Let me ask you a question:
If you had a steady supply of decent income coming in every month with no effort on your part, would you continue working on your job?
If you are like most people, the answer to that questions would be a resounding “No”.
The honest truth is that over 95% of people have a job because they have to pay the bills, not because are in love with their job.
Nod if you agree.
See, there is always that little voice in our heads saying:
“I know I am capable of earning a lot more…”
“I have been slaving away at this job for the last 3 years with nothing to show for it”.
“If only I had a million dollars, I would actually have a prayer of living my life my way…”
As we grow old, the voice doesn’t go away – we simply get better and better at ignoring it.
And because of that, we keep working 9-5 till we are old & tired.
The scariest part is that even after working for 45 years, many of us don’t have a lot to live on in our retirement years.
Warren Buffett is famously quoted to have said “If you don’t find a way to make money in your sleep, you will work until you die”.
And I agree with this statement.
And this really is the crux of the matter.
The issue is that we have been fed this magical line from the very beginning:
“Go to school, study hard, get a well-paying job, save for retirement, work till 70 and live happily ever after”.
In this case however, there really is no “happily ever after”.
By the time you are 70, your golden years are gone.
Here’s a scary statistic to bring things into perspective.
The Social Security Administration says:
Take any 100 people and follow them for 40 years till their retirement age.
Only 1 will be wealthy.
4 will be financially secure
5 will continue working not because they want to but because they have to
36 will be dead
54 will be dead broke, dependent on their meager social security checks, relatives, friends, even charity for a minimum standard of living.
If you read this article & take action, you will be the 1 person in the 100 people who will be wealthy.
Once again, the reason why billions of people around the world find ourselves in this conundrum is simple:
They simply don’t know how to make money while sleeping.
I would like to change that today.
I am now going to show you, step-by-step, how you can make money while you sleep.
I will show you how to create passive income.
I will show you how you can becoming financially independent in 3-5 years, even if you are on a budget.
If this sounds too good to be true, I understand but if you read this entire article word-for-word and take action, I guarantee that your life will never be the same.
You might be wondering now “Why is financial freedom so important anyway?”
Isn’t working 9-5 the “right” thing to do because everyone else is doing it as well?
Don’t you make friends while working a job?
Someone has to work to pay the bills, right?
The issue here is not that you have a job – the issue is that you aren’t making money in your sleep & therefore stuck in a vicious cycle of the “rat race”.
On the other hand, some people I know are making money while they sleep, but they are still working at a job full-time.
Why?
Because they love their jobs.
Not because of the money.
Not because they have to pay the bills.
Just because the work they do resonates with them & makes them feel alive.
That being said, there are a lot of benefits to “getting out of the rat race”, “having financial freedom” or “retiring early to do your own thing”, whatever you might want to call it.
The thing is, when you “get there”, the vast majority of problems in your life simply fade away.
Your stress levels decrease and the pleasure you get out of life increases tenfold.
You are able to travel the world whenever you like.
You are able to visit your family and friends around the world simply on a whim.
You say goodbye to your mundane 9-5 job.
You wake up every single day, thankful for the enviable life you are living.
Your family, friends and even strangers start looking up to you for guidance.
You command respect.
You are finally in a position to change other people’s’ lives.
In extreme cases, you are even able to live like royalty.
Essentially, being financially independent opens you to tons of possibilities.
So if you think about it, I am not only teaching you how to get out of the vicious 9-5 routine
I am teaching you to live your life the way it is meant to be lived: With no limits or regrets.
So let’s get started.
Step 1: Understand What “Financial Independence” Really Is.
“Financial independence” is a tricky word.
For some, it could mean owning a mansion on a hill, overlooking the city.
For some, it could mean driving a brand-new Lamborghini Gallardo.
For others, it could be throwing lavish yacht parties during the summer.
In reality, financial independence has got very little to do with all of that.
Financial independence simply means you have enough passive income coming in to live on indefinitely, without working.
It means that your assets or investments are generating income for you, so you don’t have to work anymore.
