Making money is an essential skill to survive in 2021. Whether you like to admit it or not, money dictates a lot of our life, and mastering it makes life significantly easier. Not because money makes you happy per se, but because money can often make things you dislike go away. Sick of your Boss? If you can earn good money freelancing or have a big emergency fund, you can leave that workplace. Don’t like doing your gardening? Again, no worries – with money you can outsource all your chores and free up time.
The majority of people earn their income as an employee – but really, there are four key areas to making money;
- Earned income (employee)
- Freelance income (contractor)
- Side Hustle income (Hustle)
- Profit (business)
- Passive income (investor)
With this in mind – lets explore some of the ways I have made money across my career;
- Full time international cargo flight operations (employee)
- An aviation freelance and contracting business (contractor)
- Casual flying instructing (contractor)
- Warbird adventure and scenic flights (contractor)
- Index fund investing (investor)
- Peer to Peer lending (investor)
- Property investing and real estate developments (business)
- Online arbitrage using eBay, Gumtree (craigslist) and Facebook marketplace: flipping vehicles, appliances, furniture and other items (Hustle)
- Maintenance of a shopping center – cleaning graffiti, rubbish, gardening and general caretaker duties (Contractor)
- Small ‘Cashies’ for landscaping, fixing / repairing / maintaining vehicles, cleaning cars and houses, mowing lawns (contractor)
- A small website portfolio that earns income from Advertising, Affiliate marketing and selling Digital Products. (Business)
- Matched Betting (Hustle)
- Gardening – growing plants and food to both supplement my groceries and also for sale or barter (Hustle)
- Tutoring students in Science and Maths (HSC and University level) as well as ‘helping’ them with their assignments (Hustle)
- E-commerce (such as selling Print on Demand T-shirts) (Hustle)
You can see I have tried a lot of different ways to make a crust. So what worked and what didn’t? Well How about I simply tell you how I am making money in 2021, and you can come to your own conclusion?
Ways CaptainFI is making *serious* money in 2021
- International cargo flights (employee)
- Aviation freelance contracting (contractor)
- Index fund share market investing(investor)
- Peer to Peer lending (investor)
- Property investing and real estate developments (business)
- Website portfolio that earns income from Advertising, Affiliate marketing and selling Digital Products (Business)
What did you notice? I got serious about leveraging my time, and focusing on income streams that can be outsourced. This means focusing on investing and business incomes. These forms of income are not as stable as earned income, so I am still supplementing them with employee and contractor flying incomes until I am confident I can go full time and rely on them to reach financial independence.
The goal for everyone is to progress from Employee to Contractor to Business owner to Investor. What are you doing differently in 2021 to climb the income ladder?
~Novel Serialisation: Heavens Fire~
Captain FI is a Pilot based in Sydney, Australia and is passionate about Financial Independence. He writes about Personal Finance and his experiences becoming an investor on track to retire by 30.
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