I’m sure many of us have bought into the idea of passive income. After all, who wants to exchange their limited time for money? I’d rather travel the world, see places, relax with lemon tea by the beach than answer phones calls or bang away at the laptop.

Granted that there are a small minority that managed to do that after building up a lump of assets and then hiring someone to managed the money conservatively. Many are dot comers who worked their tails off, took significant financial risk, hit the market right and then sold off their companies for a ton of money. If you are this type of personality, you probably won’t be satisfied just sitting around. With money in the bank, quite a few now want to make the world a better place. Kudos to you. That too, you still need to over see that person. For the rest of us trying to build up passive income, is the destination just a myth?

I know of someone who bought a fair bit of assets and also teaches about personal finance & financial freedom etc. Lately due to changes beyond his control, he decided to liquidate. Although he will end up ahead compared to when he started, he said and I quote “even with passive income, you’ll need to monitor changes that happen in the marketplace”. Yep, the market does not remain stagnant. I sure as a property investor, you’ll need to be on top of the market, new property coming into market, movement of renters, changes in interest rate etc. All this reading and keeping tabs with the market don’t sound all that passive to me. Granted it is leveraged effort.

Let’s take a look at creating online passive income. In the online world, changes happen even faster. There are quite a few ways to get online income. Very few, if any are as passive as you would like it to be. If you are selling stuff online, you have to have customer service. If you go the affiliate or advertisement supported way, changes to affiliate program or ad rates will effect your income. You will need people to manage and maintain your sites although this can be outsourced, this means hiring and managing people to a certain extent. Again is leveraged but hardly passive.

Franchise? Which ever end of the franchise whether you are a franchisor or franchisee, you’ll need to be rather active I think. While the passive income idea is a great, the idea that most people are sold, that they never need to lift a finger ever again, is a fallacy. It is great to have people work for you, if they produce more than the headache they bring. Finding, training and retaining such employees or outsourced staff is work too. The work is just different.

Have you been bitten by the passive income bug too? What did you realize when you woke up? Share your story here.

Original article from Personal Money Tips

2011 started with a bang and we are almost into the end of January. How time flies. While it is sort of a tradition that many personal financial blog writers will review their goals & talk about the present year goal, I know I have in the past, this year, I’ll not get into the boring, long winded stuff. Last year, around this time, I wrote about 80 20 Principle For Money And Life.

As time goes by and you get older (hopefully wiser), your perspective changes. Mine did & I hope yours will change too. If it doesn’t change, then, that’s alright as well. What is important to you, is the most important thing. Don’t let me or anyone else tell you what is important. After all, it is your life.

This doesn’t mean you don’t listen & hear others out. It merely means that you listen, process and decide for yourself and not blindly follow what others are doing.

What I have learned in the past year is to challenge some long standing beliefs. Stuff like stuff i.e. possession, work not forgetting money. Challenging the status quo has its rewards. Seeing things also opens the eyes and mind. Recently, we went for a longish (by our standards) holiday. Only 16 days actually. Our friends missed us & wondered where we disappeared to.

While on the road, we met people who travelled between 3 to 6 months. Gives you some perspective what is a long time. While travelling, we met people from the West working in Asia or looking to settle somewhere in an Asian country. Back home here, we have friends who wants to migrate to the West! From what we hear, the economy isn’t too great at the moment in the US and yet, people here want to migrate there! Makes you wonder. By the way, I’ll do a write up on the travel a bit later to share more of what we experience on our trip.

What have you learned in 2010? What do you want to learn and apply in 2011? What you feed your brain sure make a difference. In society, we are programmed to be compliant. Seth Godin, the author, marketeer, thinker writes that our “tribe” people we belong to want us to comply to their way of thinking and living. Otherwise, you don’t belong and they kick you out of the tribe. Back in the days of dinosaurs and saber tooth animals, without the protection of the tribe, it means almost certain death. Read more in Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

Oh, remember, don’t take my word for it, check it our for yourself.

Original article from Personal Money Tips

If time is money, you ought to spend or invest it carefully. Most people spend too much time wasted doing not really important stuff. When you track your time, you’ll be surprised where it goes.

Here are five applications you can check out. http://lifehacker.com/5362829/five-best-time+tracking-applications

Original article from Personal Money Tips

I got distracted this last few days. If you don’t know, I have my hands in quite a few cookie jars. I know I have wrote about it before, about getting focused. I guess that people do that from time to time. I’m not perfect. Far from it.

I got distracted from using my new camera and web surfing looking for software to do editing etc. I guess that can’t be helped to a certain extent. If I don’t know what I can or cannot produce form my tools, then I’ll eventually hit the wall. The thing is, is that I have a habit of collecting tools and information too early without being productive immediately. Then also along the way, I found myself browsing sites with nice photographs. Sigh.

