0:02
This is the digital nomad quest podcast with Sharon Tseung. teaching people how to build passive income, become financially free and design the best lives. Hey guys, it’s Sharon from digital nomad quest and

0:17
the show’s over the Rei

0:18
and today we’re going to talk about why it’s important to have multiple streams of income. Now if you’re new to the channel, welcome, I’m all about teaching how to build passive income, become financially free and design your best lives. So make sure to subscribe if you guys are interested in that. Make sure to subscribe to Sean’s channel he’s all about talking about real estate investment so today we’re gonna have just like a normal conversation around why it’s important in this day and age especially because of the pandemic the Coronavirus stuff going on. We’ve all been on lockdown so far and it’s been week two in quarantine kind of boring, but a lot of people are losing jobs having financial difficulty right now. It’s a scary time to be honest. You know, like a lot of people can’t go to their office now. They can’t actually go do work. So a lot of people are laying off people. It’s just a it’s just crazy right now. Also stock markets tanking what other crazy things are happening right now?

1:08
I mean, basically, yeah, obviously, there’s a lot of fear about going out in the first place. So even though there are a lot of restaurants are open, some people aren’t going out to eat because we’re scared. So yeah, a lot of these are hurting and like people are getting let go, not just permanently, but some people are on the economic kind of furlough where you just aren’t getting paid, but you’re still with the company. So at least you have your benefits. And there’s obviously liquidity issues. So a lot of the banks aren’t giving out loans. So basically, a lot of their money is tied up in illiquid assets, and they have no way to access their capital. So you know, they need money to pay off all their debt. They don’t have it. So they’re going through some struggles there too.

1:45
Yeah, it’s crazy times and I know people with friends who like literally all of them are laid off and it’s not as common in the Bay Area because we all have like tech jobs most of us but you know, I can see like movie theaters are not open now. Even just Like at my current job, we’re looking at TV commercials that we want to do for a work but like the inventory is actually really cheap because a lot of restaurants and businesses pulled out from doing TV commercials because they don’t want to advertise at this time. Right? So a lot of people are losing jobs. It’s a It’s a crazy time. And that’s why I think it’s important to talk about this because this is like exact proof why I believe in diversifying and this is exactly just everything I believe in that like we need to start looking into other opportunities, other passive income streams, remote work and ways to make money so that you know, you’re not tied down to a job, you’re not forced to anything you can design your lives actually. So I really truly believe that we can design our lives we can create opportunities for ourselves if we just educate ourselves in different ways of making income. So in this video, I want to talk more about like how we can prepare for the next crisis as well as like right now what we can do to make money and lower expenses and stuff like that. So number one, I wanted to talk about Stocks actually right now it’s tanking. So, you know, what are your thoughts around stock investment? Like, is it a good thing? Is that a bad thing? What do you think? Well,

3:07
obviously we’re going some crazy times right now the stock market went down about 30% from its peak of about a month ago. You know, it is scary and all people do want to pull back from the stock market. But to me, it’s not that bad. So right now we’re going through the Coronavirus, it’s 2020. And the stock market has taken the 30% cut recently. But you also have to remember that this cut is from its all time high of like 3400 per share the s&p 500, which was you know, from like last month, but you know, it is scary. But if you look back on like a grad chart line, we’re basically out where we were two years ago back in like September 2018, where we also had a little correction, people think that it’s not good to be in the stock market. But for me, this is a long term play, you need to put your money in there and then forget about it, because over time, we’re going to be able to see that increase back again. And I mean, maybe in 10 or 20 years, s&p 500 might be at $10,000. We have no idea and it’s just it’s a possibility.

3:59
Yeah. So I think definitely think it’s a long term play I think you can still focus on day trading and stuff if you like like are really educated in it but if you don’t have time to do that type of stuff I do suggest putting some money in the stock market I believe in diversifying those so I don’t believe in dumping like all your, you know, money into the stocks because this time if you had all your money tied up in the stock market, and then it’s tanking, yeah, it’s not it’s not the best way. So currently, I just have part of my money in the stock market and I’m just leaving it there as a long term play. I’m not you know, I’m not cashing it out or anything like that. So I’m just leaving it there. So I’m doing it kind of safely, where I have that money there. I have some money in you know, real estate investment. And then I also have some savings for myself that I also put into my passive income businesses. So having multiple areas where I put my money in it just makes it a lot safer. So I mentioned real estate investment and you know, he is an expert in real estate investing. So let’s talk about the effects of the Coronavirus and stuff like that on the real estate market and kind of how you would prepare for these types of things like is it even a bad thing? has it affected the real estate markets? Yeah,

