Perpetual Income

I have no intention of practicing urgent care medicine forever. It was very enjoyable early on in my career, but it has stopped being challenging and I find myself going through the motions without much passion.

I am not ready to give up my earned income from employment and ready to try something new. Something which will generate perpetual income with some ongoing effort. I have some ideas and have talked about some of the businesses ideas which I’m pursuing.

Perpetual Income

There are many ways to build systems which allow you to earn perpetual income. Passive income is one of these – something I have beaten to death on this blog.

Some will be totally comfortable earning their income from pure labor. To them, it’s not the nature of the work, it’s the steady income coming in, the fact that they can provide for their family, and the satisfaction of being productive.

Who knows, maybe I’ll earn my perpetual income from physical labor. But it might be from intellectual properties or real estate properties. I might continue earning income from consulting or from investing.

The most important thing about perpetual income is that it eliminates the need for a substantial retirement savings. Sure, a little bit of savings might be good to help me when I’m too old to work. But if I can rely on earned income for the majority of my life, I’ll build in inflation protection and investment risk protection. It’s a very powerful tool.

I don’t want to spend another 13 years pursuing something like medicine just to be bored of it or burn out from it. Nor do I want to get into something similar which is so highly regulated. So many people with their hands in my pocket – it’s exhausting.

Finding income work

It’s said that the norm for past generations was to have one job for several decades, collect your pension, and then retire on that income.

I don’t know about your grandparents and their ancestors, but that’s not how the game was played in my family. People from previous generations had multiple careers, whether consecutive or concomitant.

A person may have been in the military for 5 years, taught grade school for another 5 years, then worked as a butcher for another 3, and done retail work for another 10.

They may have sold goods from their home for a while or owned a grocery store. Having a specific job title wasn’t as big of a deal unless you were in the business of taking people’s money en masse – doctors, lawyers, bankers, and dentists.

Writing

It’s 2018 and I am enjoying writing. I could write for other companies or monetize my blog and earn $50k-ish a year. Writing is a skill and, just like any other skill, it’s up to me to figure out a way to earn a profit from it.

Auto mechanic shop

Previously, I loved automotive stuff and owned an auto mechanic shop. I could have continued running that with my head mechanic to earn a perpetual income from it. In hindsight, it would have been wiser to maintain some share in that business even though I stepped out.

Teaching

I have also taught at a college for only a semester – just this year. It’s something I would consider going back to. I could see myself teaching a few hours a week and earning a few thousand dollars per month from it.

Practicing medicine

And, of course, I did practiced medicine for 12 years, coming up on 13. Though I may not want to practice urgent care for the rest of my life, there are other ways of providing health care which might interest me.

Real estate

Later I might try my hand at real estate. Maybe I’ll start my own residential contractor business. Or I might invest in business ventures of friends. I’ve been a landlord twice – not exactly enticing but it was a way to make some money.

Personal finance

I’ve been writing about personal finance, financial planning, and financial advising for some time. I am interested in the topic. Going on to get required credentials in order to do it for a living, that’s a solid option in order to general perpetual income.

Developing Interests

The toughest thing about earning perpetual income is finding out what interests you. And by ‘finding’ I mean developing interests. It takes a lot of exposure to know whether you are interested in a particular subject. It’s usually not enough to get a cursory exposure to something – gotta get your hands dirty, just a little.

You go to the library, you read books, and you delve into a particular subject more and more. You shadow those who are earning a living doing it and then you try dabbling in it. Eventually this will lead to you having either no interest whatsoever or there might be a small spark.

This is one of the reasons that parents enroll their kids in different classes. It’s often entertainment stuff such as sports or playing music. But some parents make sure to give their kids as much exposure as possible:

• teaching a class or course
• creating a product
• writing a book or for a website
• producing intellectual property
• entrepreneurship
• creating a website
• selling products online
• learning a skill such as home repair
• farming
• investing