Realized passive income is a must with job loss
Have you ever thought of what happens to your life if you lose your job? Financing experts always advise people to have saving to sustain your life for 6 months as a minimum, and I think you shall follow this advice. However when I lost my job, I realized that building passive income is equally important with building your basic saving to shelter yourself from uncertainties that might catch you unexpectedly anytime.
Creating enough passive income to reach financial freedom is dream of many, including myself. I’ve been investing in shares on and off to create some passive income. But honestly, properly managing and growing my passive income had not been priority of my life (you know, so many things more appealing, entertainment, hand phone, TV shows etc.). And since graduated from university, I always had stable job, never thought that job loss would happen to me one day.
My background
Let’s talk about my background for a while. I had been working in oil and gas industry for nearly 10 years. Though I didn’t manage to climb my career quickly, my career path has been progressing steadily. In 2008 to 2009, I went through slump in oil price and back then there was massive retrenchment across the whole oil and gas industry. I was the lucky one able to keep my job, however it didn’t build my awareness about possibility of job loss in future.
Came into 2020, global demand of crude oil slumped due to coronavirus outbreak, massive wave of retrenchment struck oil and gas industry again. Unfortunately, in June 2020, company informed that my hire contract would be terminated as the project I was working on had been put on hold by customer. I was not prepared for this at all, and it forced me to start reviewing my passive income profile.
Speaking of passive income, I have to talk about my father. If following terminology in the famous book “Rich Dad and Poor Dad”, my father may be classified as “semi-rich dad”. With combination of active and passive income, my father was able to raise five kids up and even paid for our university tuition fees. After graduating from university, my father forced us to invest in an apartment to have some passive rental income. In addition, our savings from day job were passed to my father to invest in shares. As a result, I have a little bit of passive income now. Although it is not enough to fully pay for my month bills for a family of three, it is a big relief to my burden when I lost my job. The reason I described my father as “semi-rich dad” is, as his children we always know about power of investment and passive income since younger age, however we never really taught about importance of building passive income and the role it can play in your life. Despite this, I am so grateful to have my father as he made me started to understand basic concept of investment much earlier than many other families.
Trigger to start my own blog
Unemployment hit me badly and meanwhile made me to realize that creating and managing passive income is a must-do to live the life I want. As a starting point, I decided to start my own blog to share my journey of investment and creating passive income. Of course, I would be very happy if my blogs can be one of my sources of income someday. I also hope this blog can bring useful information and inspiration to interested readers, and all of us can grow together to reach our goal of being financial independent.