LIVING OFF DIVIDENDS & PASSIVE INCOME

Congrats on your GMAT score! That’s awesome! I’ll be studying for the GMAT’s in a couple of years myself. Hope I can do that well.

CONGRATS!!! am from India. city Hyderabad. Which part are u visiting? Enjoy ur vacation.

I’ll worry about paying for school when I get admitted.

And after carrying so many mortgages, I’m de-sensitized by large loan amounts. I’ll just pretend I bought a house in the mid-west (a house that doesn’t provide any rental income).

Congratulations! Nice blog and very useful! I am Robert Kiyosaki fan to!

Congrats on your GMAT score! I plan to give the GMAT soon as well. Did you mean you solved 3 different GMAT books from Kaplan and 1 another book from Barrons? I thought Kaplan makes only 1 GMAT book. Please clarify. It will help me prepare for my GMAT exam. Also any other pointers on how to study for the GMAT are appreciated.

Here’s a list of Books To Help You Score a 700 On Your Gmat

Thanks for your feedback. My wife totally agrees with you. She said if I can’t at least get into USC (ranked 21 this time) I don’t deserve to get an MBA!!!

Hi Mikal,

I just solved a couple of books. Refer the link at the end of the post - that has all four of them.
I spent about 3-4 hours/day studying for around 3 weeks. Last week I spent around 8/hrs and the last two days was round the clock - mostly giving tests and seeing where I feel short.

I think the key was realizing that its better not to rush through the test. I spent several minutes on the first 2-3 questions making sure I got them correct. There was one question I spent 2 minutes on and I knew I didn’t have a clue so I randomly picked the middle score and went forward knowing that a few wrong questions don’t hurt your score.
If you practice the math enough you’ll realize there are a few short-cuts.

I had issues with critical reasoning and I practiced that and sentence correction in the verbal section. But I focused mainly on the math. I scored only 81% in math but 99% in verbal with an overall score of 97% so I guess most people score poor on verbal. You need to decide what your weakness is an attack that.

good luck.

Thanks and congrats again!

Thanks for the clarification, Nirav!

Your thoughts certainly make sense.

One advice I can give is: Make sure you have excellent recommendation letters from people that really know you and can point out all your strengths and some weaknesses.

A few of my friends went through the MBA admission process, and the difference between getting into a top tier school and not getting in appears to be in the quality of recommendation letters.

Some of my friends (who didn’t get into the top school) went for recommendation letters from individuals who had impressive titles (VPs, CTOs, etc), but who did not know them well enough, so their letters, while glowing were not personable enough and that made a difference.

A former co-worker or a lower level former boss who has really gotten to know you over the time might be a better choice.

Wish all the best luck!

I wholeheartedly agree with the Stanford guy. A top tier MBA opens up a world of opportunities for you. I got my MBA 4 years ago from Wharton and while it was expensive my first year after graduating I made about $250K and now I am making about $700k. A lot of my classmates are making much more. I’m in i-banking by the way. Besides the great job opportunities its the people you meet. You make a great network full of very successful people in very prominent positions all over the world. It works upstream as well, the top levels of the business world are mostly made up of people from a small community of schools. You carry it forever. The same goes if you want to start your own business. It won’t matter obviously if you plan to open a business installing air conditioners, but if you do something higher level, like start a hedge fund someday, or a tech company, private equity firm, etc. that network and the cachet of that top school’s name is a major help.

There is no doubt about it, a top tier MBA is worth way more than you pay for it. But if you can’t get into top tier I probably wouldn’t bother. I’d even say Top 10, not Top 20. But I may be biased because I work on Wall St. where most people went to a Top 5 (e.g. Harvard, Wharton, Columbia, Stanford, MIT are favorites).

First, a congratulations on the score and your accomplishment. It clearly is something that you are excited about. I would however, like to second Pavel’s comments. While no one will doubt the value of an investment into a top-tier MBA, Word Up seems to be missing the (original) point of this blog, namely a qualitative improvement in lifestyle. 50-60 hr work weeks and 2-3 weeks of vacation for 250K may be acceptable to most Americans (of which I am one), but that still classifies as the rat race, just as it does at 700K or higher, unless of course you love your job more than what you do with the other hours of your day.

My (unsolicited) advice here to you would be to do not give up the ideals that caused you to start this blog in the first place. Get your MBA and make a boat load of money for a few years and take no prisoners, do what you have to accumulate capital. But make a plan to get out of the race, using the strategies you’ve developed here. Even with 500-1000K of liquid assets, a passive income of 150-200K is relatively easy with a good head on your shoulders.

As it seems you haven’t quite been part of that race yet, the experience is certainly worth it, as will be the network of contacts you’ll make and the opportunities it will open. But make no mistake about it, people and institutions will quickly offer up gobs of money in exchange for major portions of your life. The Wall St folks have implicitly bought into this, it isn’t bad or good, it’s just a lifestyle choice. And once you’re in the paid more/buy more/paid more/buy more cycle, it’s very difficult to escape. And contrary to what you might hear, getting paid 500K for a job you loath can only last so long.

I wish you the best of luck, and regardless of the input, do not stop questioning your lifestyle:

- Is this how I want to spend my 30’s and 40’s
- Is my current lifestyle leaving me fulfilled, energized and empowered?
- Am I a better boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse/family member?
- Am I proud of what I am doing? (not what I am making)

Again, best of luck.

Phil

- About me: I’m a 36 yo supercomputing engineer/consultant. Since finishing my MS/CS in 98, I have run a small consulting business anchored by some minor positions at universities locally and abroad. I work about 30% of the year, spend 3-6 months traveling (I’m an avid explorer), educating myself further and working for non-profits. I always have time and money for things that are important to me. My annual after-tax income averages around 90K and I have an investment portfolio and properties (passive income!!) worth about 500K. I have lived in SFO, Stockholm, Delhi, Seattle, LA, Boston, Tennessee, Baltimore and Sri Lanka. (SFO is still my fave.)

Hi again, sorry for the delay. Being able to chase one’s dreams is a big part of fulfillment. If the dream is just of 400K, then the dream is empty. But your dream seems to be more than just that and that is excellent. As you said, you need to get this ‘out of your system’, which is another way of saying ‘I need to see if this is what will make me happy’. Most of us will be lucky to have such a strong message of a possible destiny. So for that, I say good luck and happy hunting.

My life is far from ideal. The fact is, that I still do something that I don’t enjoy for money. And even though it is a lot of money with tremendous freedom, at the end of the day, it is prostitution, there is no emotional or spiritual connection with the work. Those of different backgrounds and indeed, certain religions, might be quick to say, ‘well that’s why it’s called work’. That my friends, is the biggest cop-out of them all and truly is an injustice against the life we have been given. At 36, I am working hard to get back in to the many things I have enjoyed in the past, things I let go for various reasons, most of which were oriented about goals of ‘externally defined successes’. Making the change now is hard…it’s easier when your young. So, when you detect some passion for what your doing, be sure to chase it down and ‘get it into your system’, lest you become another high priced prostitute, trading hours, weeks, days and years of your life for someone elses dream or worse, endless accumulation of things to attempt to fill that gap inside. But we all know, money can’t make you happy, but it sure makes life easier! But as concerns for money abate, climbing to the top of that ‘actualization pyramid’ gets even harder.

All the best.

Phil