How to have multiple income streams? This is a question you will find a lot of answers on the internet. Especially when you search for it on Youtube. Just type it in, click to some videos and wait what the advertisement algorithm will show you.

Good luck 🙂

I would like to talk about that topic in a different way today. There is no webinar or course I want to sell. It is just about an idea, which of course needs to discipline and work, but it will probably make you wealthier than going allin on Bitcoin.

Multiple income streams – what is it?

Usually all of us are working 9-to-5. Whatever we do we receive a salary from it, which is sometimes more and sometimes less. Just a few people invest their money to generate more income from it. In Germany we are ways behind with a overall stock quota of 12-15%. That means that only 15% of all Germans are investing into anything you can trade at the stock market, including all kinds of fonds and/or ETFs. That means, 85% are NOT investing their money for any reason.

As you are following my blog I guess you are one out of the 15% from the German (or any other European country). So you are already knowing what to do. Maybe you have not started yet, but I will show you why you should start as soon as possible.

Let’s just imagine you receive a salary and save some money into an MSCI world-ETF. This will generate you another 1,8% of capital income from dividends. This is great – congrats! What have you ever asked yourself what you and your finances might be capable of?

Receiving money from a salary and ETF dividends already makes you a person earning money from multiple streams. So now the task is to built stronger streams, who are more independent from each other. And the target is once again clearly: The bigger, the better!

What does is need to built mutiple income streams?

I started my financial journey about 5 years ago. First of all I saw a big mess, which I wanted to clean up. There were several debts I had to pay back and no money for investments. My portfolio was full of crap to be honest. It was a depot from 1999 with shares from the dotcom-bubble, most of them already broke. And there was a pretty expensive lifeinsurance I was paying every month.

Some day I stumbled into Kolja from AktienmitKopf and Lars, who most of you probably know. I was experiencing a time where I dreamt of freedom, maybe living like a digital nomad and not being dependent from anything or anyone. Those two guys talked about P2P lending and investing into ETFs with small amounts.

Well, that was what I needed. So I set up my first accounts and started pretty soon. Investing into ETFs worked with a minimum amount of 25 Euro and investing into P2P lending from 10 Euros on. The first month I saved 50 Euros. What do you think happend over the next months?

The power to stay with your plans

Nothing. I mean really: nothing happend! After six month I was more or less doubting myself. Was it really worth it what I was doing there?

But looking at it more in detail I saw that I already made a fortune of 500 Euro. I have never had that much money in savings account. Never ever before! So I felt pretty proud from one moment to the next, when I saw what I was capable of.

There were times during the last years were I was short on money or things happend to me I was not really prepared of. Of course I had to take some money from my savings, but I never stopped saving! I stayed on my plan. And just like Kolja mentioned it once, I increased my savings rate. With every bonus, every christmas money or payrise I put 50% aside and saved it and used the other half to have fun.

Today I am looking on my monthly savingsrate and think like “Well, it is much more than the average. You are doing good, but do never lose it out of sight”. Of couse the savingsrate depends on your income, but through strictly investing it I was able to built multiple income streams from dividends and P2P lending.

What motivates me every day

There is a pretty simple strategy I use since two years to set up own goals. As you know I try to focus on incomegenerating investments. Keeping it simple I am dividing my savingsrate into 70% von stocks and 30% P2P lending.

I am following a ETF-strategy investing a huge amount into incomegenerating ETFs with bonds, REITs and dividend stocks. Additionally I am investing directly in some dividend stocks inspired by the dividend-alarm from Alex Fischer. The idea behind all this is to generate monthly income from several stock-sources.

With the last 30% I am generating income from P2P lending as you probably know. That felt great and I opened a lot of accounts at several P2P lending platforms. But the outcome was thast I earned some small Euros here and there, but was not able to establish a massive income stream.

Therefore I decided to follow Lars strategy of setting up saving targets orientated on the generated income. For example you need 4.445 Euros on Bondora Go and Grow to generate a monthly income of 25 Euros. And I needed about 2.750 Euros on Mintos to generate 25 Euros of passive income from that investment.

How much money do you need to generate 25 Euros/month?

As I already mentioned there are several categories I am investing in. It is like 40% into ETFs, 30% into dividend shares and 30% into P2P lending. So here the figures, which might help you to understand the idea behind it.

Incomegenerating ETFs:

• STOXX Global Select Dividend 100 UCITS ETF
  • ca. 9.700 Euros at a current 3,09% interest
• Asia Pacific Dividend UCITS ETF
  • ca. 8.800 Euros at a current 3,42% interest

Incomegenerating dividend stocks:

• GlaxoSmithKline (GB0009252882)
  • ca. 6.200 Euros at a current 4,85% dividend
• Omega Healthcare (US6819361006)
  • ca. 4.000 Euros at a current 7,55% dividend
• McDonalds (US5801351017)
  • ca. 12.500 Euros at a current 2,38% dividend

Incomegenerating P2P lending platforms:

• Bondora Go and Grow
  • ca. 4.445 Euros at a current 6,75% interest
• Mintos 
  • ca. 2.800 Euros at a current 11,1% interest
• Reinvest24
  • ca. 2.350 Euros at a current 12,7% interest

The more yield, the more income, the more risk

While investing it is all about the risk-reward-system. There is no right or wrong – just fits and don’t fits for your personal situation. If you are asking investors how much of their net worth they are investing into a special are like P2P lending the numbers differ from 0% to 50% or even more.

I decided for me that I first of all feel pretty young to go on a risk and secondly very motivated to follow my plans to reach financial freedom by the end of 2025. So my risk-level ist pretty high, whereas I am investing about 30% of my net worth into P2P lending.

You have to find the share or amount yourself. Start small and get used to it. Examples like Grupeer should be in your mind, because P2p lending is a high risk-investment. But feeling comfortable with 3% you might increase it to 5%. Of couse your income will increase because of the huge interest, but as well your risk will increase.

Find a way to diversify your portfolio and weight the risk-reward-strategy the way you are able to sleep very good at night.

Find a way to make your income streams count

I already mentioned that I started increasing my savingsrate by adding additional income and payrises to it. You might use this strategy as well. But as there are many sources of income you might think about them. Over the years I wrote some books selling on Amazon as well as I narrated some audio books selling via Audible.

This does not make me a fortune, but it helps to increase my savingsrate. Out of those income sources, which already make me having multiple income streams I save 100% into my portfolio. Additionally I save about 50% of my income from active, self-eomplyed stuff.

In the end this leads to an overall savingsrate which is far above the average. And it was hard work to get there, over the years. I often tended to be happy like things were and forgot about it – and didnt raised the savingsrate when I was able to. Tracking my own finances was the key. Like everywhere I do not want to see the line to drop. Therefore I needed to put in the work.

When I started tracking my finances I was quite happy to spread my money and call it diversification. Until now diversification is very important to me. But I focussing more with my targets. To generate another 100 EUR of passive monthly income I divide the investment like 70% into ETFs and 30% into P2P lending. So I have investmenttargets for my P2P platforms as well as for my ETF-strategy. This might make the investments theirself more important, but it is like working on a schedule in a structured way, which make things for me easier.

I make each investment count in the overall view.