Generating passive income to meet your living costs in retirement is possible with practical ideas and careful planning.
Are you looking to meet your living costs in retirement? Or perhaps earn enough money to cover your needs and some of your wants? One of the routes you may take to arrive at these outcomes is to generate passive income, which can be produced through careful planning. And here are some of the options you can consider.
Stock images
Selling stock photos or videos has been a growing area and worth exploring too where you could earn between 25-45 cents per image. If photography is your thing, it won’t feel like a chore. You’ll just need to create an account and load up a lot of images on various sharing stock photography websites such as Unsplash.
Low input business
There are small businesses that require an initial investment and minimal supervision such as hiring people to do some of the grunt work. Consider a business that involves vending machines, laundromat, or car wash facilities, in which the required low input is your time.
Generate passive income by buying shares
Buying shares and receiving your dividends is arguably the most passive of passive investments. Buy and forget — no costs like insurance and no maintenance to worry about.
You can reduce risk and improve the resiliency of your income stream as share investments are easy to diversify. Do this by buying shares across different companies and industries within your portfolio or through a fund. $2,000 is enough to get started investing in shares. Make sure you don’t expect to need the money in at least 5 years.
Another benefit of shares is being liquid. You can sell your shares and have the money in your bank account in 3 days.
Residential property
If you borrow funds to enter the residential property market, expect the initial cash flow derived from the rental income to go to loan repayments. Also, expect to deal with on-going costs such as insurance and council rates, and properties wear out.
If you have some handyman skills, residential property investment seems well suited to you. You can do minor improvements to properties to increase their value like modernising a kitchen.
Not only will you attract better quality tenants, you can also charge a higher rate of rent. Over time your property investment will start to produce surplus cash.
Commercial property
Commercial property investment is a feasible alternative to residential property investment. But you need to have savings available because banks usually require a larger deposit when buying commercial property.
All maintenance and costs in commercial property are borne by the tenant. You have no obligation to give the place a fresh paint or replace the dishwasher.
Given that you have a quality tenant, and at least a 5-year lease term, commercial properties tend to become a cash flow quickly, with most lease agreements building in an annual increase.
Maintain a steady income with the ASAG Reverse Mortgage
Most senior Australians are concerned about limited income in their retirement. Here at ASAG, we hope that our equity release solutions can help you ease this burden by unlocking the wealth in your home. One of these solutions we offer is our reverse mortgage.
The top benefit of the ASAG Reverse Mortgage is that ongoing payments are not required, so it’s one less worry you have to deal with. However, repayments can be made voluntarily at any time without penalty, which reduces the balance and interest charged.
The ASAG team is happy to assist you with further details about how our reverse mortgage works. Our lines are open on 1300 002 724 and at info@asagfirst.com.au, so feel free to call us or send your enquiries about our equity release solutions.
You can also get started by using our tool below to assess your available equity.