How time flies! The month of January for 2012 already came to an end. Talking about New Year’s resolution, I haven’t even got a chance to think about it yet. Anyway, procrastination is the thief of time so better start working now!

One of my resolutions this year is to diversify my sources of income as the economic forecast for the year 2012 is not that optimistic. When the economic growth is slow, it will affect consumers spending which thus affect businesses. So I predict my earned income will be affected by this trend. This leaves me only two other options which are the portfolio income and passive income to focus on. Just in case, you are not aware the different types of income we could have, check out the diagram below.

I first learnt about these 3 types of income from Robert Kiyosaki’s book – Rich Dads Retire Young Retire Rich. According to what Robert said, earned income is the income we trade using our labor and time; portfolio income is the income generated from stocks, bonds and mutual funds while the passive income is generated from business or real estate. It can also be a royalty income from patents or use of one’s intellectual property such as songs, books or others.

Since the economic is expected a slowdown this year, it is even more important to depend on portfolio and passive income especially when one is growing older each year. When one grows older, it hard to maintain the same physical and mental energy require for a job and when we stop working, our earned income will stop too. As what Robert Kiyosaki suggested, it is best to start building on passive and portfolio income early so that even when we stop working or retire, they still able to generate steady stream of income for us. By that time, we can retire free and easy without financial worries. This is what I hope to achieve during the slowdown period, take time to acquire and build more assets.

Passive Income
To the home online business owners, we know that passive income has a different meaning.  The word “passive income” has almost synonymous with “affiliate marketing” and “blogging”. To most of us, it means building a successful business online and it continues generating a steady income without much intervention from the business owners.

I’ve been trying to build a passive income over the past years but it was too slow. This year, I hope to increase my passive income to at least 60% and at the same time, look out for more affiliate programs that offer recurring commission.  It’s a great way to generate residual income as it is one-time effort.

Portfolio Income
I’ve little knowledge when come to creating portfolio income. Over the years, I’ve left it to my financial adviser but realized lately it was not performing as it should be expected. So instead of building up a solid portfolio, I’ve made more losses than profit over the years. Look like it is a high time to fire my financial adviser but it is also part of my mistake for not monitoring closely and taking pro-active action on my portfolio income.

So, one of my goals this year is to increase my financial literacy. The only way to benefit from this income is to increase my context and content and learn how financial things work. Fortunately, there are a lot of free financial information on the website and one of them is Robert Kiyosaki’s website – richdad.com, it offer free financial education, resources and news. There is a wealth of information at his website, I’m grateful to Robert for his generosity and what he taught gave me confidence that income does not necessary have to come from one source. There are many other ways and sources to generate income that are beyond my knowledge. I’m glad I found it now, may be slightly late but better late than never.

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If you are worry about the economic slowdown and how it might affect your earned income, it is high time you look around and check out alternate income. Maybe, you can do well in other incomes than your earned income. Good luck to you! If you have any successful story in building alternate income, please share it at the comment below.