Discovery of the Year: Passive Income Exists! and why I say so

Lo-o-o-o-o-ng road to Financial Freedom

Up until very recently, I thought that 4% return on your money was a GREAT deal.

In fact, I believed that anything better than 4% was most likely a SCAM.

Given this information, my freedom seemed practically-unattainable:

My financial freedom was THREE MILLION dollars away

3 million @ 4% = $120,000 / year = $10,000 / month

Imagine, how HAPPY I was when I learned that there are 

NUMEROUS LEGITIMATE WAYS

to make more than 4% on your money! 

How about 6%, 8%, 12%, 17 % or even 20+%?!?

With higher returns, the path to financial freedom is much shorter! 

For example, at 8% return, financial freedom is

1.5 million away:

1.5 million @ 8% = $120,000 / year = $10,000 / month 

Discovery of Private Exempt Market

During summer, I started investing in what is called private exempt market. I learned about this type of investing from a good friend, whom I met at a networking event about a year ago.

Investing means lending your money to someone who will use it to create value and pay you your money back with a profit.

You have to remember that investing can be risky - you can lose time, money, go through a load of stress, etc.

This is why there's a whole slew of regulation around investing in private exempt markets, which is in place to protect consumers (aka you and me) from making bad decisions and getting themselves into financial trouble.

Private market means all non-public businesses, from mom-and-pop-shops to huge private enterprises.

Exempt means that there are rules for investing into these private deals.

You have to meet one of the exemptions to qualify. 

These exemptions are governed by law. Their purpose is to protect the consumers from financial losses, which they can't withstand.

Up until a couple of years ago, only accredited investors were qualified to invest in private exempt market and private companies could not advertise investment opportunities to non-accredited investors.

Accredited investor is someone who meets at least one of the following criteria:

• Earns more than $200,000 per year before taxes
• Together with spouse, earns more than $300,000 
• Owns more than $1 million before taxes of financial assets but net of related liabilities
• Owns more than $5 million of net assets 

Needless to say, the whole concept of private exempt market was invisible / forbidden / unattainable to average middle class professionals because most of us don't qualify as an accredited investor, so we fall under the protected class.

I personally had no idea about these deals. Protection worked :)

The Good News!

The good news is - the legislation was updated and we now qualify and can learn about investing in private exempt market. 

Here is the recently added Eligible Investor exemptions:

1. Owns $400,000 or more net assets
2. Earns more than $75,000 per year before taxes 
3. Together with spouse, earns more than $125,000 

Lastly, there is one more exemption - Any Investor!

Legislation still protects us by setting the limits of how much Eligible and Any Investors can invest.

Yet, we all now have an opportunity to invest into many of the same deals that accredited investors have been investing into. And I bet, most accredited investors wouldn't be too thrilled investing into something like this, which I constantly see in my Facebook feed:

This is NOT a good deal.
Hope you aren't clicking on ads like this one...

My First Two Assets in Private Exempt Market

11% vs. 3.2% - Gets You There Faster!

I invested in two private exempt market deals so far. Here are the key reasons why I chose them:

1) Like the horse and bet on the Jockey 

• I educated myself about the details of the project and understood it. I checked with people who are a lot smarter than I will ever be.
• I am very clear about the business model, project plan, exit strategy, and underlying securities 
• Most importantly, I verified the track record of the Jockey. I know that they’ve done what they are about to do over and over and over and over again successfully. 

2) Operating within my comfort zone

• Using RRSP money, which will not be available to me anyways for a couple more decades 
• NOT putting all my life’s savings into a deal all at once - I allocated two chunks and spread them across two independent projects 
• Selected projects within the real estate niche, which I'm familiar with
• Am comfortable with the timeline and the fact that my money will be locked for 3-5 years

3) Trust but verify

I chose one asset with frequent cash distributions and another one with higher return and longer waiting period.

The former pays investors quarterly. I chose it because I wanted to see how the asset works start to finish, before looking for any other deals.

I got my first quarterly deposit! Over $900 dollars - a single quarterly payment covered my family's internet for an entire year. Not bad!!!

The best thing is this income was purely passive.

I can imagine how much work it has taken the private business to generate this return.

For me, it is truly passive - zero effort - 11.06% annualized return.

Now, that I've completed this small proof of concept, the sky is the limit :)

Hope this blog post helps.

I wonder if you knew these deals existed and 6, 8, 10, 17% or 20+% passive return was achievable? 

What was your experience? 

Feel free to leave a comment below!