ING Direct is running a promotion over the last days of December (and, by extension, 2011) where you can enter to win prizes of $1000 or a grand prize of $5000.

Make any transaction with your mobile device between December 19th and December 30th for 12 chances to win $1,000 (or a $5,000 grand prize).

All you have to do, as the above snippet states, is to use their mobile app and make a transaction through it.  For this purpose, a transaction seems to be a transfer, payment, or person-to-person transfer.  Each day you do that, you get one entry into the contest.  Pretty easy, and you just might with a little extra debt repayment money!

Passive Income is a bit of a myth.  Not so much in that it doesn’t exist (it does), but in what it really is, and why we should all be striving to attain as much passive income as possible.  I’ve written before about what passive income is.  But, in that article, I only wrote a short paragraph on why we should want passive income.

What is Passive Income

You should read the original post on what passive income is, but I’ll recap here as well.  In a nutshell, passive income is income that you earn with little ongoing effort (work).

Why Passive Income

The why of passive income is really the motivating factor for most people.  Many of you know the allure of free money, or easy money.  And many of you will mistakenly think that passive income fits one or both of those categories.  It doesn’t.  The difference, and the reason you will still want passive income, is in the ongoing work part.  With a traditional job, like the one I recently quit, you get paid per unit of work.  If you work one hour, you get paid $x.  If you work one year, you get paid $xx,xxx.  If you build one widget, you get paid $xx.  Your earning potential is directly tied to the amount of work you do.  More work = more money.  It’s a finite system.  You can only work so many hours in a day, so you can only make so much money.

You’ll still work for your passive income, but, if it’s a true passive income source, you’ll be able to work less for the money as time goes on.  The income is no longer tied to the amount of work you put in, except in the beginning.  Please don’t think that passive income is easy, or that it requires no work.  It does.  In fact, you might work harder than you have before initiating it.  But, once it’s initiated, the work can decrease if you want it to.

Passive Income Examples

One of the most common examples of passive income is rental income.  You rent out a property, using a property management service, and all you have to do is sit back and let the rent checks roll in.  Sounds easy, right?  It is.  But, you have to get there first.  You’ve got to do the work necessary to have the ability to purchase that rental property.  You’ve got to do the work to make sure that it meets codes so that it can be rented out.  You’ve got to do the work necessary to find a property management service that fits your needs.  And, even though it then becomes almost entirely passive, meaning you do no work to attain it, there might still be some occasional work that needs to be done, like deciding whether a repair should be done, and by whom.  As you can see, there’s a huge outlay of work to set up the passive income stream.

Another popular example of passive income is dividend paying stocks.  You own some shares of some companies that pay dividends to their shareholders, and let the dividend checks roll in.  Sounds easy, right?  It is.  Again, you’ve got to get there first.  You’ve got to do the work necessary to have the ability (money) to purchase those shares.

Passive Income isn’t Free Money

Passive income isn’t free money. I can’t repeat that enough. And it isn’t easy money.  You’ve got to put some work in to set up the passive income streams first.  But, once you’ve set them up, each day, week, and year, makes your work cost to attain those funds diminish.  Until, at some point, your work cost per unit of income is fractional to what it would be in a traditional job.  If a traditional job requires 1 unit of work for each unit of pay, over time, passive income might require 1/100th unit of work for each unit of pay.  And, that, is why we should all want passive income.

For me, passive income isn’t about being able to sit on a couch and watch television while the fat checks roll in.  It’s all about being able to pay my bills while I do the things that I like to do.  This site, and others I own, help me with that (although they are far from passive, they aren’t traditional jobs for me either).  I’m working on other methods of increasing my passive income stream as well.  I’ve always wanted to be a published fiction author.  I’m participating in NaNoWriMo to that end, with hopes of being able to self publish ebooks and use the royalties from that as another passive income stream.  I like to take photos, so am going to be exploring avenues of making some income with that as well.  It will require taking more photos, which is work, but, because it’s something I do as a hobby already, it’s a variant of a passive income stream for me.

