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Financial Freedom, Financial Journey, Financial Planning, Investment, Lifestyle, Retirement Planning

March 2017 Non-W2 Income Report and First Quarter Recap

You can go here to read about why we’re sharing our non-W2 incomes on the blog. And you can visit this link to see our past non-W2 income reports.

As anticipated, March was a very great month for us. We received a total of $5,249.31 in non-W2 income. Our international stocks (many of which pay out dividends in larger amounts once a quarter) were responsible for the big jump.

march 2017 non-w2 income report

This month’s number plus the January 2017 and February 2017 numbers have brought our first quarter non-W2 income total to $8,906.89. The monthly average is $2,968.96. With our monthly expenses being around $4,000, this monthly average covers about 74% of our expenses.

We anticipate this percentage will be a little higher by the end of the calendar year. Some of our investments have large dividends/interest payouts bi-annually or annually. Additionally, we continue to make new contributions to most of our accounts. We’ll see as we continue to track these numbers.

April’s chart will look slightly different as I recently did a 401(k) rollover.

We use Personal Capital, a free financial tool, to track our net worth, view our investment performance, analyze our asset allocations and project our retirement goals. I wrote a comprehensive review of Personal Capital in another post. I encourage you to check it out.

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Financial Freedom, Financial Journey, Financial Planning, Investment, Lifestyle, Retirement Planning

Money Makes Money: February 2017 Non-W2 Income Report

It’s already April and I just got around to sharing our February non-W2 incomes report. A lot has happened in my family in the past month. Some of the changes and adventures included giving my resignation letter to my previous employer and possibly forever saying goodbye to W-2 employment and taking a road trip across the country.

february 2017 non-w2 income

There are two great things I’ve came to love about non-W2 incomes; one being having incomes coming in to cover my expenses while on vacation and that, two, these incomes are location independent (e.g., I can be anywhere in the world and still continue to receive dividend/interest payments.).

You’ve probably noticed the few “$0”s on the table above. First, I was surprised we didn’t receive any dividends/interest payments on either one of our Roth accounts. Second, there was no financial coaching income for February. We were busy preparing for taxes and for the adventure across the country.

All things considered, the total for February was only couple hundred dollars lower than that of January. We are optimistic that the March total will be much higher. Many of our investments either pay dividends/interests quarterly or pay out higher amounts on the quarter mark. Come back to the blog to see the March report soon. You can view my previous non-W2 income reports here.

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Financial Freedom, Financial Planning, Investment, Money Habits, Retirement Planning

Money Makes Money: January 2017 Non-W2 Income Report

Last month, I started sharing our non-W2 monthly incomes. In that article, I also shared why we’re doing this on the blog. Yesterday, my husband and I summed our financial numbers. Below is a chart listing our non-W2 income sources and totals for January 2017.

January 2017 non-w2 income

As anticipated in last month’s report, we expected January’s numbers to be much lower compared to those of December 2016.

From my understanding, most early retirees in the Financial Independence and Retiring Early (FIRE) community fall in one of two groups when it comes to funding their early retirement lifestyles:

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Financial Freedom, Financial Planning, Investment, Money Habits, Retirement Planning

December 2016 Non-W2 Income Report

We’re sharing our non-W2 incomes on the blog not to brag. We want to show you what is financially possible. If you’ve read some of my previous articles (such here, here, here and here), you know that both my husband and I have been saving aggressively over the past decade. Our savings rate ranged from 55% to 75%. This was true even when our combined income was below $100,000. The total passive income number you’ll be seeing here is the result of a decade of financial discipline and strategic investing. We took no shortcuts nor did we stumble upon great luck.

december 2016 income report

In our household, our biggest financial goal currently is to build up our non-W2 income. Sometime in the near future, my husband and I will want to leave our W-2 employment. At that time, we want our annual non-W2 income to cover our annual expenses. Ideally, we prefer 95% to 100% of expenses will be covered by our passive income sources (such as from dividends and interest payments from stocks and bonds and income from rental properties) and anything beyond that would be a bonus/extra cushion. We are certainly not there yet; we currently have enough passive income to cover our basic expenses. This is the reason we’re looking into rental properties to fill the gap (click here to read my rental property investing series where I share our journey on this new adventure).

Part of financial planning is financial tracking.

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Financial Planning, Investment, Real Estate Investing

Real Estate Niches and Strategies

Year 2016 was a year full of financial learning for both my husband and I. Early this year, we learned the importance of financial planning (which I talked about in this article). Towards the close of the year, we learned about the importance of having a business plan when investing in real estate. Part of getting started on real estate investing is to first decide on a niche (or two) to get into and which strategy to use to build wealth.

real estate niches and strategies

Real Estate Niches

When I started researching on real estate investing, I was only interested in single family homes. I was aware of other investors buying up small and large apartments, commercial real estates and notes (the buying and selling of paper mortgages). However, my husband and I never paid much attention to those kinds of real estate investing. These types are only for investors who have lots of money. Even if we have the cash or leverage (securing loans), my husband and I aren’t interested in venturing into that kind of large scale risks or work. We’re looking for something much smaller in scale and more manageable. As I wrote in the previous article, we aren’t looking to become multimillionaires through real estate investing. We are interested in portfolio diversification and additional stable monthly cash flow.

Small Multifamily Properties and Their Appeal To Us

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