Anyhow, that’s sort of behind me. Time to get back to the path. The lesson I learned here is to know a bit of yourself. Time yourself when you planned on getting “distracted”. Any new thing in your life will distract you from what you must do. Sometimes, you can’t plan it. Like when there is an accident or a new child arrives to your family.

I guess, that what Seth Godin will call “The Dip”. Any changes you do will first take you lower than where you are before it takes you higher. If at all possible, don’t take too long a dip.

Original article from Personal Money Tips

Ok, that one of the longest title if not the title I’ve ever used for a post on this site. But the question is important to ask one self. You might detect from the tone where this post is coming from. One of my zen moment, or rather a bit stoned from the onset of flu perhaps.

Anyway, I like to bring attention to this. You see, several years back, I got online because making money online seem to be the in thing. Still is if you are new. I got exposed to all sorts of new stuff including blogs, social media, facebook, auto responders, podcasting, video casting, blogging clients, css, wordpress, content management systems, twitter, friendfeed ….. you can see that this is a long list that can keep going for a long time.

Looking back, doing all this while it did improve my knowledge about the web and bring in a few dollars to fund the hosting of several website, this one included, it did consume a lot of my time. I won’t say waste of time but it did consume it. And today, I got a blog post about life streaming. The thing you do with a mobile phone to update your site or any social media site to let people know, what you are doing. just

I found that doing all this got me so hooked to the internet that I must go check out either my email, or facebook, or my stats that is I found it is distracting me from the most important thing in life. Living life!

Sure, I made some online friends, connected with old friends, learn a few tips and tricks and in fact I got a site set-up that brings customers to my offline work. That sure helped. But with the amount of new stuff online, I’m forced to examine whether I want to do something or not. Not only does using something new involved a learning curve, it take time to set up and to do regularly. And in these economic times, getting more productive is more important than learning the next cool thing on the web. Sure it is interesting to see what your friends are doing but living life yourself must be better than just reading about it online, right?

Take care, live life, Your life!

Original article from Personal Money Tips

Is the the dawn of a new beginning? This is my crystal ball look into the future. Crisis almost always produce change in a good way, eventually. The credit crunch sparked a financial fire storm that swept across, and is still sweeping the world over. Some call it a financial tsunami. Whatever it is called, 2 to 3 years from now, things will look very different.

Although this fire storm is blamed on greed by Wall Street through real estate subprime loans, other factors like rising demand for fuel, energy, food and raw materials are contributing factors. We have been taking things for granted like low cost of energy and what we thought of as abundant of raw materials. Would the crisis change demand?

Probably not. Producers will find ways to meet that demand through game changing discovery. Let’s that the past for example. Before the invention of refrigeration, wars were fought over salt. Nations which has salt mines control the economy. Once refrigeration became cheap enough for the masses, it no longer mattered.

Another example is the automobile. In the 80s, fuel crunch caused a scramble by manufacturers to produce and market fuel efficient cars. In came things like fuel injection, aerodynamics and other technology that was accelerated to the market. After some time, people forgot the era of fuel shortages, so you see bigger and badder SUV, MPV and almost all cars in general. With the crunch, cars sizes will get smaller and again, an acceleration in technology to increase fuel economy.

Although oil prices are heading south at the moment, people woke up to the fact of high fuel prices and not likely to go back. No at least for the next decade or two.

This crisis will bring about changes in the way we do business, work, play, travel etc. Those who can foresee the needs of a changed environment will cash in on opportunities that was never there before.

My question is what and where do you think these opportunities lie? By the way, the red symbol is the Greek letter delta which is used in mathematics to denote change or difference.

Original article from Personal Money Tips

2 days ago, I met a prospective customer, Mr. B who after hearing my explanation of products, started to tell me about a Bio-Disc. Being a logical skeptic, the item Mr. B showed me look like ordinary glass with lightly imprints of circles. That the product was distributed through Multi Level Marketing or network marketing, is another red flag to me.

I mean, if you have such a fantastic product, why wouldn’t the manufacturer sell it at what ever price and get all the profits, rather than share the money with the people in the network? Look at Viagra. Pfizer didn’t sell the drug through the network, did they. They knew they have a market and a product that will stand up to medical trials and FDA approval, not withstanding side effects but you get my drift.

Anyway, it has been some time since I first highlighted a scam so it seem just about the right time. Remember the first rule of investing? Don’t lose your money! Don’t fall into this one.

Comments from users 1, debates from both sides

Type in “bio-disc scam” into your favorite search engine & you’ll get quite a few results. If you really want to earn some money, and not scam someone, I suggest you take a look at this post about earning some money without scamming people.

Share your thoughts here about bio disc. Have you come across it, heard it, been there done that and it not a scam?

Original article from Personal Money Tips

Although it might not be obvious on my blog, I’ve been somewhat of a person that challenges the status quo. Not all the time but enough times. Perhaps it has to do with stuff I’m reading and the people I hang around with. Not the people I hang around with physically but more indirectly through books, the internet and audio mp3 I listen to.

