Active income before passive. The best "safe" passive investments might net you 10% annual returns, at best, if you're as good as Warren Buffett and in a stron

Active income before passive. The best "safe" passive investments might net you 10% annual returns, at best, if you're as good as Warren Buffett and in a strong economy. The effort of picking those investments is pretty high though, and could well be 40 hours/week. Most other higher returning ones are gambles. If you have $1000, you'll can expect to get back $1100. Can you invest that $1000 into your career to make more than a $1100 salary increase? Books, classes, networking? Then the next level is buying time - dishwashers, not having to use coupons, etc. At some point, you can't just invest enough money in yourself and that's when you look into passive income. Businesses are generally not passive income, they're just a higher cap of active income.