Isabella Rousseau, business manager

Growing up, we tend to think a lot about what we want to be when we reach adulthood. Whether you wanted to be an astronaut, a doctor, a teacher, an athlete or a fashion designer, our minds have always focused on the idea of working for money. While having an occupation you love and care about is a great thing, it is a good idea to consider having multiple streams of income. 

You don’t have to go out and get another job or degree, you can actually stay at home, dedicate little time to this other income stream, and watch your money grow. Your money can work for you. 

While your five and ten dollar bills can’t clean the kitchen or walk the dog, they can grow and multiply, becoming fifty and one hundred dollar bills, increasing your wealth. 

To achieve this, consider investing your money. Investing is putting away money away now in hopes of returning a profit or financial benefit in the future. Investing is the best way to build wealth, while also providing another stream of income for you to enjoy. Think about it like this: if your goal is to have a lot of money one day or just be comfortable financially, would you rather work for money or have your money work for you? I prefer the latter. 

While I love working and keeping busy, I also prioritize and enjoy other non-work-related things. I want to have time to enjoy my hobbies, spend time with the people I love and have a break from work, so working all the time is not what I want (you are probably the same way). The thing is though, you and I must earn money to maintain our lifestyles, so we should have some type of income. Earned income is the income we receive from working our job. This type of income is limited simply because there are only so many hours available, 168 hours in a week to be exact, for us to work.

For example, say you earn $10 an hour at your current job. Even if you worked all 168 hours a week, this is an impossible scenario and I am not accounting for overtime or taxes, but let’s go with it, you still only earn $1,680 a week and cannot make a penny more than this. You are capped, and probably very tired. Working multiple jobs is not a solution to the earned income dilemma. Earned income is like running round and round in a circle. You might be moving, but you are not getting far. 

Time, not wage or salary, is our number one opponent. Therefore, we must open our world up to something else, something easier, and we must find a solution where time is not our opponent, but our hero. This is where passive income and investing come in. Passive income is income earned from a person’s assets or investments. When you think about millionaires and billionaires, odds are they got their wealth not by working at their job and receiving earned income, but from their investments and collecting passive income. One does not have to “work” to earn passive income in the traditional sense. While they must choose their investments and allocate funds to income-generating assets, there is no real work involved in gaining a passive income.

You can grow your money without really doing anything. Your money works for you, so now you can sit back and relax without having to worry! The best part is that anyone can do it! You do not have to have a lot of money or experience to start out, it really is simple. Once you have learned the necessary skills and opened investment-specific accounts, you are good to go! Passive income really is so incredibly important, never doubt its power.