Many people have been wondering and some were asking if I have any other passive income other than my investments in equity and debt mutual funds. Some think that I may have some real estate income or business income or some other income that I am not disclosing. Here is a post to bust some myths and bring out the truth.


First, lets address the elephant in the room which is on most people's mind, -- do I have multiple passive incomes? The answer is a clear and resounding no. I have one and only one source of income which is my mutual funds investments. I would only need another source of income if I did not trust myself and my financial planning. Of course it does not hurt to have multiple sources of income. But at this point, that is the only income source and I am not actively pursuing any other income streams. I work on interesting projects that you may have read on my blog and it may give the impression that I am earning something from them. In the interest of full disclosure, lets go over some of them.


Financial Planner

Some of you may have read that I recommend a good financial planner to take care of your investments if you cannot do it yourself. Sometimes I may have mentioned that I will offer financial advice if one is interested, either in the blog, in emails or over phone to people who asked me financial advice. In reality, no one actually hired me :). I did do financial reviews for some people and only one person paid me. I charged Rs. 2000 for having spent about 2 hours on the plan. So no, not earning as a financial planner but thank you to that person! You really did not have to.


Investment Analysis App

I have written about paid subscription to my investment analysis app and asked to write to me if anyone is interested. Not for passive income but to offset some of the costs of running the servers, storing the data on the cloud, network traffic etc. Of course I could have run the code on my laptop and never actually released to the public. But for some reason (perhaps given my past work experience), I like to release production quality apps even for personal use :). Only one subscribed and the cost is Rs. 100 per month, so that it just about covers the expenses of running the service. Anyway the point I am trying to make is that it is not an avenue to make make money.


Ads on this Blog

Some thought that I must be earning or will earn income on this blog because I run ads. For those of you who joined the blog before 2020, know that the blog has been completely ads free until early 2020. But my monthly expenses of running the blog have been creeping up to almost Rs. 400 per month and I did not want to pay out of pocket. So I started running ads only very recently from Jan 15, 2020 or there about. Again, the idea was not to make money, but to stop bleeding money. I will write another post explaining the cost of running the blog and how much I might be earning via ads but so far in April I have earned $0.69.



Yes, you have read that right. Less than a dollar in 20 days. Lets just extrapolate and say I will eventually earn $1 in 30 days. That is about Rs. 75 at best. But wait, the story is not yet complete. Note that this is all virtual money and Google does not pay me until I have accumulated at least $100 in the account. At the current rate, that will take more than 8 years to get any money at all! So no passive income here either. Rather I am actually spending :).


I don't mind giving free advice, but it should not cost me right?


Freelancing

I do a bit of freelancing (android/C coding, web development, building electronics etc) for people who say they have project ideas. I have never accepted any payment for my work nor did I ask for business partnership. In some cases I paid for their projects so they can move forward. I am not trying to boast or prove that I am altruistic. Just saying. I do not earn anything for my time doing freelancing (if you can call that).


Real Estate Income

You know my stance on real estate. I just don't like it in India. So obviously, I don't earn anything on real estate in the form of rental income or in any other manner. Don't have agricultural land, so no agriculture income. I don't buy and sell real estate. Don't own any commercial properties either.


Affiliate Links, Products and Business

Finally, I am not sponsored by any one, nor do I post any affiliate links (amazon links for example) or sell any products on this blog or elsewhere. I don't run, own or invest in any business that gives me income.


Conclusion

I know that some of you might find this post unnecessary, explaining passive income is so much detail. But these were all the questions I was asked by some one or the other (not necessarily my blog readers, but friends, family, neighbors, some random person online etc), so now I can deflect their questions and redirect them to this post. I want to reiterate for those of you who think I have other streams of income -- I don't have anything except for my corpus in debt and equity mutual funds. I have full trust and faith in my planning and I don't really need any passive income to survive. If this ever changes, you will be the first to know :)