The Point Of It All: Multiple Streams of Income

I”m going to take some time to write about the point of this entire operation here at Code My Own Road. This post is intended for new readers to come up to speed with my journey so far and what’s in store for the future. It’s a three part series that chronicles my thoughts over the last couple of years.

This website is about my experiments in multiple streams of income. There’s loads of reasons why someone might want to explore creating multiple streams of income for themselves which include insurance, flexibility, freedom and all of the above.

When all you seem to hear about is who the latest firing was, who got laid-off last week because they weren’t pulling their weight, and economic problems causing devastation in the business world globally, you might begin to realise that your 9-5 job (more like 8-6 if you’re lucky) is not as secure as you originally thought.

Creating multiple streams of income was something that came to me after a year of full time employment in a low paying sales job.

“If this is it, if this is really all there is – working for 8 hours a day going home exhausted only to do it all again tomorrow”, I thought, “then how the hell do people get rich?”.

Looking back, it was a solid thought process and something that sent me spiralling down many different avenues in an attempt to find out what set rich people apart from others.

Did they inherit it? Or could you really make it on your own – from nothing?

I Looked At Real Estate First

Knowing that a lot of the world’s richest men and women were successful because of their real estate empires gave me hope. I could even find examples of it in my home town of Brisbane like Sarina Russo (who literally started with nothing as well). Sounded promising.

This, really, is the first time I came across the idea of passive income and creating multiple streams of income via rental properties – a path to riches.

I was absolutely fascinated by the books Steve McKnight wrote on how he created a rental empire that passively gave him so much income he gave it all away in order to start it again to prove to the world the concept worked.

Buy lots of positive cash flow properties, let your tenants pay them off, and reap the rewards. Easy I thought, until I actually started to try and find cash flow positive property in Australia. He failed to mention how bloody hard that was.

The funny thing about cash flow positive property is that you usually you don’t just find them on realestate.com.au.

You’ve got to *create* cash flow positive properties by doing something to them to add value for low cost. You can also get in the pockets of real estate agents who will let you know about the properties before they hit the market. Or just generally just hustle your ass off trying to make it work, dedicating long hours to the search.

I still think creating cash flow property is a fantastic way to create solid income – eventually. It just takes longer than the experts define unless you really want to (and have the time to) bust your balls to make it happen.

So, multiple income stream experiment number 1 – positive cash flow properties – was going to take a little longer than I planned.

A year or more went by without any change. I kept an eye out for opportunities, but for the most part I’d resigned myself to the working, sleeping, working, sleeping, two week (too weak) holiday, working routine. It was a dance that seemed all too familiar.

This is the first part of a three part series on my explorations of multiple streams of income. Click here to read the second part of this series. And here’s the third part.

Photo Credits: therichbrooks, PrimeImageMedia

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