In our sixth interview series, I conducted a Personal Finance Interview with Anthony of Fiscally Sound. We will hit on a number of topics including debt reduction, passive income, personal finance influences and more. You can find the link to the others here.

Beginner Passive Income: An Interview with Fiscally Sound

I interviewed Anthony at Fiscally Sound to get his take on side hustles, passive income and financial independence. I learned a lot just like I did in other personal finance interviews I conducted with top money bloggers. I’ve interviewed people that have a lot of different approaches to achieving financial freedom.

For example, I interviewed Spills Spot and he is much more oriented at building wealth slowly. Or, Vital Dollar’s approach to building wealth through businesses. He’s sold over $700,000 worth of websites over the years. I loved my interview with Vital Dollar.

What is Beginner Passive Income?

I’ve seen far too many people try to do complex passive income strategies before really having a base of solid income sources. Stick to beginner passive income strategies before moving onto risky passive income.

Things, like hosting on Airbnb or using Drop to earn cashback rewards, are simple enough that if you continue to use them, they will add up significantly over time. Use my Drop link and you get $5 just for signing up.

Once you set up these seamless passive income opportunities, you can move onto things like a Kindle ebook. Kindle books take much more effort and entail a lot of marketing and research. I created an ebook to help people invest for passive income and achieve financial freedom in 5 easy steps.

The book is called Dividend Investing Your Way to Financial Freedom. This book allows for you to invest your side hustle income to receive more income through dividend investing. I created the book to help you learn. Read more about why I created my dividend investing book.

The main point is to stick with the basics for passive income before testing more complex strategies:

1. Manage your money for free with Personal Capital.
2. Stick to 3-4 passive income strategies that are simple and completely stress-free.
3. Master those beginner passive income opportunities.
4. Use the proceeds from these beginner passive income strategies to move to more complex passive income opportunities.
5. Continue to invest and repay debt at a faster rate.

Beginner Passive Income Interview Questions with Fiscally Sound

Let’s dive into our interview questions with Fiscally Sound, so you can learn passive income 101 and his approach to building wealth.

What is the one piece of advice that you’d give to people just realizing that they need to get their ‘financial fitness’ in order?

Create a budget that you can stick to and make sure that short term and long term savings are a part of it. Secondly, always be looking for ways to optimize your budget by reducing expenses and increasing income with the goal of increasing your savings allocation.

Why Fiscally Sound? What do you hope to accomplish in the near-term and the long-term to gain financial independence?

I started this blog because I have worked in the financial services industry in many capacities and I have a passion to see consumers empowered to win in their finances. Short term, my wife and I are on own own journey to kill our debt including our mortgage. Long term, I look forward to building a real estate portfolio to create my retirement cash flow. I have found this more practical than the “$1,000,000 nest egg” methodology.

What are your favorite forms of passive income?

Although it often gets a bad rap, I am actually a proponent of network marketing as a means of building passive income. The reason is that it’s accessible to nearly everyone. That doesn’t mean it is easy, but if you align with the right company and great product or service and treat it like a business, it will pay you like one.

Secondly, would be building a niche industry blog. They take time to build but can provide residual income in the form of ad & affiliate revenue.

What is your definition of being ‘fiscally sound’?

To me fiscally sound means that you have a plan for your finances and you are living intentionally with your money (i.e. earning more than you spend and saving/investing wisely). It means you know what your priorities are based on your financial goals (i.e. not just living for today) and you have a retirement plan that you are working towards; one that will allow you to enjoy your post-work years, and ideally one where you can retire earlier than most.

What have you learned from creating passive income streams? Do you like to take your side income and recycle it into new opportunities?

I have been a side hustler all of my life and I have learned lots of business, sales, and marketing skills on my journey. I was fortunate to learn digital marketing very early on (the late 90’s) and that was my side hustle that grew into a digital marketing agency that I built with two friends until I sold my interest to them.

After selling my interest in the business, I built a business in the mortgage sector which included having a passive income from a lead gen business that I built. This is where my passion for consumer financial education grew and based on that passion, I wrote my first book, The Bankruptcy Mortgage Book, which was a guide to help people rebuild their credit after a bankruptcy to qualify for a home mortgage.

Regarding side income, I read something today from Jay Leno. He said “I had two jobs because I realized that was the quickest way to become a millionaire” and discussed how when he was coming up as a comedian, he had a day job and would spend the money he made as a comedian and save the money from his day job working at a car dealership until his comedian income was exponentially more than his day job income. That’s my philosophy; I am more inclined to save and invest my side hustle income.

Watch it here. 

Do you have any mentors or people that you follow that have influenced you to be financially independent?

Yes, many. One would be Nelson Nash, for helping me see life insurance in a different light and as a part of a retirement strategy.

What is your favorite way to attack personal debt?

I am a fan of the debt snowball, accelerated by side hustles.

What inspired you to create your site? What’s one thing that you didn’t know that you know now?

Having a background as a digital marketer, I knew it was a great way to share my message. I didn’t know I would meet so many amazing like-minded people on my journey, but I am now a part of a few communities with like-minded personal finance educators.

What are some things that you wish you would have done as a young professional if you knew what you know now?

I wish I would have never cashed out 401k’s when I was younger saying “I’ve got time to put money away for retirement” (yes, I did this more than once). When you are single and making lots of money, you tend to think you are invincible and that your level of income will always be there or continue to increase.

Many of us learned that this wasn’t true after the last big real estate crash (and that’s when I got out of the mortgage business and lost those big paydays).

What is the last personal finance book you read?

Last October I read The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach on the flight home from FinCon where I got to meet David and hear him speak. It’s a great read and it motivated me to increase my savings and investing as well as automate more of it.

This should be required reading for college students who often don’t get enough practical financial education in school.

Conclusion on Beginner Passive Income Interview with Fiscally Sound

Increasing your income is key. If you can earn side hustle and passive income together, you can achieve financial independence much faster. Financial independence is important. Here’s why.

I think these beginner passive income opportunities are a great starting point for anyone striving for financial independence.

See Related Passive Income Resources:

• Our guide evaluating the best cashback apps
• Earn side hustle income with these freelance websites
• Our list of over 23 online jobs to help you increase your side hustle income

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