, but I&#x27;m concerned less with overall effort than reducing the risk tied to my income coming solely from my job.<p>I&#x27;m super interested to hear if any HN&#x27;ers have tried to diversify their income outside of tech, maybe through some small-ball physical investments like ATMs or vending machines?<p>background: late 20s, FE dev, small amount of savings, no debt
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ZeroFries
My fantasy set up: remote FT developer, with a small float tank business in my
basement, and a dog walking business with a few clients. A few hundred dollars
a day from various sources, with a nice walk in the afternoon, and a chance to
meet new people through the float tank business. If you lose your dev job, the
main source of income, you at least have enough back up to get you through it.
I have no idea if this is actually feasible or not, but it's what I'll be
attempting to pull off over the next few years.

Think about what you enjoy doing and if there's some way to get paid for that.
Teaching, writing, speaking, land lording, house flipping, coaching. Design,
build, and manage (or some subset of that) vacation properties, and you can
use them for yourself when not rented.

You could also use some labour to reduce costs rather than generate income.
Grow your own food, fix your own car, ERE style.

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akg_67
Considering you mentioned "focus less on absolute financial independence" and
"small amount of savings", I guess that you want to generate multiple streams
of income through your "labor" instead of "capital".

There are only two ways to generate, increase, create multiple stream of
income through "labor": increase number of hours of "labor" spent working
and/or increase the hourly rate you charge for your "labor". Two problems with
"labor" based income generation approach: there is upper limit on the "labor"
hours you can contribute and "capital" providers typically control how much
they will pay you for each hour of your "labor".

When you generate income through "capital", you have none of these
limitations. Unlike days of our parents and grandparents when "labor" was
well-respected, now a "capital" based income generation approach is considered
much superior.

You should be thinking about how you can move from "labor" based to "capital"
based income generation approach. My wife likes to say it like this: "I want
my Green workers (color of dollar bills not newbies) to work hard for me
instead of other way around." Focus on maximizing conversion of your "labor"
into "capital", accumulate/save the earned "capital" and then use it to
generate income.

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JacobAldridge
I'm working on this 'Portfolio' approach at the moment. Slowly, because I'm
choosing to keep my main income fairly high which means it warrants more of my
time.

Current income sources:

\- Primary business, working as a business coach/consultant. Affords us a
fairly decent level of life, but I cap my income (well, time) to focus on
other streams because consulting income is only ever as good as next month

\- Investment properties - 1 tenanted at present, with some plans to do the
same with our current house. This is in Australia - both would be negatively
geared, meaning they 'lose income money' every year (costs>revenue) but that's
made up in capital growth. I originally thought property would be my primary
wealth vehicle, but then got into business

\- I have one live profit share arrangement with another business I helped
build, where I get x% of revenue for a period of time. Nothing awesome, but a
valuable experience and some 'free' income each month

\- With my newest consulting brand, I plan to build on online membership
knowledge base. Working on the structure and product/market fit right now.

\- There's another company I'm actively working on, with the same membership
model in place.

Both of the final two are 'proofs of concept' for me - learning by doing. I
believe my current business skill set lends itself to creating the brand and
product for this business model, so I want to add experience with the online
platforms and channels to round it out. If I can get that combination humming,
there's nothing stopping me partnering up with subject matter experts to
create a few similar business each year. Each that work might only be mid-6
figure pa businesses and I'd have a minority stake, but you don't need too
many like that in your portfolio to have the financial independence you're
describing.

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sharemywin
Not to say it can't be done, but it's probably better to focus on becoming
more of an expert and learning new things to keep a job than an idea that's
good at selling books, but really hard to achieve. I've lost a lot of money
trying to chase side businesses. It's really hard to half ass something and
make it successful. And if you do happen to find something like that why not
put few more resources into it and make it really successful. The best
investment I've had by far was socking away money into a 401k.

The problem is most businesses pay labor at minimum wage or slightly more plus
own profit which a lot usually gets eaten by marketing, overhead etc.

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CoreSet
Thank you for your comment - I really appreciate that you engaged thoughtfully
with my question.

I understand I could make a massive amount (relatively) of money specializing,
and to a certain extent I am, but I truly hate the market's insistence I be a
one-trick pony. I'm willing to accept a lower standard of living to avoid
this. I want to focus on other things in my life than the problems my boss
tells me are important.

EDIT: I'm a big fan of ERE, if that tells you anything.

~~~
sharemywin
You could become a consultant/contractor. Not telling you not to explore other
opportunities and or businesses. Although, I would avoid most canned business
opportunities. I would focus on one at a time until its been exploited to its
potential.

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baccredited
I buy ticker VOO, maxing out tax advantaged accounts first and then just
keeping buying more.

[http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/22/getting-rich-
from-...](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/22/getting-rich-from-zero-to-
hero-in-one-blog-post/)

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kkoppenhaver
Something that I was listening to today along the same lines.

[http://www.madfientist.com/side-hustle-nation-
interview/](http://www.madfientist.com/side-hustle-nation-interview/)

From the linked site:

Today on the Financial Independence Podcast, Nick Loper from Side Hustle
Nation joins me to talk about the importance of investing in yourself, why you
should diversify your income streams, and how creating your own side hustles
can help make your journey to financial independence shorter and more
enjoyable!

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meric
Build some websites and sell them on [https://flippa.com](https://flippa.com).

Or buy one and improve it and collect adsense money.

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fiftyacorn
does this work - always seems a minefield

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supremeanger
I buy and sell HN Karma as an investment. So far im looking at about 40% ROI

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Rainymood
Could you elaborate on this? I'm really curious ...

