My Plan to Make $500,000 Outside of My Day Job In the Next Two Years

How to use passive income to find freedom do do what you love

Live to work or work to live?

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always focused on making money.

When I was 5 years old I started shoveling snow off my neighbor’s driveways, and by 8 I was creating designs for business cards and magnets, and selling them to small businesses in my community.

By the age of 12, I had come up with an advertising campaign for local small businesses where I would find 10–20 business owners who were willing to pay a small sum for an ad in a quarterly door-hanger flier that my friends and I would deliver on 5000 doors in my small town.

My entrepreneurial spirit continued into high school when I started a DJ and entertainment production company that scaled to 12 people running up to 8 events per weekend.

I had a relatively lucrative childhood.

Unfortunately, by the time I got to college, my drive, sense of urgency, and talents I had developed over the years caught the attention of corporate America and I was sucked into the rat race which took a massive toll on my entrepreneurial spirit and efforts.

I was suckered into the dogma and feeling of safety receiving a consistent paycheck every two weeks.

In the scheme of things, I’ve had a phenomenal career so far, working for some incredible companies, having the chance to travel to amazing places, live in various major cities, and work on some fantastic projects that taught me life lessons I couldn’t have found anywhere else, there is a pretty big part of me that genuinely regrets not chasing my entrepreneurial drive or at least keeping it up on the side over the past 15 years.

To be clear, I love working, it gives me a sense of fulfillment.

Typically, I don’t work for the money. I work because I love what I do.

That was the case at least until the past 5 years when prices shot through the roof astronomically with inflation and I live in one of the most expensive cities in the country.

While I’m not much into buying stuff, I drive a Honda, shop for clothes at Target, and I’m writing this article on a 6-year-old laptop that’s ready to crash at any moment.

Money is still important to me as I view it as a ticket to freedom.

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Avoiding the golden handcuffs

Over the past few years, I came to the tough conclusion that even working in big tech which turns out to be one of the highest-paying careers, most people will never become “rich” or even “comfortable” even if they manage to save and invest a significant amount of their income for the duration of their career.

There are two simple reasons for this sad reality:

The US tax code: The US tax code is designed to benefit business owners, specifically people who provide jobs and housing. If you don’t provide jobs or housing, you are a leach to the economy and the tax code will treat you as such taxing you at higher rates than the ultra-rich. Don’t believe me? Check out Tax Free Wealth by Tom Wheelwright.
The growing wealth gap: Even if you manage to get a 3–5% raise per year with a promotion every few years, the ultra-rich are almost doubling their income every two years if not faster because it takes money to make money. Your raises, bonuses, and even investments will not allow you to keep up with the rate of inflation and the growing wealth gap. You won’t be poor, but it sure won’t make a house any more affordable for you 5 years from now when you finally saved that downpayment.

Now this doesn’t mean that tech professionals can’t retire from their earnings, anyone who manages to invest 6-figures per year for 30 years will be well off but there are two problems with this plan:

Cost of living: Most of these professionals (myself included) live in the most expensive cities in the world where the average cost of rent is over $5,000 per month and the average cost of a single-family home is over $1,000,000 with property taxes soaring well into $25,000+ annually.
Burnout: Big tech has become incredibly competitive and stressful over the past few years and I see people dropping like flies, taking time off for the holidays, and deciding never to come back.
Managing to keep your high-paying job for 30 years even if you want to: With layoffs happening every few years and the cuts being deep and unpredictable including some of the highest performers in the company, there’s no guarantee that professionals will be able to keep their high paying job for their entire careers.
Raises not keeping up with cost of living: Believe it or not, even people making 6-figures or multiple 6-figures per year are not receiving raises that keep up with their local cost of living, especially when their housing costs may be over $100,000 annually and rising quickly.

I’ve managed to avoid most of these traps over the past 5 years in big tech by following a few simple rules:

I am NOT buying a house where I live, the interest on the mortgage alone would be more than I currently pay in rent. I invest elsewhere.
I avoid lifestyle creep by keeping my current level of spending even when I make more money
Invest, save, invest, and save some more. I invest and save more than 50% of my income on autopilot.

People tend to refer to getting caught in these financial life creep traps as “Golden Handcuffs”. They make a ton of money but their cost of living continues to rise and they begin to find themselves trapped in their high-paying jobs with no sign of retirement in sight.

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Finding my path to financial freedom

As much as I like my job, I’ve been kept up at night this past year due to the constant layoffs.

On top of the stresses of job instability, my team’s size has been cut in half in the past year and my workload has gone up over 400%.

I haven’t been this stressed in years and I know it’s not sustainable.

I know I could easily leave and go somewhere else, but most companies are putting their teams under similar pressures and the grass sure isn’t always greener on the other side.

So I’ve spent the past year taking matters into my own hands.

I am rekindling my entrepreneurial spirit with a simple goal in mind:

Stop being reliant on the income from my full-time job.

I’m not looking to quit or retire, I am simply seeking to supplement my full-time paycheck with passive income streams so I feel less reliant on my job.

I am trying to build a real safety net under the fake safety net that we are led to believe comes with a bi-weekly paycheck.

Here’s my plan:

I aim to hit $250,000 per year in passive income by the end of 2025.

Rental Properties:

I already have a few rental properties that bring in about $62,000 per year in rental income.

Rental Property Income: $62,000

Annual Growth in Property Values: $30,000

Equity Growth from Principal Paydown: $12,000

Estimated Annual in 2025: $104,000

Investment Returns:

Dividends: $12,000

Interest: $4,000

Portfolio Growth: $52,000

Estimated Investment Return Annual in 2025: $68,000

Ad Revenue from Blogs & Medium Articles:

$24,000 ($2,000 per month)

Affiliate Marketing:

$12,000 ($1,000 per month)

Total estimated passive income in 2025: $208,000

Two issues with this plan still need to be worked out:

I am still $42,000 short of my goal even if I manage to meet all of the above targets
Of the $208,000, less than 25% of that would be cash hitting my checking account because it’s calculated as growth in value instead of actual income

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started” — Mark Twain

No matter how this plan turns out, I am confident in one thing. Actively pursuing passive income streams to supplement my full-time job is guaranteed to produce a more stable future than just sitting around waiting for my full-time job to magically pay me more and hoping to keep my job for the next 30 years, which by the way I have no intention of working in my current career for the next 30 years.

What do I want to do?

Honestly, I don’t have a clue.

Learn to fly
Become an airline pilot
Traffic controller
Pyrotechnician at Disneyland
College Lecturer
Lay on a beach somewhere until I get cr*pped on by a seagull

I’ll decide when I get there

I’d love to hear from you! What are your thoughts?

Have you started building passive income streams?

If you had the opportunity to make a massive career pivot, or the freedom to retire, what would you do with your time?

As always, thank you for reading and please share those claps👏 and subscribe for more :)

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