If it simplifies your life to put your bills and savings on autopayment, wouldn’t it make your life even simpler if you could also put your income on autopayment? I know you probably already receive your paycheck through direct deposit, and in that sense your pay is “automatic,” but what if you could also automate everything you have to do to receive that paycheck?
After all, most people trade both their bodies and their time (together) for money. Is that a fair deal?
Even lawyers, dental hygienists and general practitioners, for the most part, have to be physically present to carry out their business. It also takes up time, the most basic and perhaps only resource we are given in life.
Can you separate what you do with your time from what you do for money? Better yet, can you separate both of these from where you are physically located?
Although many of our professionals — doctors, CEOs, surgical technicians — are among the highest-paid individuals in our society, this doesn’t relieve most of them from the necessity of trading their time and presence for dollars (or whatever currency they are paid in). And in that sense, they have as little life leverage as anyone being paid an hourly wage for demanding physical labor (or worse, as little as those not being paid anything for their physical labor, such as many of those who solely work at home as parents).
If you can’t yet separate what you do from how you earn the money necessary to live, what can you do to start moving in that direction? Start thinking of ways you can leverage time, money and other resources, however much you have of them, in order to earn more of them.
Just as electronic payment or online banking has saved us a physical trip to the bank or the time it takes to think about paying a bill and doing it on time — how can you take this principle and apply it to other parts of your life? This is how the “rich get rich and the poor stay poor.” If you ever feel like you have to be in three places at once, maybe you’re doing something wrong. You need to automate your income so that you have more resources to do the real business of your life.
Any ideas or stories on what’s worked for you? Share them below.
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Nice site and an interesting read – are you having fun with it? I like what you are doing here.
Taking my regular 9-5 (7:30-5:30 actually) job and transforming it into a telecommuting position has been really beneficial for me. I still have to trade my time for money, but physical presence is no longer tied to income. As a result, I’ve chosen to live 1000+ miles from my employer where housing is cheaper and my wife had a great opportunity. I started to chronicle my adventures in telecommuting at The Telecommuter Manifesto blog. Even the time I do trade for money is reduced, thanks to a 20 second commute; the time to walk downstairs to my home office.
Wow, congrats, Mike! Sounds like you’ve really scored big with those decisions. Even if you still have to trade your time, at least you’ve got half of the equation in place now. I’ve started automating my own income with online and portfolio income, but the bulk of my income still requires I trade quite a bit of my own time for it. In fact, the life of an academic is inherently unscalable, which is unfortunate. My research depends on me and can’t be outsourced. Another good reason to diversify income sources.
I’ve been trying to look for stable shares that produce a regular steady dividend income. It’s not easy finding them though.
Value Investing, take a look at mature telecom companies. Many of them have little growth, so they pay out big dividends to investors.
VI, you must not be very deep into your research yet, or perhaps you’re only looking at US companies. I suggest broadening out to other countries.
I have to say though, consultancy for example is a good way to start looking at yourself as a business. Yes, it is not a good model for getting rich, but it can help you break the cycle of looking at your job as a way of life.