It is only then that you get to live life on your own terms.
So once again, for good measure, you become financially independent when:
Your monthly passive income > your monthly expenses
Please take a little bit of time to internalize this concept – doing so will literally change your life.
Step 2: Stop Making Other People Rich
Do you know where all your money is going?
Chances are, you are so busy that you have never thought about going through your bank or credit card statement.
Because of this, you simply don’t know what you are paying for & to whom those payments are going.
See, we all think we have an idea what our monthly expenses are but we really don’t.
If you think you spend $300 per month on food, you are probably wrong. You most likely spend $500.
Do you think your cell phone bill is $50 per month? Nope, it most likely is $80.
That cottage trip you booked with family, thinking you were only going to spend $300 on it? It cost you $750.
Not knowing how much you are spending will literally force you to work till you are 70 years old.
Ask yourself “Is it worth spending the next 30-40 years of my life slaving away at a job?”
If the answer is no, you need to make a few changes.
First things first, we are going to figure out where all our money is going.
Go check your bank and credit card statements.
It will show you the exact picture.
If you see charges on there which you don’t recognize, you either bought something and forgot doing so or more importantly, someone is using your debit or credit card fraudulently.
Either way, just call your bank (or your credit card company) and report the charge.
They will most likely reverse it for you, allowing you to save money.
One of the nastiest things which keeps us working our entire lives is:
The monthly subscriptions we sign up for, keep paying for and never use.
In 2012, I signed up for an extremely fancy, all-inclusive gym & spa called Lifetime Athletic in Mississauga, Canada.
I was paying a whopping $160 (tax included) per month for it.
The service was great and for the first 2 months, I absolutely loved it.
However, I soon stopped going there frequently.
The trouble was, they still kept charging me every single month.
In 2017, I canceled the service because it was a drain & it wasn’t benefiting me.
In my mind, I thought I had paid them only $2,400 in total.
I was way off.
I checked my payment history and over the last 5 years, I paid them $9,600 instead.
I am very sure the exact same thing is happening to you.
Make sure that you don’t keep paying for stuff you don’t use.
Simply put, if we are to become financially independent, you have to stop making other people richer at your expense.
Step 3: Save 20-40% Of Your Income
Nope, I am not talking about saving your income so you can live off of it, simply because this is the traditional school of thought which is responsible for keeping billions of people subservient to the system.
Instead, I am suggesting that you save a portion of your income so you can use that money to invest in vehicles which create passive income, allowing you to get retire early.
See, we live in a consumerist society.
Much of the time, our happiness and sense of self-worth is directly related to how much we spend & the stuff we buy.
This is why you keep seeing people driving around in BMWs, not knowing that the person driving it is just 2 months away from filing for bankruptcy if he lost his job.
But that’s not all.
We continuously dig ourselves into a deeper hole every chance we get.
Whenever we get a raise, our expenses magically rise to meet it.
Whenever we get a tax refund, we throw a party or go on a trip.
The fact of the matter is that if you are not saving any money right now, you are essentially enslaving your future self for decades.
The key takeaway here is this: Save 20-40% of your income.
Yes, it won’t be easy.
Yes, it will take work.
But it is also necessary.
I can guarantee that once you actually figure out where all your money is going, you will be able to cancel your monthly subscriptions or get rid of other unnecessary expenses which will then allow you to save you at least 20% of your yearly income.
If you currently aren’t saving anything, you are doing something wrong.
Either you don’t have a job, or if you do, you are spending everything you earn.
The only way you can save 20-40% of your income is by:
Step 4: “Convert Earned Income Into Passive Income”
The general public only knows one way of making money, which is working a 9-5 job.
Our society does not teach us about other ways of generating income.
The truth is that there are 3 types of income:
If you have a job, irrespective of how much you make at it, you are making “earned income”.
If you sell your stocks or house for more than the price you bought it for, that is “portfolio income”.
If you make money through an asset while you sleep, that is “passive income”.