5:04
for the real estate market is actually been very hard to get loans on properties. And I’m not talking about the loans from like big banks like Chase and Wells Fargo who end up selling to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, I’m talking about hard money lenders. So investors actually buy properties and try to buy for cheap in order to fix and flip. It’s very hard to get financing right now. So I think a lot of investors are trying to stay away from buying properties. Right now. home buyers and sellers are both scared to move in the market right now to home sellers wanna put their home on the market right now. They don’t want people to come to the home while the quarantine is going on, obviously. So they’re doing all of these virtual tours and buyers don’t want to buy homes now either because they want to see where the market goes over the next few weeks. Now in terms of buy and hold investments, it’s still a good time to buy and hold but problem is a lot of people who rent our properties are like blue collar workers. And just like we mentioned, the might not have their job so they might not be able to pay rent and when it comes down to feeding your kid for a month or paying your rent, but there are some things called a like mortgage forbearance, which means that you can Call your mortgage lender and tell them hey, I’m being affected economically because of this issue. Can we work something out where I don’t need to make my payments for a mortgage for a month or two? While things shake out? I haven’t done yet myself, I don’t have a lot of experience. But there are some talks about this. And almost every level of real estate is trying to do some kind of forbearance. That’s like the big word right now everyone from the single family property owner to large apartment complexes to Reed’s which are giant funds that own multiple multiple apartments. They’re all calling their lenders and saying, Hey, we may not be able to make payments. What can we do? Let’s work something out.

6:31
Yeah, so I think right now, you know, people are scared but like, especially when it starts lifting it’s gonna go crazy. Right? So what stocks and real estate people are all gonna get back into it. I I think that right. So yeah,

6:43
right now, a lot of people are losing their jobs. Yeah, for sure. Especially those who work in like service industry, like restaurants stuff, but when this is over, you know, I’m planning going to restaurants. I’m planning on going to movie theaters. I’m excited to go back outside. I’m like pent up in here. So they’re definitely going to have their business back up. But the question is, can you survive until this thing’s over. I think most restaurants and businesses can survive for three weeks, which is what our shelter in place situation is here. But worth it stretches out to the summer.

7:09
Yeah, we have no idea how long this is going to go for. So when we go back to stocks and real estate, I think stocks are probably going to keep dipping until you know, you see like a little uplift and hope but like that quote, you know, Warren Buffett says, be greedy when people are fearful, right and then be fearful when people are greedy. So I feel like kind of evaluating that psychology and seeing how people are feeling is good for investing and investing into stocks and real estate when people are, you know, more scared and then kind of going into that turn of like, Whoa, that’s like that inflection point is a great like time to start buying. So I think that’s a good way to prepare of like, you know, putting some of your money into both of these things at you know, the right time. And also your point about kind of buying holds depends on your tenants like if they’re blue collar workers or not and whatever. It’s like a good idea to evaluate the public. Population growth and like the percentage of renters versus owners as well as like the demographics of your tenants to kind of see if your rental property can withstand these types of like hardships. So let’s get into passive income businesses which is like my favorite. So you know my whole thing when I left as a digital nomad to build a passive income businesses, I thought it was like a financially sound decision. Whereas like a lot of people thought I was being risky with my family finances by like leaving and traveling while I was, you know, doing whatever, but ultimately, I thought it was smart because first of all, like the bear is super expensive to live in, like just the US in general is a lot more expensive than a lot of other places in the world. So I was, you know, kind of using geographic arbitrage to my advantage where I was making sure my expenses are lower by traveling to cheaper countries while I was building my businesses. So by doing that, I was able to kind of build a lot of different income streams with like Etsy, Amazon affiliate marketing, like a lot of different ways where now if I didn’t have a full time job, or what Ever, like I’m good, I’m saying that was my whole goal of kind of removing financial restrictions in order to kind of design my life and be able to do kind of whatever I want without having to worry about my financial health. So I’m all about financial freedom. And I think we both agree that diversification is like really important. So we’re both pursuing not just like investments, but also our own online businesses. Like with him, he’s doing his own podcasts and YouTube stuff. And we’re kind of creating courses and stuff like that. So we have multiple income streams that we’re trying to do so that we are safe in these types of hardships.

9:33
Yeah. Because I mean, this is gonna happen again, somewhere down the line, something’s gonna happen. And you should just be prepared to deal with this kind of situation where you lose one main stream of income. And you’re right here in the Bay Area. It’s extremely expensive to live here. One room furnished, it’s probably 1500 bucks a month. How much do you pay for your whole place in Chiang Mai?

9:50
It’s not even just I think I paid like 150 bucks a month for that place like yeah, and so that’s like, divided by 10. Like I was like, solo. I paid 600 a month for everything like entertainment, food, travel accommodations, like everything. So you know, you can save a lot just being elsewhere. And you can find other ways to save that too, right? So we do this thing called house hacking when it comes to real estate. So I personally just live at home, but like, my parents want me to live at home. So it’s like all good with you. You’re doing some thing where you’re kind of like running out rooms and stuff. Right? Do you want to talk a little bit about that?

