Learn
The income library
Every way a person can earn passive income, one page at a time: what it is, who pays you, out of what, what it costs, how it is taxed, and how it goes wrong.
There are only six ways money reaches a passive investor: interest from lending, distributions from ownership, rent for the use of an asset, royalties on rights, premium for selling an option, and profits from a business someone else runs. Every product below is one of those six wearing a costume. The six-lesson course walks through them in order.
How the library is organised, and where to start. The numbered cards below are categories of investment: one per way the cash can reach you. Inside each is a page per income type, and every page answers the same questions in the same order: what it is, who pays you, out of what, what it costs to hold, how it is taxed in the US, and how it stops. The reference section further down is not another category; it defines the words the rest of the library uses, so it is worth opening when a term gets in the way rather than reading front to back. If you do not know which category you want, start from the mechanism above that matches how you would like to be paid (lending money out, owning a slice of something, renting something out) and open the category that pays that way.
The twelve categories of income
Grouped by how the cash actually reaches you. Every one of these is a way to invest for income.
Interest-producing investments
You lend money and receive interest: from a bank deposit all the way out to a private note. 15 topics.
Dividend & distribution investments
You own a slice of a business or fund, and it pays out part of the profits. 13 topics.
Real estate income
Someone pays you for the use of property you own, directly, or through a fund. 25 topics.
Business ownership income
You own part of an operating company that somebody else runs day to day. 12 topics.
Royalty & intellectual-property income
You own rights to something, and users pay you each time they use it. 14 topics.
Digital-asset & online-business income
Assets you build online that keep earning after the work is done, with maintenance. 14 topics.
Options-based income
You sell someone the right to buy or sell at a set price, and keep the premium. 8 topics.
Commodity & natural-resource income
Income from land, energy and resources: royalties, leases and production payments. 10 topics.
Leasing income
You own a physical asset and lease it to an operator who puts it to work. 10 topics.
Annuity & insurance-based income
You hand an insurer capital and it contracts to pay you an income stream. 7 topics.
Structured & alternative-income investments
Engineered income: contracts, pooled credit and cash flows packaged into a security. 14 topics.
Retirement-account income strategies
Not investments: the tax wrappers that decide how much of the income you keep. 7 topics.
Reference: concepts and terms
Not an income category; the vocabulary the rest of the site uses, and how each number misleads.
Income concepts and terms
The vocabulary the rest of the site uses: what each number means, how it is calculated, and how it misleads.
Browse →Good places to start
The topics most people arrive looking for.
Business Development Companies (BDCs)
A listed company that lends to mid-sized private businesses and must pay out almost all of the interest it collects, so the yield is high and the credit risk is yours.
Read →Certificates of Deposit
A time deposit: you agree to leave money at a bank for a fixed term, and the bank fixes the interest rate for that whole term.
Read →Covered Calls
You own at least 100 shares of a stock and sell someone the right to buy them from you at a fixed strike price; the buyer's premium is credited to your account immediately.
Read →Dividend-Paying Common Stocks
Shares in a company whose board chooses to hand some of the profits back to shareholders in cash, usually every quarter.
Read →High-Yield Savings Accounts
A bank or credit-union deposit account that pays interest on idle cash at a rate the bank can change on any given day.
Read →Music Royalties
A song generates several separate payment streams (performance, mechanical, synchronisation and digital-performance), each collected by a different organisation and split between different owners.
Read →Real Estate Syndications
A sponsor buys a property with money pooled from passive investors; you own a limited-partner slice and receive distributions without touching the building.
Read →Triple-Net Lease Properties
A single tenant on a long lease pays the rent and also the taxes, insurance and maintenance, leaving the landlord with something close to a coupon.
Read →Then put numbers on it
The library explains the mechanism; the calculators do the arithmetic for your own figures.
- Cash rates : what savings, money market accounts, CDs and T-bills pay right now
- Dividend stocks : yields, payout safety and growth records across US payers
- Bonds : the Treasury curve, corporate and high-yield index yields, bond funds
- Options income : covered calls and cash-secured puts, and what they really cost
- Private credit : BDCs, direct lending and hard-money loans