In order to become financially independent, you have to make “passive income”.
This is the income the truly wealthy people earn.
This is why the rich keep getting richer.
This is why the rich get taxed much lower than you & I, even if their net worth is in tens of millions.
This is why the wealthy are able to book business-class flights from San Francisco to Paris simply on a whim.
So what exactly is passive income?
“Passive income” is any kind of income which is generated consistently with minimal supervision.
There are 3 major passive income sources:.
There are other passive income sources as well but for the time being, let’s stick with these.
Here are some examples of things which are not assets at all but the entire world seems to think that they are:
If you currently don’t know anything about these passive income sources, don’t worry.
In 2008, I didn’t either.
In 2018, I am now financially independent.
I will explain these passive income sources in extremely easy to understand English in this article so keep reading.
For now, just remember that people who are truly rich make “passive income” and make money while they sleep, with minimal supervision.
Since you currently make income from your job, that income is “earned income”.
To live the life of your dreams, you have to follow this rule:
Actively convert earned income into passive income.
Step 5: Become Financially Intelligent
In my humble experience, most people are not financially intelligent.
Financial intelligence is about making your money work hard for you.
It is about understanding how money works & how to leverage it so you make even more money.
It is about earning the right kind of income and by doing so, paying a lot less in taxes.
Please remember that I am not suggesting that you evade taxes.
I am merely recommending that you learn how the tax system in your country works so you can pay a lower amount in taxes legally.
Financial intelligence is knowing that when you work for money, you make less money because you are taxed at a much higher rate.
Wealthy people know that if their investments generate income as opposed to them having a job, they will be taxed at a much lower rate.
Financial intelligence is also about using other people’s money to make more money for yourself.
Financially intelligent people put a down payment of 20% on real estate, just so they can borrow 80% of the money from the bank.
This way their small investment in real estate reaps bigger rewards because of leverage.
Financially intelligent people create passive income using an asset because they know that doing so brings them a higher income with much lower taxes.
And finally, financially intelligent people know that most people are 2-4 months away from bankruptcy if they lose their job, irrespective of the flashy lifestyle they might currently lead.
But let’s back up for a minute.
Here is how “normal folks” operate (By the way, this category includes at least 97% of the world’s population):
Please do not get offended if you can personally relate to the 13 points above.
Once again, the vast majority of the world’s population reside in the category above, so you are definitely not alone.
Now let’s talk about how financially intelligent people operate:
As you can see, there is a big difference in the outlook on life between the normal folks and those who are financially intelligent.
If you currently fall into the “normal folks” category, don’t worry. By the end of this article, you will find yourself solidly-rooted in the “financially intelligent” category – knowledge which most people lack.
Step 6: Create Passive Income
Here are the 3 types of income generating assets you should focus on if you want to be financially independent:
Asset 1: A subscription-based online business
Online businesses are the quickest path to becoming financially independent and for good reason.
Online businesses, if set up the right way, allow you to:
This is simply not possible with brick & mortar businesses, which is why I love online businesses.
A good portion of my profits have come from Quantum SEO Labs, by providing services to my clients and charging for them monthly, which means that I was operating a subscription based online business.
In simple terms, a subscription based online business generates consistent income from customers every month, all digitally of course.
You can create an online business in virtually any niche – all you have to do is:
Now, think of your greatest passion.
Is it photography?
Is it paint-balling?
Is it playing the guitar?
Is it entrepreneurship?
It can literally be anything.
Also, take a moment to think up of common problems that you can effectively provide a solution for.
As long as you are passionate about it and there is demand for it out there, you can create a monthly subscription program around that passion or problem.
You then get to charge your customers a monthly amount for the membership.
What you charge depends on how much value you provide, which means that life changing solutions can be priced much higher.
The sweet spot for membership programs is between $27-97 per month but I have also been part of programs which charge $497 a month.
Here are some real-life examples:
How To Create a Subscription-Based Online Business – The Big Picture:
Let’s assume that you are really passionate about photography.
