UNEarned Inc. is designed for people at any stage in their financial journey who wish to generate more passive income. What makes us unique is that we primarily focus on passive income you can build almost anywhere, with just your computer or mobile device. We don't promise the process will be quick, but the method allows you to generate income while you sleep. While we do provide resources on side hustles and ways to increase your income in the short term, the long game should always be focused on 100% passive income.
As a reminder, we are NOT financial advisors - Please read our disclaimer before proceeding if you have not already done so.
The roadmap by UNEarned Inc is fairly simple, but there are many road hazards along the way. Hence, why we created this site.
Use dividend stocks to form a strong foundation for your passive income portfolio; use growth stocks to grow your capital and siphon some gains over to dividend stocks when appropriate. As your portfolio and income grow, move into other passive investment vehicles for diversity such as equity and real estate crowdfunding, crypto, and even precious metals like gold and silver - all while doing this from almost anywhere in the world.
Open Brokerage Accounts: Investing in the stock market is the core of our passive income strategy. Why? Unless you wrote a hit Christmas song like Mariah Carey and collect royalty payments, dividend stocks are the most passive income strategy you will ever find. Dividend stock investing is so passive, that you if you had the unfortunate circumstance of dying in your sleep overnight, dividends would continue to hit your brokerage account every month, or every quarter, forever, until someone notified the broker that you had passed. Even then, dividends would continue to be paid and someone would have to assume ownership of this account.
However, depending your age, it is a very good idea to invest in growth stocks as well as dividend paying stocks to increase the rate of your capital appreciation. Companies like NVIDIA are incredible stocks to own, but they don't pay dividends, so you need to have an account for these types of stocks.
We recommend different accounts for growth stock investing, dividend investing (w/ DRIP), and even a dedicated options account if you plan on trading options. Visit our article on stock brokerages to get a list of accounts we have personally tried.
Establish HYSA Emergency Fund: I hate emergency funds!! Unfortunately, in today's world, the income from your regular 9-to-5 is more precarious than ever. The problem is that emergency funds have also grown larger because of inflation. It used to be 2-3 months of living expenses (not your take home pay, which should be higher) was enough. As you get older and have more expenses (think home mortgage, kids in college, etc.) your emergency needs from a job loss can soar. Today most people will agree you need 12 months of living expenses, which is a lot. Saving 12 months of expenses will take some time, and it's for this reason we feel Step 1 should be a quick win of getting into investing first. Step 1 will help your net worth start growing automatically while you build your emergency fund. There is also the ability to collect unemployment, which is somewhat of a buffer while you build your emergency fund. Go for the highest (and most reliable) high-yield savings account (HYSA) you can find (hopefully over 4% APY), which allows you to transfer to and from your main checking account with the least amount of friction. You don't want to wait 5 days to get your money if you need it. It also not a bad idea to have $500-$1,000 USD in cash somewhere in your house, that you can easily get to without going to a bank. In further steps we will talk about other non-banked assets like precious metals which are also good to invest in for these purposes of access to things of value that can be easily traded (think zombie apocalypse). We feel it is fine to go onto subsequent steps once you have at least a 3-month emergency fund built, but continue to set a portion aside for this fund. If it takes you 5 years to save a full year of living expenses, that's a lot of stock market gains you've missed out on.