33-year-old mom makes $40,000 a month in passive income—and lives on a sailboat: How I work ‘just 2 hours a day’

In 2011, I started a personal finance blog, Making Sense of Cents, to track my journey to becoming debt-free — and it took off fast.

Within a few years, I was earning enough to quit my 9-to-5 job to focus on my business, and I had paid off $40,000 in student debt.

Today, I live on a sailboat with my husband and daughter. I work just two hours a day and get to spend the rest of my time traveling the world.

When I first started, I poured hours of work into the blog. But over the years, I’ve worked towards making my business as passive as possible. Last year, it generated about $40,000 a month in passive income.

Here’s my best advice for starting your own business and working less hours:

I’m always thinking ahead. With task-batching, I group similar tasks together and complete them all at once. This helps me avoid multitasking, which can be distracting.

For example, I write several articles for my blog in one day, so that I can have five months’ worth of content waiting to be published. Then I don’t have to worry about not having enough to post.

Automation helps, too, like scheduling newsletters and social media posts to go out for the rest of the week. And I only check and respond to emails once a day.

I have a newsletter hosted on ConvertKit for Making Sense of Cents with over 130,000 email subscribers, and it grows on its own thanks to placements for it on my blog and social media accounts.

The newsletter is designed to send readers to different blog posts (depending on their interests) that generate ad revenue, my online courses, the affiliate products that I promote — all on its own.

And since readers get consistent newsletters, I don’t receive so many questions from them.

Instead of trying to learn how to do everything myself, I hire freelancers for things that I’m not an expert in, like graphic design and video editing for my online courses.

Delegating is important, too. I have a part-time editor for my blog and a virtual assistant to help with minor things like responding to customer emails.

The key is to hire people you’ve thoroughly vetted, or those that you already know and trust. My virtual assistant is my sister and my editor is my sister-in-law.

You don’t want to become dependent on just one new income stream, because if it goes south, you might have to return to a 9-to-5 lifestyle to make up the shortfall.

Instead, when you start your business, spend time thinking about what passive income streams may fit you best, and build out at least two. I make passive income from three sources: affiliate marketing, banner ads and online courses.

Some revenue sources are more passive than others. Do your research. Plan your streams around how much time per month each will require from you. Then you can start creating your dream workweek.

Michelle Schroeder-Gardner is the founder of Making Sense of Cents, where she helps readers make smart decisions about how to earn, save, spend and invest. She paid off nearly $40,000 in student loan debt in just seven months and now travels full-time with her family on sailboat. Follow her on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest.

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