You love taking scenic photos & capturing beautiful moments.
Imagine this:
You create an online subscription program which teaches people how to improve their photography skills.
You use Facebook’s advertising platform to target the right audience i.e. people who love photography and have a desire to become a better photographer.
The reason you use Facebook’s ad platform to promote your program & get customers is because Facebook allows you to target people based on their city, country, education, gender, marital status, the interests they like on Facebook and the causes they are involved in.
So you set up an ad on Facebook and give photography enthusiasts the opportunity to sign up for your Photography program.
Breakdown:
You give them a ton of value.
You give them new tutorials, checklists and examples every month and bill them every month.
By the way, you don’t have to spend time billing your customers – your payment processor takes care of it every month, automatically.
You now have what is called passive income because you have set up an asset which generates income for you with minimal supervision.
Now you might be wondering: What about all the content I will have to put up for my subscribers?
Won’t that take a lot of time?
The caveat here is that you can point your subscribers to resources other people have created, as long as they are valuable and as long as you credit the person who created them.
Remember, there is a ton of free information out there which you can point your customers towards.
You can also create your own content but for most cases, it really isn’t necessary.
Let’s do the math:
Even though you offer a $1 trial, your program charges customers $47 per month.
You use Facebook’s ad platform to get customers to sign up and 1 person signing up for your program costs you $25.
Over the next 5 months, you get 1000 people signed up for a total revenue of $47,000 per month which is $47 per customer multiplied by 1000 customers.
This is a prime example of how an income generating asset is created.
Now you might be scratching your head thinking:
“If it costs me $25 to get 1 customer signed up, it will cost me $25,000 to get 1000 customers.”
You are right.
But since those customers start paying you as soon as the 7-day trial is over, you recover the cost of your advertising very quickly.
The main point to remember here is that your customers (and not you) are paying for your advertising spend – they do so when they pay you $47 per month, after the 7-day trial period is over.
Write this down: Your customers (and not you) should pay for your advertising spend.
Also, you are spending $25 only once to get the customers signed up but that customer is paying you every single month till they cancel.
And if you provide them with a lot of value, your customers will stick around for years.
You can also recover your advertising cost by offering your customers 30-50% off the total monthly subscription cost if they purchase an annual subscription.
Assuming you would like to offer them 50% off if they sign up for the annual subscription, you can say something like this:
“Normally you would pay me $47 per month to enjoy this high-level photography training but if you switch to the annual upsell option right now, it will save you $282 ($47 per month 12 months 50%) in cash.”
Because they will save 50% by signing up for the annual offer, around 20% of people should take you up on that offer.
You might also be wondering, “Yes that would work but doesn’t that make me lose a lot of money too?”
If you think about it, you have now essentially had a customer commit to sticking around for 12 months as opposed to just 1 month.
The cherry on the cake is that they have paid you the annual subscription in advance, which means that they have sent you $282 (and have also saved $282 on their end).
You can now use the $282 payment to pay for your Facebook advertising & you will be in the green from Day 1.
Now your cash flow is positive and you are getting customers essentially for free.
The end result in this scenario is that if no one takes you up on your annual subscription offer, you are still generating a monthly revenue of $47,000 by setting up an asset which works for you 24/7 once it is up & running.
This is exactly how successful entrepreneurs keep generating passive income without exchanging time for money like the rest of the world does.
To recap, in order to have a successful subscription based online business, you need 3 types of payment options:
All of this gives you a good idea as to how these subscription based programs works.
I will email you the entire checklist in the next couple of days so you can take as much time as you need to go through all the steps.
If you aren’t familiar with online businesses, it will not take you more than 2-3 hours to internalize the entire process and also to go through all the resources I have mentioned.
Keep your eye on the prize and don’t sweat the little stuff.
Asset 2: Dividend stocks
The great John D. Rockefeller, one of the richest people in the US famously said: “Do you know the only thing which gives me pleasure? It’s to see my dividends coming in”.
One of the easiest ways to create passive income is to buy shares of dividend paying companies.
