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Travel in style
I have been flying for work and leisure before however on my current trip from Washington, DC to Singapore I have been allowed to use Business class for the first time.
While I never really understood why one would have to pay so much more money to travel on the same route I have now a better understanding of why Business class is a really good thing to take when you are a total of 20+ hours in the air.
Traveling with Singapore air in business class allows you to have a single row cabin-style seat all for yourself. There is plenty of cup space, and storage for misc things, like cell phones, battery packs and the like. The LCD screen is a massive 17inch and you have USB plugs and power outlets.
The other difference is the way you are treated on the flight. While I have never had any issues flying Economy or Economy Plus, the stewardesses are much more pro-active and supply you with a constant stream of food and drinks.
Going across half the earth’s circumference in business will also allow you to rest well after you fold the chair into a bed where you can stretch your legs out all the way.
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How can I ever afford this
One of the quotes from Robert Kiyosaki which has always resonated with me was “Poor people say ‘We can’t afford this’ while rich people ask ‘How can we afford this'”
Poor and middle class people buy liabilities while rich people buy assets. So to answer the question above, obtaining an income generating asset instead of the business class ticket would allow me and you to afford such a ticket easily over time. If we stay focused on the end goal and avoid giving into our temptation for instant gratification we will be able to enjoy life’s better sides later on.
Prices vary greatly even for the same airline and the same flights, depending on where and when you purchase them. In my case, the price sticker for the ticket going Economy the same distance was around $3500,-US while the business class ticket came out to be around $7200,-US. So the difference which needs to get covered is $3700,-US.
Think about it this way if you travel once a year that would require an asset covering this extra flight expenditure to be generating around $300,-US per month. This does sound much more attainable than the tickets price tag. I should also mention that the prices I found ranged from the cheapest economy class of $700,-US to $14000,-US for Business class.
Not only would this asset allow me to travel in style once but it would allow me to do so every single year. Buying CDs or letting your money rot in a savings account at or below 2% would require an asset of at least $150,000- in your account. If you however invest your money with E.g. Fundrise.com at around 6%, then the value of that same asset would need to be $60,000-
The Hare & the Tortoise
Now looking at other revenue streams you could earn as much as 10% on your assets ( Note getting a 15% ROI is possible but very unlikely ). You can for example take the real estate game more hands-on, by going to Groundfloor.com. Groundfloor.com is a crowd-sourcing platform for real estate. You can add as little as $20 per project to spread out your risk. In the past year I had an average return of 9.5% on all the investments which paid back.
The higher the expected interest rate is, the more research you should do into the actual property, neighborhood, and the recipient of your loan. I never found anything of 12% or higher where I felt comfortable to risk my principal. Also please understand that when the marked goes down you are likely to suffer more losses. So stay clean of investing everything into a single property and do your research.
Assuming a 10% return on your investment brings the required asset value from $60,000- down to $37,000- or if you would travel 10 times in economy you could then use the money you saved and travel Business once every year for life. Now you could also find the cheapest economy seats which can be found at below $1000.- So lets think about it in a way which would allow you to get to a lifetime business class upgrade the fastest.
Back to business class
Instead of paying $7200.- you would find economy seats in the $1000.- range save the $6200.- difference into your interest collecting “Business class asset account“. One flight a year on average with an average return of 10% would mean that at the end of year 2 you would have $14,322.- after 3 years you would have $22,574.- and 4 years in you would be at $31,651.-. All you would have to do is to fly cheap economy for 5 trips in 5 years and you could have $41,636.- in that account, more than enough to fly business class from then on forward … paid for from that one asset.
Obviously this is a very positive calculation with a lot of other assumptions, such as the same economy and business class rates. At the same time I did not even mention the flying miles you would aggregate over such a theoretical 5 years. Please stick with me here, as I am trying to paint the picture of financial freedom here, by deferring your gratifications for a few short years, and the huge benefits this will bring.
Was it not Albert Einstein who proclaimed that “Compound interest is the 8th wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it; he who doesn’t, pays it.”
There are also other obvious caveats and conditions in this example. If you are employed your employer would likely pocket the difference and not even mention it. Being self employed is again a great benefit. You would also, in all likelihood not use a single asset and designate it as the ‘Business class asset account‘ although you could.
Finally, the return of 10% would assume similarly good conditions for Groundfloor.com as have been in the past few years. Remember that any investment is risking parts or all of the principal. Though think of it this way if you travel Business class the first five times, then you would have lost 100% of that asset and you would never be able to have an asset pay for your trips Business class tickets.
Multiple streams of income
But where do you find these assets you may ask. Leaving out the stock market for now as we are looking for income generating assets. I already mentioned Fundrise.com and Groundfloor.com above. Fundrise is a fairly passive way to invest in real estate. You can chose to re-invest the income each quarter and increase the value of your asset, or you can chose to get a pay-out every 3 months. I have received a 6% return on my investment with Fundrise which is a fairly good deal for a completely passive income source.
My average return using Groundfloor.com in the past year has been around 9.5% but it required more of my time to seek out the properties I wanted to invest in. 9.5% is however a very good return and thus I will continue to build up this asset in the coming months.
Another realistic asset for me are the Play store apps I have. While they do consume way more time and energy than they should, I still earn around $500,- per month with them. Also remember if you can build an app which gets millions of users you can basically replace your main income with this side hustle alone, if done properly.
I have heard of apps earning six figures per month. The most well known apps can earn millions each month although. I would never hope to get to these levels, however the chance for one of my apps to exceed One Million Installations is very real and the more value I add to them, the better are my chances to increase my monthly income.
The drawback is that you basically are working for Google and/or Apple. These two companies own the play-store and the app-store and can terminate your account at will. Your installed user base is not your user base. It is that of Apple/Google.
Then there is earning money with blogging. This has always been really hard for me in the past. I had many blogs which I used to add a lot of content in the software development area. The problem for me has been that this has been a hobby for me more so than a business. As such I never invested heavily into SEO or maintained a regular schedule.
Earning good money is very feasible with blogging but it will also cost a lot of energy and time to get off-the-ground. If you plan to build an asset of this type you need to create a constant stream of good content for your followers. There are certain steps you can take to improve your chance and shorten the time it will take to build up this asset class. The best way to achieve consistency is to set concrete goals, divide them into yearly, monthly, and weekly goals and consistently achieve them.
To speed up your success there are of course the basics, like killer content, SEO, and a proper marketing campaign. These all are topics I will dive into in later posts. Please make sure you come back regularly for the most amazing content in this area.
There are plenty of other ways to earn money online and we are going to reveal most of them on here over the next few months / years. The ones given here are just examples of what has worked for me in the past and what ROI you can realistically expect.
Life decisions
Depending on where you are in life and how many streams of income you have this may or may not be out of your league. If you have a bank account balance which exceeds $100 Million then first off congrats, secondly you may not care to save a few thousands for the improvement in comfort you would receive in return.
Life is too short to always look at your expense column and look for the cheapest products and solutions. Obviously always remember that as long as you trade time for money you may want to be more on the cautionary side of things.
I have surpassed a demi-century and I am starting to see that I need to fan out my income streams way more than I have done in the past. I hope that you are all going to follow me along and also work on adding assets to your wealth portfolio.
Please leave a comment and let us know if or how you are you earning additional income ?
Is your income mostly active or mostly passive ?
