There are many possible ways to generate a passive income stream. The simplest example that comes to me is the Vending machine in our office 🙂 The person who owns it posted a photo of him and his family during Christmas break that thanked all the people who went to use the vending machine for “taking care of the family”. The background to the photograph was the backyard of a nice house, presumably his own. My initial thought was that it was such a nice gesture on his part to do this. But, my second thought was that this was an awesome passive income stream…there is some work needed to fill up the machine, but that is almost a weekly once visit. So, I decided to explore what are the different means of passive income streams and what applies to me. Here are my thoughts.

Cash

• Interest money from cash stashed in a bank account
• This option works for me.

Dividend Income

• Dividends from bond and stock investments
• This option works for me.

Side Business

• An automated business that can function without full time effort from me
• Ex: Vending machine 🙂 , a franchisee, etc etc
• This option DOES NOT work for me. I am neither business savvy nor people savvy.

Rental Income

• A rental income, especially one where the mortgage is paid off OR where the rent is more than the mortgage payment.
• This option DOES NOT work for me. I am still struggling to buy a house for my family && did I say I live in one of the most expensive areas in the country 😉
• But, this is something I will consider in future.

Based on the above thoughts, I have decided to create the following types of passive income streams

• Interest money from Cash
• Dividends from stocks and bonds

I will talk more details about each in the next post.