10:25
Yeah. So for those of you who don’t know, house hacking is basically when you have the whole place to yourself. And instead of just living in a whole house, you rent out every room, room by room. And basically, when I moved up from Los Angeles to Northern California, a lot of my friends in LA were also needing a place to stay in NorCal. So I said, Hey, just rent out my rooms and their rents pay for my mortgage, and my insurance and my property taxes. So basically, my personal cost of living is almost zero.

10:48
Yep. So I think it’s really important to not only have multiple income streams, but also reduce expenses. So let’s get into kind of the things you can do now to prepare yourself in the future as well as right now. Like how you can improve your financial situation. So I really think even though you’re stuck at home, there are ways to build up your income streams, reduce your expenses so that you’re not in that state of like oh my god, I don’t know how to like if this goes on for a few months like I don’t know how I can handle it, there are ways to make it so that it can work for you. So let’s talk about different things we can do. First of all, I think it’s important to get educated right so it’s important to join you know, Facebook groups start by you know, watching our channels and listening to podcasts about different ways you can make money so I’ve talked about it a lot in other videos, but you know, I mentioned selling digital downloads on Etsy selling shirt designs on merch by Amazon, you can do Fulfillment by Amazon where you’re shipping products from China, which is probably not a good idea right now. But like you could do that and then like have Amazon warehouse to fulfill your orders for you. You can create a blog and create a YouTube channel. You can create a podcast where you do affiliate marketing, you can sell your own courses, you can sell your own products and stuff like that. So there are different ways that Especially if you build a brand There are many ways to monetize that. I’m just listing a few different ways. Do you have any other things in mind as well?

12:06
So right now, especially on the real estate side, not gonna lie, it’s very scary probably wouldn’t get into any new investments. If you’re a brand new investor take this time to really learn there are so many different types of real estate investing strategies that you should find out what works best for you and then learn more and find those people who are really good at that and connect with them through like online meetups and whatnot.

12:25
Yeah, you know, when when I mentioned earlier about like buying when people are scared doesn’t mean like buy completely now when people are still gonna be scared and cases of Coronavirus are like exponentially increasing definitely look for that inflection point where you where you see some hope and you see that like maybe cases are towing or something like that, where it just feels more safe to like go into it. So do you agree with that?

12:49
Yeah, I mean, obviously, you’re going to get the best deal if you buy at the absolute bottom, but think about this too. It’s hard to get financing during the absolute bottom, like no one’s gonna want to give you money for those deals, and You don’t know if it’s gonna keep going down or not right. It’s called catching a falling knife.

13:03
Yeah, I mean, the best thing to do right now probably is just to stay educated and kind of updated on like current news as well as current news around the real estate market and the stock market and then back to the sides passive income businesses. We also talked about lowering expenses, some things we can do right now, I mentioned you know, in other videos where you have like cashback apps and like receipt, scanning apps, and all these things that they help you actually make money back from your purchases. A lot of people do stuff like couponing where you can basically you can collect a lot of coupons or you’re getting a lot of inventory for free or I’m actually amazed by it. I know you’re like whatever about this, but it’s funny because you know, Ryan Scribner, he actually does couponing and like think about all the couponers who have piled up a bunch of like Tori where now like they’re good, where they don’t have to worry about going to the grocery store all the time to collect stuff. It’s like they have figured out a way where they they reduce their expenses so much that they don’t need to buy like sanity. And like food and stuff like that they’ve already figured it out. So there are ways where you can reduce your expenses. And I’m super amazed by that, you know, like people think it’s hard to save up, they’re living paycheck to paycheck, but no, like, there’s ways where you can save on these things.

14:14
I’m gonna disagree with you right there because I think that, you know, the cashback apps are cool, but in reality, you only get a couple cents per thing. At the other day, you might make five bucks, alright, whatever coupon into couponing takes a lot of time and they just taking so much supply for no reason. They just like keep them in their house as like trophies, in my opinion is better to get better habits. So there’s something called hedonistic adaption, where as your income increases, you start getting more and more luxurious things. So you’re in college, you’re poor, you live in a crappy apartment, you have a gross car, and then you get your first job and you start getting more money. Now you have a nice car, right? You get a nice apartment, stuff like that. So I think it’s better to look at what you’re spending and start cutting out things that aren’t really important to you. One thing that we’ve been doing recently is we’ve been cooking a lot and surprise, surprise cooking actually saves you a lot of money because instead of Going out and eating 10 $15 meals for lunch and dinner. Boom, now you’re eating spaghetti meals cheaper and healthier too.

15:06
Yes, definitely true. I think we’ve mentioned a lot of different ways like a lot of different ideas that hopefully spark your brain to start thinking of ways to reduce expenses and diversify your income streams. So I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Please make sure to rate review and subscribe. It really helps our podcast grow. And thanks again. I’ll see you guys in the next one.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai