Quite a few readers asked me why I was looking for a job instead of investing full time. There are a few reasons to that.

• The wife is still studying. One of us needs to have a stable job [and health benefits].
• The investments I’ve made have seen mostly capital appreciation. There is very little cashflow thrown off at the end of the month. I need about 5 times that to live-off of [including health benefits].
• If I don’t spend my time at work, I’ll probably spend more time spending money. This means I’ll need even more money!
• Someone mentioned that if I spent my time doing what I loved, it wouldn’t feel like work. While there’s some truth to this, I haven’t figured out how to monetize the things I’d rather be doing. I used to love to program[which is what I currently do] but a few years ago I realized that programmers[& engineers in general] are underpaid for the headache they go through and are also under-appreciated. [Case in point, a CPU which costs years to develop and millions in research costs less than a fancy birthday cake]

What am I doing to boost my cashflow? Nothing right now. I haven’t found a single investment generates a good Cash-on-cash return. I’ve looked at some apartment buildings and found the sellers were just lying about the numbers.

I think I’ll be looking at oil wells for cashflow.[This is not the deal I’m currently invovled in but other companies that raise money from private individuals.] The returns are between 30% and 80% a year. [Of course, theres a 30% risk of hitting a dry well and losing your investment]. However there are some companies that will spread your investments over 20 or more wells, thereby reducing your risk significantly. Of course, these investments have higher barriers to entry.[usually 50k-100k]. I’m still doing my research but I think I’ll be ready to invest in one of these in a few months. I’ll probably form an LLC and get 5 other partners which will reduce our risk further.

Also, I read this article yesterday about people in other countries are living well off of Google’s adsense program. Some dude in India is making $1,000/mo off it and its funding his graduate studies. Stories like this give me hope! Initially I put ads on this blog to see if I could figure out how it works. I’ve found out that some people make a really good living off them. They make niche website with tons of canned content and put up ads which pay them hefty returns.

I read the article yesterday and thought I should put more effort into monetizing my blog. Co-incidently, 2 companies contacted me today about sponsoring my blog! The money is insignificant so far, but I’m learning how to monetize my blog writing skills!