All you have to do is carry out thorough research and buy the stocks of the right companies.
Once that is done, you will receive regular dividend payments to your brokerage account which you can live off.
By the way, buying dividend stocks is completely different from stock trading, which refers to buying a stock when the price is low and then selling it when the price goes up.
Instead, you are investing for the long term and getting paid every month or every quarter, depending on the company you invest in.
If you do this the right way, you will never want to sell your stock because you will see the stock price rising as well as dividend payments coming in like clockwork.
But let’s go through the basics first.
A stock is an ownership in a company.
When you purchase a stock, you essentially become a part owner of a company.
If a company issues 100 shares and you buy 10 of them, you now have a 10% ownership in the company.
Since you are now an owner of the company, you are entitled to any profits the company generates.
You can buy stocks very easily through an online broker.
In the US, the best brokers in my humble opinion are Interactive Brokers and TD AmeriTrade.
If you are in Canada, you will love Questrade (http://www.questrade.com/) – this is the only broker I use because they charge minimal fees and have great customer service.
However, before signing up for a brokerage account, check their pricing to understand how much they charge you.
The best brokerage platforms only charge you when you buy or sell shares – there are no other hidden fees.
Let me hammer this home for good measure:
The first type is where investors look forward to the appreciation of the stock price, so they can then sell the stock for a profit.
This means that you purchase for example Intel Inc. (NASDAC:INTC) stock for $30 per share, wait 5 years and then sell the stock for $60 per share, profiting $30 per share.
Although this can make you money, we are not looking for these types of stocks because:
The second type is the dividend-paying stock, which makes you passive income on auto-pilot for years & years.
I know people who bought Canadian Utilities (TSX:CU) stock in 1980 & are still receiving passive income through it.
But I digress.
Generally speaking, healthy dividend stocks pay between 2.5% to 8% per year in dividends.
Remember, every person has their own risk tolerance as well as income requirements.
The most important thing to keep in mind though is to buy these stocks when the prices are low, which will allow you to get a higher dividend yield.
This means you make a higher income for the same number of dollars you invested.
The higher the number of dividend stocks you own, the higher your passive income is.
If you recall, dividend income (because it is passive income) is taxed at a much lower rate.
This means that if you earn $20,000 a year working a regular job and you earn $20,000 a year in dividend income, you will pay much less in taxed on your dividend income.
These tax savings can really add up over multiple years.
Remember these 3 important points when buying a dividend stock:
Practical example:
Let’s assume that ABC Inc. has its stock trading on NYSE (New York Stock Exchange) or TSE (Toronto Stock Exchange).
The current stock price is $25 per share and you buy 100 shares for a total of $2,500.
ABC pays a dividend of $0.25 per share every quarter.
This means that the company pays $1 per share every year, since there are 4 quarters in a year.
Since you paid $25 per share and since you are getting $1 every year in income from that share, your Dividend Yield % is 1/25 or 4% annually.
Once again, the Dividend Yield % = Annual dividend received per share/Price per share
You also realize that the stock usually traded around the $30-33 level per share and the price only went to $25 because an easy-to-fix problem caused people to unduly panic & sell the stock.
In order words, you bought a stock which pays 4% annual dividend at a bargain because other people were selling out of irrational fear.
By the way, this happens more frequently than you might think.
Anyway, this scenario helped you buy more stock for the budget you had and it also means that you will bring in higher dividend income.
Before purchasing the stock however, you check the financials of the company and realize that the company has been paying a regular dividend since the last 18 years and it has never missed a dividend payment.
Also, ABC has been increasing the dividend every year by an average of 8%.
So you now know a couple of things:
Investing for dividend income is one of the key skills you need to learn if you want to become financially independent.
Once you get good at this process, you will be able to quickly turn your savings into passive income, which will keep pouring in like clockwork for decades.
Asset # 3: Real estate:
The fact of the matter is that the richest people on Earth make money in business & invest that money in real estate.
