“Wealth is the ability to fully experience life”
Today, I want to share how to create location-independent income streams, and why they are important now more than ever, to have.
But first, I wanted to share a short story about how these location independent income streams show up in my life.
My husband and I were on a drive about a month ago, and I mentioned that our plans for travelling Europe this year were definitely out of the picture. I half-jokingly, asked if he would instead like to explore the U.S. since we’d likely be stuck stateside for a while.
“How?”
“What about by RV?” I asked, without having ever camped in an RV.
After all, we had fun in Moab last month. What if we bought an RV, drove down there and explored other parks and made stops along the way? If we liked it, we could continue, if we hated it, we could return home, sell the thing and cut our losses. What did we have to lose?
The very next day, we went RV shopping. We picked out the best model we could find, and days later headed East. #RVlife
Fast forward a mere four weeks after that initial car ride conversation to today, and you will find us based in Moab, Utah, where we’ve been riding UTVs, searching for dinosaur tracks in awe of the ancient petroglyphs, exploring hidden caves, and eating more ice cream than we would like to admit.
This spontaneous lifestyle pivot is only possible because of one important detail: all of our income is location independent. Neither of us has to be based in a certain place to pay our bills. In fact, we’ve been all over the world, and still that virtual mailbox money hits our bank accounts, and we’re not the only ones.
Sarah, a close friend of Agents Invest and Addicted to ROI, has location-independent income streams too. Hers include a regular paycheck and rental income. She’s currently based in New Zealand working remotely and traveling the country by van, enjoying the #vanlife. Before this, she was traveling Asia and visited 13 countries in 2019 alone. Last year, she worked remotely basing herself in South America and Mexico. She was in Europe and the U.S. the year before.
In fact, everyone on our team has location-independent income streams. Deena, who supports our investor community has rental income and 1099 income where she can work anywhere. Emily is based in Spokane, Washington, and owns a gym in Seattle, five or so hours away. Kendra is working remotely from Australia, where she spends her weekends island hopping or diving the Great Barrier Reef (we can’t make this stuff up!).
Why does location independence matter? There are a number of reasons, but ultimately, it allows you to reclaim your freedom.
We’re currently seeing this playout because of the global pandemic. We’ve seen stories of tourists stuck abroad, New York City is experiencing a mass exodus, and any industry that relies on tourism is suffering. Hospitality jobs have some of the highest unemployment rates at the moment too.
The silver lining? Remote work is being offered more and more. Now, large companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter are offering their employees to work remotely. This will likely continue to be a trend as employees desire freedom and flexibility. Location-independent work and location-independent income were gaining popularity before this year but with COVID it’s now commonplace.
The ability to earn an income no matter where you are in the world, allows you the freedom and flexibility to live in a more desirable location or at the very least, a less expensive location. If you are living in an expensive city just because that is where the high-paying job is, imagine being able to move to a more affordable city or closer to nature without losing the high-paying job, by creating location independent income. Or imagine replacing your W2 income with rental income. Now, you can not only quit your job, but also live anywhere.
Working remotely can simply reduce the number of hours you are commuting to work, not to mention the reduced expenses by not having to pay for gas/parking/carpool or even work attire. Who else has enjoyed the Zoom attire?
How to create location independent income:
- Firstly consider if your work can be done online, or perhaps even partially online?
- Invest in rental properties
- Start a side hustle online
Now, I challenge you.
In the month of August, I’d love to challenge you to create at least one location independent income stream. It could be anything, some members in our community have Amazon businesses, others are renting out rooms/units in their primary residences, others are lending using their personal funds or SDIRA. These are all examples of location-independent income streams but there are more. If you already own rentals, look at increasing the money that your rentals make.
We’d love to hear your success with this challenge, so make sure to email us at hello@agentsinvest.com or share in our private Facebook group.
Now that we’ve gotten your wheels turning about creating location independent income streams, next week, we’ll talk about some ideas on how to not run out of capital!