What are some of the passive income streams that you employ?  What are some of the things that you do as hobbies already, that you might be able to turn into an income stream?

photo credit: quinn.anya

I’ve been using Swagbucks’ toolbar and search for a while now.  Each time you search, you have a chance to randomly be awarded a number of swagbucks.  It’s usually not a ton, but somewhere between 10 and 20.  As you build your balance, you can redeem them for prizes.  I usually go for the Amazon.com giftcard.  For 450 Swagbucks, I get a $5 Amazon.com giftcard.  Depending on your search volume and, to some extent, luck with the random awards, you can get a new Amazon.com card every 2-3 months.  Not bad at all.  It’s a good way to supplement my buying habit at Amazon.

With Memorial Day right around the corner, Swagbucks is holding a “Swagbucks Extravaganza”.  I could try and explain it, but I’d probably get something wrong.  Here’s how they explain all the festivities this coming week:

Swagbucks, the best place to get free stuff from searching and more is celebrating Memorial Day next week with a special Score Four and Twenty Swag Bucks promotion – they’ll have 4 special Limited Edition collector’s bills available, and if you can snag all four by the end of Thursday, you’ll get a bonus 20 Swag Bucks. ALSO, this Thursday they’re have a Swag Code Extravaganza, a day filled with fun, games and the opportunity to snag over 40 Swag Bucks worth of codes throughout the day. Be sure to visit Swagbucks all this week for opportunities to win big!

Not a member yet? Sign up through my referral link and enter the code MEMORIALDAY when prompted – it’ll pad your account with an extra 50 Swag Bucks on top of the 30 that everyone starts with. Get started earning your reward points today!

That extra 50 if you are a new sign-up is pretty nice.  I think I only got the 30 that most normally get.  Starting off with 80 would be a pretty good jump start to a new giftcard. This week should be a good week to get started too, as the potential to gain extra swagbucks all week is pretty good.

ING Direct, the online savings account giant, is running a bit of a special, when you sign up for an Orange Checking account, and use the debit card that is associated with that account 3 times within 45 days.  I don’t see anything about when the offer will be pulled, but these generally don’t last too awful long.

Sign up here!

If you’re unfamiliar with ING Direct, they really do bear some looking into.  I use them for most of my business accounts.  Part of that is because of the higher rates that they pay on their savings accounts (1.00% as of this article) that beat the pants off of what I’m getting from my local credit union.  Another part is that they make it super duper easy to create sub-accounts to help categorize your money.

For instance, in my account, I have an Orange Checking that I do almost all of the transactions through.  I then have two Orange Savings accounts, one as just a general savings and another that is a tax savings that I put a portion of all earnings into as a slush fund to help cover any tax costs each year.

In any case, if you don’t have an online checking, this could be a good opportunity to pick one up and grab a free $50 as a result.  Because you’ll be using the debit card associated with the account, you won’t have to change any deposits/withdrawals that you currently have set up, just deposit an opening balance, then use the debit card three times.  If you don’t want to use it after that, you don’t have to.  Heck, use it for three transactions that total less than $50 and you’ll get them paid for!

Sign up here!

Beating Broke Note: The links here are affiliate links.  If you click on them and sign up, I will receive some money.  It’ll eventually get deposited into my orange checking and split up into my tax savings and regular savings.  Even if they weren’t affiliate links, I’d still recommend the company.

Prosper.com, the P2P lending site that started it all is turning 5 today.  And, to celebrate, they’re giving everybody a payment refund.  Well, OK, not everybody.  But, everybody that lists a loan today (Feb. 17th 2011) and gets it funded will get a refund of their second loan payment.

The details (A.K.A. fine print)

* To be eligible for the offer, you must submit your loan listing between 12:00 a.m. and 11:59 p.m. PT on February 17, 2011, and that loan listing must result in an originated loan. If you meet these criteria, Prosper will credit your second required loan payment up to $300. The credit will be posted to your account within 30 days of Prosper receiving your first payment. All personal loans are made by WebBank, a Utah-chartered Industrial Bank. Eligibility for a loan is not guaranteed and requires that a sufficient number of investors commit to fund your loan.

Pretty cool birthday present, no? If you’ve been thinking about a loan of any sort, you should give Prosper a try today.  It’s not every day that the lender gives you a free payment!

If you’re not into borrowing (and who really is?), you can become a lender on Prosper as well.