This simple rule has allowed them to become multi-millionaires or even billionaires.
It would surprise you to know that Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonalds has famously said “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m not in the hamburger business. My business is real estate.”
So now that we understand how important this asset class is, let’s dive right into it.
I will now show you how you can invest in real estate profitability, irrespective of the way the market is going.
There are 4 reason why real estate is extremely popular with the rich. Here they are:
With profitable real estate investing, you have to make sure that:
Here are some properties you can benefit from:
Practical example:
Steve is a 33 year old software developer at a medium sized company.
He understands how money works & is on the path to retiring early.
Steve buys a duplex in St. Catherines (a suburb of Toronto), when the housing market is crashing and people are panicking.
Instead of paying the usual price of a standard duplex at $120,000, he pays only $85,000.
He puts down 20% the price ($17,000) for the duplex and gets the bank to loan him the rest of the amount.
Because he had financed 80% of the $85,000 purchase, he takes out a loan of $68,000 at an interest rate of 3.49%.
Using mortgage calculators available for free online (https://tools.td.com/mortgage-payment-calculator/), he calculated his monthly mortgage payment to be around $339.15.
As soon as the duplex was in his name, he rents it out to 2 small families.
His monthly property taxes were $83.
The repair and maintenance for his duplex was $250 monthly.
Steve was able to rent out both units for $700 each, for a total of $1400.
His monthly profit from his duplex is therefore:
Rental revenue $1,400
Mortgage payment $339.15
Property taxes $83
Maintenance $250
Net income $727.75
This net income from the rent of the duplex is passive income because:
In most cases, Steve will pay 2-5% tax on this income, allowing him to keep most of it for himself.
Also, because of inflation, he gets to increase the rents of his duplex by 2-3% annually, pocketing more income in coming years and still paying a very low tax.
If you have read so far, you are probably a little overwhelmed by the new information and that is completely understandable.
However, you are probably really excited at the potential of finally quitting your job because you are generating income during your sleep.
Imagine creating an online business & then expanding it so it helps 1,0000 people improve their lives. You charge your customers $47 per month for a total of $47,000 per month.
This amount per month is more than most people make in a year.
And no, this is not an outlandish example.
Normal people like us are doing it very successfully.
Imagine again that you invested $30,000 in a dividend-paying company which pays 6% in dividends every year. You see a direct deposit of $1,800 in your bank account every year.
Finally, imagine getting your hands on a condominium located in an area with a lot of demand. You pay 20% down to buy it and then rent it out for a monthly profit of $300. That is $3,600 per year in your pocket without you working at all.
If your head is spinning, that’s a good thing.
You have learnt a lot of new stuff in this article.
You now have knowledge which has till recent been the domain of the ultra-rich.
Now it is time to put this knowledge into action.
Next steps:
Now that you know how “passive income” works, you can put the entire plan into action.
Let’s say that you and your significant other need a minimum of $2,500 per month to live.
This means that in order to become financially independent, you have to find ways to create a monthly passive income of at least $2,500 per month.
This translates to $30,000 per year.
Creating a monthly passive income of $2,500 per month can be achieved in these ways:
If you look closely, you will see that buying dividend-paying stocks and real estate require some capital to start.
This is exactly why I have shown you how to cut down on unnecessary expenses.
When you do that, you save money.
You can then use that money to create an endless stream of passive income for you & your family.
Finally, you need to understand a couple of things:
I have a gift for you:
Congratulations!
If you have read so far, it means that you are excited to create your passive income stream so you can retire in the next 3-5 years.
If you are willing to put in the effort, I am willing to invest in you.
In order to help people like you, I have created a FREE step-by-step program which will show you how to become financially independent.
Here’s what I will teach you when you sign up:
If you are interested, please fill out the form below.
In conclusion, I am happy to share my knowledge with you in this detailed guide.
I hope I was able to give you life-changing information.
If you feel that this guide has helped you, please feel free to share it with your friends and family since they also deserve the best in life.
To your success,
Yasir Khan