From these people and my own observation, I began to think why things should be done differently than the way it is today. Although there are times when change is not good, as is too much change too often, most things should move forward for the better.

As I type this article, I’m trying out the all in one Flock browser that is quite powerful. I used to use a blog client called Blogdesk. It is a wonderful software for off line publishing to blogs. Since I downloaded Flock, I have to give it a try. So far it looks good.

The thing that prompted me to write this is I’m a bit of a technology enthusiast. I don’t necessary buy the latest gadgets but I like looking and checking them out. In previous post, I wrote about the Asus Eee Pc and how you can extend the life of your computer .

Recently Asus came out with the Eee Box, a simpler, cheaper way to do things on your computer. Coming in various configuration, it sells for between $269 and $299. It is small and definitely challenges the convention that most of us want everything in our computer, which is not true. By the way, Asus current line of computers and thinking is making them tons of money. The Eee Pc is flying of shelves. I’m not going to write much about Asus’s machines since this in not a gadget blog but draw your attention to how you manage your finances.

What Asus did was instead of focussing on increasing features, putting more and more powerful processors to run bloated software, they went the other direction by keeping things simpler, reducing features, using less bloated software. The result is tremendous sales. Which goes to prove that there is a market for simpler stuff.

Instead of sophisticated, complicated financial plans, multiple accounts, funds, etc some of us might be better off doing more with less info. I mean how many of us have time to monitor multiple shares, mutual funds and/or property and still get work done and have a life? Not to mention reading blogs like this one. I think not too many.

Therefore instead of gathering information trying to understand the difficult stuff, when it comes to finances, is just as important to stick to something you understand, simple and works for you. It doesn’t mean to don’t expand your knowledge, but you do the basics first.

Original article from Personal Money Tips

I wrote this post to illustrate a point. The point here is that when something is repeated over and over again, it is accepted as real even though there is nothing to prove it is the truth.

Have you ever heard the story of the Slow Boiled Frog? I’m pretty sure you have but for the benefit of those who haven’t, it goes like this.

Most people (after they have been told countless time, including me)belief that when you put a frog in a cool pot of water and slowly heat it, the from will get accustomed to the slow temperature changes and not do anything to escape. It will remain comfortable until it suffers it gets too hot and dies. Conversely, if you drop a frog into a pot of boiling water, the poor frog would do anything to get out it if can.

This story if often used as an analogy to show that people would not react to slow changes in the environment until it is too late. Subprime etc. And it is very often used in business meeting and conventions. Well, the truth is out. The next time you boss tells you about the slow boiled frog story, you know better. But please also keep your mouth shut. Else it is not good to embarress your boss in a big meeting, yesss?

“Professor Doug Melton, Harvard University Biology Department, says, ‘If you put a frog in boiling water, it won’t jump out. It will die. If you put it in cold water, it will jump before it gets hot — they don’t sit still for you.’” Next Time, What Say We Boil a Consultant FastCompany.com

Here is further proof

Dr. Victor Hutchison of the University of Oklahoma) answer was
as follows: ‘The legend is entirely incorrect! The “critical thermal
maxima” of many species of frogs have been determined by several
investigators. In this procedure, the water in which a frog is
submerged is heated gradually at about 2 degrees Fahrenheit per
minute. As the temperature of the water is gradually increased, the
frog will eventually become more and more active in attempts to escape the heated water. If the container size and opening allow the frog to jump out, it will do so.” Naturally, if the frog were not allowed to escape it would eventually begin to show signs of heat stress, muscular spasms, heat rigor, and death.

Lesson here, don’t believe everything you hear or read. Remember one Kiyosaki from Hawaii. It is believe that Rich Dad is fiction. And everyone quote’s RK. Could it be another urban legend?

Original article from Personal Money Tips

The Chinese proverb “Money makes money” has a certain truth to it. If you have money, it is much easier to make more money. And you have probably seen this joke somewhere.

If you owe $1,000, you are a piker,

If you owe $100,000, you are a businessman,

If you owe $1,000,000 you are a tycoon

If you owe $1 billion, you are a magnate

If you own $100 billion, you are the government

Again, this is quite funny AND has some truth to it. The more money you have, the more people are willing to lend to you. Where am I going with this? In Yahoo finance, it was reported that even companies are lending money in the billions to either consumers or other companies. Take a look at this.

Last year 82% of Sony’s $1.1 billion in pretax earnings came from its financial unit, Sony Financial. General Electric gets 34% of its pretax earnings from financial services. Boeing carries $8 billion of customer leases and interest-bearing receivables on its books. Paccar, maker of tractor-trailer trucks, has $9 billion.

What does all this mean? This means a wide range of global companies makes lots of money from financial activities. In fact, some companies like Sony makes more from such financial activities than producing movies or consumer electronics. It also means these companies are exposed to the debt crisis should it wider further.

Could all this implode the economy?

Original article from Personal Money Tips