For the past three years, I have participated in the ND Technology Occupations Student Loan Forgiveness program.  The rules were pretty simple.  You had to have a College Degree in a technology related field, and have a job in North Dakota in a technology related field.  If you met the rules and got your application in before they ran out of money for the year, you got a $1000 student loan forgiveness payment on your student loans.  Yippee!  In those three years, I got the payment every time.  They pay it directly to my loan and I now have $3000 less in student loans to pay for.  Considering that I got away from college with a degree and only about $30,000 in loans, I’ll take a 10% reduction in principle.  I’ve also got my interest locked in at a nice low 3.75%, so I can’t complain about my student loan situation.

The one dim spot was that you could only claim the student loan forgiveness payment for three years and then you were done.  Today, however, I got a letter in the mail from the North Dakota University System (the administrators of the program) telling me that the ND Legislature extended the program in the 2009 session.  Yippee!  But wait!  There’s More!  Not only did they extend it so you could claim it for four years, but they upped it from $1000 to $1500!  WoooHooo!  Oh, and they changed the name of it as well.  Now it’s Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Loan forgiveness program (S.T.E.M).  All I’ve got to do is fill out some paperwork and send it in on time (May to June) and, if approved, they’ll pay $1500 of my student loan off for me.  That’s another 5% of my original principle.  For a total of 15% of the principle overall.

I knew there was a reason I stayed in North Dakota!

P.S. if you live here too (tell me) and you think you might meet the requirements, you can get information on the program at www.ndus.edu ; (Or you can click the STEM link in the next sentence.) click on Student & Parent Information and then Financial Aid.  There’s a link there for the STEM program.

If you’re  looking to pickup a copy of QuickBooks Pro 2009 for your home business or your small business, today (December 22, 2008) is the day to do it.  Intuit has announced that for one day only, you can get a free copy of the program at your local Staples.

The way it works is that the regular price is $199.99, then they take a $40 instant rebate off the top and have a mail in rebate for $159.99.  I don’t like mail in rebates much, but for a free copy of QuickBooks, it might be worth the effort.  The deal is only available today (December 22,2008) at Staples stores and at Staples.com.  Even if you don’t need a copy, you could probably pick one up and sell it on eBay for a tidy profit.  Make an extra credit card payment with it.

ING Direct is still pushing their Electric Orange checking with check card in December. Last month, they pushed it but everyone who used their check card before the end of November 5 times for over $10 got a free $20 deposited in their account. (There’s still time to take advantage of that!)

For December, they’ve got another deal for you. If you use your Electric Orange Mastercard check card 5 times or more on purchases of over $10, you’ll be entered into a drawing for a $5000 prize.

1. Use your Electric Orange Card to make 5 purchases of at least $10 each and you’re entered.
2. Each purchase must appear on your December statement.
3. We’ll choose 5 winners and drop $5,000 into their Electric Orange by 1/15/09.

It’s not a guaranteed $20 like they did this month, but if you already use your check card, it might be worth the effort to make sure you make all 5 transactions for over $10.  Who couldn’t use an extra $5000 at the beginning of the year.  Think of the debt that could pay off!  It would also make a great head start on a great emergency fund! Or a college fund!  Or retirement account!  Oh!  The possibilities!

Read the rules at the ING Direct site.

ING Direct is pushing their Electric Orange Checking Accounts this month and you could be the recipient of a nice $20 bonus.  And it’s pretty simple to do too!

If you have an Electric Orange checking account, you’re already enrolled.  You then only need to use your EO debit card to make at least 5 purchases of more than $10.  When they all show up on your November statement, you’ll get a bonus of $20 sometime before December 15th.  (Details at the ING page)

I just heard about this today and normally I don’t use the debit card for my EO account all that much.  It’s set up to automatically pay a few subscriptions, but nothing that would meet the qualifications for this bonus.  However, my family and I just returned from a vacation where we had saved for the expenses of the vacation in an ING Direct savings account that is tied to the EO account.  When we went on vacation, we transferred the money to the EO account so that we could easily access it with the debit card.

Unknown to me, we met all the qualifications for the bonus and are looking forward to the bonus!  Yippee!  There’s still a few days left to qualify for the bonus if you haven’t already.  If you don’t have a EO account, you might be pushing it to get one and get the card in time to qualify, but even if you don’t get the bonus, the 1% interest rate is still better than what most banks pay.