Have You Reached Your 7 Streams of Income for FIRE?

Many successful advocates of the various FIRE strategies will recommend having multiple streams of income.  This can help to expedite the growth of your portfolio and hence push forward your plan for FIRE, and also act as a buffer to protect your portfolio against market volatility.  Just a quick search online will yield findings that show many financial Youtubers and bloggers talk about having 7 streams of income to become a millionaire.  I do not know why 7 seems to be the magic number, but I know I am far from that (both having 7 streams and becoming a millionaire).  Hereby, I shall disclose how many streams of income I have managed to built to date.

1)    Active Income from Tuition

I am a full-time private tutor, and has been tutoring full time since 2010.  I was initially working for a Tuition Centre, where I learn how to deliver lessons in a way that students can understand better.  In 2015, I left the Centre and became self-employed till now.  I have no annual leave, no bonus, no sick leave, no employer's CPF contribution. In the eyes of others, what I have in exchange is freedom, more time for myself, and flexibility in working hours, which in fact, is just simply, no work, no income.  I just need to work hard to try to maintain my annual income, and I contribute faithfully to my CPF accounts monthly (I actually contribute 37%, to boost my CPF with both “employee and employer” contributions). On an average estimate, this is still the main stream of my income, taking up 63.1%.

2)    Rental Income from Overseas Properties

As a Malaysian working in Singapore, I have the opportunity to purchase property in Malaysia and not be bothered by the declining property value or the depreciating Malaysia Ringgit (MYR) against the Singapore Dollar (SGD), especially when MYR has depreciated by 4% year to date (see why I am staying positive here).  This is because I believe in future, I will return to Malaysia for my semi-retirement or full retirement, thus the property will serve as my future retirement home.  At the mean time, the property can be rented out to collect some rental to offset my mortgage payments.  It is a norm to get a property in Malaysia where the rental is unable to cover the mortgage payments (Yes, its negative cash-flow and not recommended as pure investment).  Thus more work will be required on my part to slowly improve the rental or pay down mortgage to make it cash-flow positive.  Currently on average, this income stream is 19.6% of my total income.

3)    Dividend Income from SGX Shares

After accumulating shares in SGX and reinvesting any collected dividends since 2018, I am happy that I am able to collect an annual dividends of more than SGD 15K.  My Dividend Portfolio is concentrated on REITs, Banks and ST Engineering, which, to date, is still providing me with consistent and stable passive dividend income.  Nonetheless, I will need remain vigilant and make sure the companies I invested in remains financially stable.  For now, the dividends take up approximately 17.2% of total income.

4)    Royalty Income from Sale of Assessment Book and Notes

This component has come a long way.  Being a full time chemistry tutor, there's a need for me to come up with notes for international chemistry students doing the International Baccalaureate (IB) syllabus, as the school do not provide comprehensive notes for the students.  After completing the notes in 2016, I played with the thoughts of finding a publisher to help me publish this as an assessment book.  After a long search, I found a publisher who is willing to help me publish the book.  However, in the midst of negotiations, there were some hiccups that lead to the halt of the publishing process.  Fast-forward to mid-2021, in a surprising twist of events, I receive an email from the publisher who asked me to vet through the draft for my book.  That eventually leads to the publishing of the assessment book in January 2022.  The book sales have been slow (available in Popular Bookstore, and also available online at Shopee, Lazada and Qoo10), so I will just hope that the sales will improve with time.  

In addition, I am also in the midst of crafting out concise study notes and practice questions for O Level/ IGCSE Chemistry.  It is available on Gumroad topically (Chemical Bonding, Acids, Bases and Salts and Electrochemistry for now), so students can choose to get what they need at an affordable cost.  For now, the income derived from the sales is negligible at less than 1%.

5)     Google Adsense

I started this blog in March 2022 as a journal for my investing journey, with the aim to pen down my thoughts and perspectives on personal financial matters, and also the fun and joys I enjoyed in trips.  I tried to update my blog with a new post every Friday, and also tried to apply for Google Adsense at the meantime.  I suppose it's because the blog was too new, Google was unable to approve my application for Adsense till end of July, where it finally got approved, after the total views of the blog passed the 10K mark!  That is definitely a very motivating and encouraging moment for me.  A big thank you to everyone who dropped by to read my blog post for the past 6 months, and sorry for spamming facebook groups like Seedly every Friday, in a bid to draw readers to my blog.  Thank you everyone for making this possible for me.  Do continue to support this blog by clicking on ads!  For now, the income derived from Adsense is negligible at less than 1% as well.

6)     CPF Life

After I passed the age of 65 (hopefully policies do not change), I will get an additional constant and stable stream of income from CPF Life.  I just hope I can hit Basic Retirement Sum (BRS) by 55, so probably receiving a minimum amount of SGD 750.00.  But that will not happen till 20 odd years later, so that's 0% for now. 

That's all folks, that's my 5 streams of income currently (6 in future, and 2 are negligible for now). Although it is still far from the 7 streams of income for a comfortable FIRE, it is a small step forward for me.  With time, as my portfolio grows, I hope dividend income can gradually take up a larger percentage of my income, so that I can slowly transit to Barista FIRE with ease. With the gradual diminishing of the effects of Covid, I also hope that the rental market in Malaysia can slowly improve, and hence the percentage of income from rental to increase slightly. Not forgetting, may the sales of my assessment book and the income from Google Adsense for this blog can slowly pick up, and may the combined income increase to above 1% of my total income.

Meanwhile, I will continue to blog my FIRE journey for my own learning, and if it could, help new investors in one way or another as well.  Just got to remind myself just continue to work hard and explore more alternatives, and at the same time, improve current cash-flow (not forgetting to play hard as well, with my "Vacay FIRE" in mind).  As always, Barista FIRE, here I come...!