In addition to getting out of debt, being frugal, and saving for retirement, you would be wise to look into various forms of alternative income. If you think about it, looking ahead towards retirement you’re going to need another form of income other than your job. Most people hope to have enough money saved in their retirement accounts that they can live comfortably off of the interest or other investment income. So the question then becomes… Why wait until retirement to develop these income streams?

In fact, the sooner you create this alternative income, the sooner you will have reached financial freedom. Once your alternative income streams are greater than your expenses, you have the freedom to do whatever you’d like. You can continue to work, quit altogether, or find some happy medium in between. The point of all this is that you don’t have to wait until age 65 to make this happen.

There are many different forms of alternative income, and you’ll need to find what you’re most comfortable with. If you put your money into a money market account, you can view the interest earned as passive income. You might decide to purchase stocks that pay nice dividends. These dividends may serve to replace some of your current job income. One of my personal favorites would be real estate investment income. Here you may have an income producing rental property that gives you a hundred or so dollars a month or even more.

You may not want to put all of your money into income producing investments, but you’d be wise not to ignore them. It’s not bad to play the asset appreciation game, but there’s a whole other playing field with cash flow. Also, the more you look into this type of investing, the more opportunities you’ll find to increase your financial position.

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