An Undervalued Passive Income Source
Once upon a time, I lived in an apartment. Next to my first-floor room lived an elderly couple, the owners of the building. Their room was understandably bigger and nicer than everyone else’s. The wife did the billing and collecting while the husband did minor building repairs.
I’m sharing this because although there are plenty of wealth-building programs out there involving real estate, I have never seen retirement presented in such a care-free manner. This couple had a lot of time on their hands to do whatever they pleased while waiting for tenants like me to knock on the door and give them money.
It was such a great idea, that it actually sums up the past six years for me. It has its joys and aggravations, sure, but it is a generally-dependable, low-effort way to generate passive income. We literally wait for tenants to knock on our door and give us money.
While doing this waiting, we have time to travel. I’ve held full-time jobs. We’ve operated side businesses. Today, for example, I haven’t done anything related to managing our property; I’ve been working on other things.
So, while I’m not a retirement advisor, I put this out there for your consideration. Where we live, unfortunately, the potential income isn’t sufficient to truly retire. However, the concept is proven. The elderly couple made it work, and it has been a relatively-stable (this is a pandemic reference, sadly) income stream for us. Short of going into real estate investing, another option is to retire to an income-producing property and supplement your social security, pension, or whatever with people knocking on your door and giving you money.
