By all means, I'm not a financial consultant, nor am I good in numbers. But yesterday, I just had a conversation with a realtor who offered me some options for accommodation for my next trip that I'm comfortable.
Don't get me wrong, I don't have the Queen's privilege for sure (don't blame me, I'm currently in the midst of watching The Crown, and the news about the late Prince Philip kinda brought the anecdote!)… But looking back, I realized that I got more opportunities to choose things than a few years ago.
For one thing, I know that the fact that I currently have multiple streams of income has really changed the perspective. If there's anything that I've learned the hard way, it is the fact that to have money, one has to have money first. Not that I belittle the art of working hard, it's just that I've learned the hard way that sometimes being a hard worker is not enough to give you opportunities you deserve.
Why Multiple Streams of Income Might Be Essential These Days
When you don't only rely on one stream of income to live, you always have a safety net to fall back into whenever things don't go well on the other side. Life has been so unpredictable these days, it's only fair to always have a backup plan for any situation. Finance is no exception.
But let's be real, sometimes it's not that easy to have a backup plan when you have way too many responsibilities. I'll give my situation a few years ago, when I worked full-time in Jakarta. I got paid quite decently, but then I had to pay my rent while also budgeting for transportation to commute every day.
As a result, my monthly salary (that was supposed to be decent) was only enough for me to survive living from paycheck to paycheck. I didn't know any other option to earn money other than working at the time, so I had to take the second job that eventually stressed me out. It was hell.
But this time, I know better about diversifying my income, so I live much more comfortably than I did a few years ago. These days, there are many options to do so compared to back when I worked full-time, and I'm thankful for that.
The other day, my classmate at the university… We took the same Catholic class at the time, and we were pretty close as we worked on the same group project on the subject. Well, she reached out to me when she posted a Facebook Stories asking if anyone got a Paypal account.
One thing led to another, and we ended up talking about multiple streams of income as she started asking me about ways to create multiple streams of income. She's a makeup artist who's also a homemaker, so she's trying to add a stream of income through Forex at the time.
This chat, in particular, was the reason why I wrote this post. 😛
5 Proven Ways to Create Streams of Income That Worked For Me
For now, I have multiple streams of income… Both active and passive. Sure, it would be more deliberating for me to only have some passive incomes to be the lazy ass that I naturally am. But I think it's quite satisfying to also do my part to get the sense of fulfilling my responsibility that earns me some money.
So, these are some ways that worked for me to build multiple streams of income.
Source: Burst.
1. Freelance jobs.
These days, I think it's also quite easy to have multiple income streams, even if you work full-time. But for me, at this point, I prefer freelance jobs to work back full-time because it gives me the full independence to manage my time as I please.
My freelance jobs enable me to have at least a stable income. I work as a copywriter and a virtual assistant, and the income that I earn from jobs is enough to pay all my bills. Technically, I only have debts on my credit cards, so my monthly salary is more than enough to pay it off. I do have to deal with an IRS 1099k form every now and then, but that isn't anything too difficult to handle.
Since I came back to my parents' house, I don't have any responsibility to pay the rent. I canceled my application for a mortgage, but I decided that maybe I should build my assets elsewhere. Which I will explain later.
2. Diversify My Businesses.
I treat this blog as a business, and recently I also started my virtual assistant business at Savviesticated. While The BeauTraveler is a one-woman show, I get the help that I need for Savviesticated. So far, it works well for me.
By diversifying my businesses, I can earn my income separately. The BeauTraveler is where I get the money for me and for myself only. The revenue for my other business is taken care of by my sister, so I will receive mine as an additional salary.
Source: Burst.
3. Stocks, Bonds and Gold Investment.
I never quite understand these kinds of investment, even though my last job was, ironically, in Business and Finance Services. LOL.
If I got to be honest, I barely understand it even though now I start investing in stocks and bonds. The only reason why I started was that how easy it is to get started online these days.
My mom invested in gold since she earned her first income as a maid when she worked with my aunt. She kept doing that after she married my dad, but I wasn't really interested in investing in gold when I got my first paycheck for so many reasons. First, I'm not exactly the type of person who loves jewelry. And also, I barely have time to go to the bank physically to open a gold account or any kind of investment really. Of course, as a result, I barely have any assets or a safety net when I decided to quit my job in 2017.
But thanks to technology, even before the pandemic, I could start my account so quickly with barely any money. I buy gold through Tokopedia as they allowed me to buy them from as low as IDR 10,000 (around $0.7 USD).
And then, I started to take more risks to begin investing in stocks and bonds through another app called Bibit. To diversify my assets, I also buy money market mutual funds through Tokopedia and OVO.
The reason why I only used local Indonesian platforms is that the ability to start investing so small. No kidding, Tokopedia even allows me to spare some changes in gold whenever I buy something online there. I barely checked on it from time to time, but the first time I checked it, the next thing I knew was that I had 400,000 IDR (around $27.6 USD) only from the changes collected from the time when I bought my cat food online. LOL.
I haven't thought of adding the platforms with USD, but maybe I will once I have sufficient funds to take some risks in the international stock market.
4. Cryptocurrency.
I know, I know! Thanks to some spammy comments on Instagram about cryptocurrency, I was also cynical about the potential of earning money through crypto too!
It was only earlier this year that I decided to join the hype as my brother told me that he invested in crypto for IDR 80,000 (around $5.5 USD) in 2018, and he just withdrew around IDR 1,600,000 (around $110.5 USD) earlier this year even though he just left the money there dormant for 3 years. No mining, nothing…
Since I really have nothing to lose at this point, I asked him where he did the transaction since at least he proved that there's a platform that actually worked for investment. He introduced me to Indodax, a crypto market based here in Indonesia. We could also start small with various options of cryptocurrencies to diversify our digital assets.
I invested a small amount in Bitcoin, but I put some more money in other cryptocurrencies. I didn't even do thorough research when I first started, simply because I just wanted to see how it works. Curiosity kills the cat, but it builds my wealth instead. LOL.
I started my investment for IDR 100,000 (around $6.9 USD), and I split it into several currencies. The others that I picked were Aurora (because I loved the name!), BitTorrent (because I'm familiar with the name and as a former pirate myself, I don't know how many movies I watched through illegally downloads on Torrent! LOL), and Dogecoin. The latter was because of my brother. He invested in Dogecoin when he withdrew around 20 times of what he paid for. Also, he mentioned that Dogecoin was named after that doggo meme… And I just had to!
Guess what? Dogecoin is at its peak today. It was only 3 months since I started investing. It already multiplies for around 5 times from what I've bought! So did Aurora and BitTorrent too!
Although I don't exactly do the mining like the majority of people who invest in crypto. But now I regularly add more and more funds into it because now I know that's the kind of investment that actually works.
Source: Burst.
5. Affiliate Marketing.
If you came across my post about blog trial and error, you know that affiliate marketing is not exactly the main source of income that I got for my blog. I only reached the threshold of $100 once in 2 years, but it's still money right?
So yeah, affiliate marketing also works as long as you have an audience and consistently promote it. My downside is that I barely do the latter, so it is what it is. For me, it's not my main purpose of having a blog anyway so it's alright.
But hey, maybe affiliate marketing would work better for you. You'll never know until you try, right?
So yeah… Those are some ways that worked for me to create multiple streams of income. I can't speak for anyone else, but I can definitely speak for myself, and it worked for me.
Have you tried any other way to get more streams of income that worked for you? Share in the comment below, and cheerio! 🙂
