I’m Not Done With Medium and Residual Income Yet

I just need to figure out what is going to work for me and my goals!

Wow, last month I really let things slide….

On this account (the Medium account I’ll republish this on), I published one article. On my other (Medium) account, I published one article — basically to say I wasn’t going to be publishing for a while. Yet, I still made $45–50 between the two accounts. About $12-ish was from referrals.

Yet, I don’t want to give up on writing for Medium. I’d love to see this become a big money generator. But I don’t have a lot of faith that it will because it seems like in order to make decent money you have to be super consistent,, publishing at least once a day. I know some that publish twice a day. 

And I just don’t have time for that if I want to work a regular job five days a week and maintain any kind of life off the computer.

Sigh. It’s something I’ve struggled with all my life. I want to make a living working purely for myself but I can’t quit my EDJ (tried that, went into debt) and I can’t find a way to maintain consistency if I’m working a day job. I know some manage to do it but it doesn’t work for me.

I do still think about trying to find a way to get back to working from home full time. And I love the idea of it. But when it comes right downn to it, I want a sure thing. I want to know that the time I am investing in working is going to result in a certain amount of money. And unless I chose to work for clients again (and if you read any of my past articles, you’ll know that didn’t work for me either because with my ADHD, I can’t do anything that isn’t interest based; therefore, asking me to write 10 articles on human resources strategies or something like that is not going to happen; I’ll procrastinate, be late delivering, and the client will not be happy and I won’t be happy), there’s not going to be any promise of how much I will earn.

I don’t know if there’s an answer for all my questions and my situation. All I do know is this…

I want to retire (or semi-retire) by the time I’m 60. That’s in 8 years.

In order to do that, I need to:

1. Pay off my credit card debt (making progress and hoping to be done that by the end of the year).
2. Get my property taxes up-to-date (I’m behind but not horrifically so and should be able to get that dealt with by the end of the year, too)
3. Get my personal/business taxes dealt with (my late husband would be so annoyed with me because he was a money man, but I’m two years behind and it’s driving me crazy but I keep avoiding it because I’m two years behind and I know I’m going to owe money but I’m determined to deal with it in 2023 before the deadline for the 2022 taxes are due).
4. Pay off my car loan early to decrease my interest and also so I have that much more disposable income.
5. Take all the money that I was using to pay off credit cards and the car payment and start putting it towards the house.

If I keep up with that plan, I will have no debt, no car payment, and no mortgage payment by the time I’m 60.

I don’t want to start getting my OAS (old-age-security) when I’m 60, even though I could, because I know that seriously decreases your monthly payments. So, the plan is to hold off on that until I’m 65.

Assuming that I am still living in my current city with my partner when I’m 60, I’ll be able to use a portion of the rental income I get from my house as income. Part of it will still go to house insurance and property tax. Probably a third of it.

I also have $300 of death benefit (a little more and by the time I’m 60 it will likely be closer to $350) and that’s something I can count on for the indefinite future.

So, let’s say that gives me about $1000 a month.

Obviously, I need more than that to live on…

So, in order to semi-retire when I’m 60 (at least from waitressing and working an EDJ) I need more income. Or I need savings.

Could I build up enough residual income to live off of before then? Maybe adding in some writing for myself via Medium/Amazon/other ebook retailers? Maybe Constant Content, HubPages, a blog?

I know it’s possible but…could I do it? 

Here’s the thing…

I know I’m never going to have a niche. Not one niche, that’s for sure. My attention span is still to scattered to do ONE thing. Write about ONE thing. Not going to happen.

I have to have variety.

I’m thinking, maybe over the rest of this year, I need to collect my interests until I have enough content to keep some kind of consistency going.

Maybe I need to write twenty articles about writing and publish them here, once or twice a week; write twenty smexy stories and publish them on my other account once or twice a week; write twenty short stories and publish them on Amazon once a week or every other week.

Then, while the other stuff is publishing I could write more of those things and by the time the other content is finished publishing, I’ll have more content ready to set up.

That might give me the freedom to work on whatever happens to be holding my interest at the moment and yet, build up some momentum.

It’s an idea, right?

Well, this had become a very long and rambly post about a bunch of stuff. What on earth am I going to title this? LOL.

Anyway, if you have some thoughts, highlight and comment. 

I’m not done with you yet Medium!