It’s been a busy couple days for me.  I just finished implementing a new blog theme and catching up on my personal finance blog reading, which I had been neglecting for a few weeks.  It turns out I’m not the only one who’s been busy, as other bloggers have been hard at work writing some great posts.  Here are my favorites from the past week:

• Passive Income Idea and Affiliate Marketing Idea - The Passive Dad talks about a site he’s been using called BigCrumbs.  He’s having some success in starting a little passive income stream with it.  He reports that some members are earning $100 - $200 a month in passive income from the service.  Not too shabby.  Hmmm… I wonder if BigCrumbs would be better than Spree?  Especially if you do any buying or selling on eBay, this appears to be something worth a second look.  I signed up for an account today, and I’ll do some more digging into it.  I’ll report back after I’ve kicked the tires a bit more with it.
• Creating a New Income Stream - General Electric - Passive Family Income talks about buying GE, which is a dividend-paying stock, and hedging his bets using a covered calls strategy.  Interesting… I hadn’t heard of this strategy before.  I’m curious to learn more about it and his success with it.
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  Categories : Ways to Make Passive Income

In the previous post, I talked about why creating passive income streams are so important. Now that we’ve covered the benefits of this form of income, let’s start the conversation on ways it can be created.

What’s below is a list of different kinds of passive income streams. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it will work for starters. As you read the list, make a note of which ones catch your interest. Here they are in no particular order: continue

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Here are some interesting nuggets I found while sifting through my RSS feeds this week. Enjoy!

• Why You Need a Credit Card - Patrick at Cash Money Life writes on the benefits of credit cards. One statement I agree with 1,000%, “The key is using your credit card properly, which means only borrowing amounts you can afford to pay off right away. If you follow that method, you will never get into trouble by using your credit cards.” Bullseye.
• How We Got a $1608.43 Cash Back Rebate Check - Kudos to Jim at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity for using the Citi Cash Returns card for what it’s best at– massive short-term expenses. Way to go!
• Eleven Perspectives on P2P Lending - Prosper Lending Review presents a question from a reader who wonders if he should invest a $100,000 nest egg with Prosper. Eleven different bloggers and lenders chime in with their opinions.
• Fynanz: How Students Spell Peer-to-Peer Loans - Erick Schonfeld over at TechCrunch introduces a new peer-to-peer lending site that specializes in loans to students. Fynanz has longer term loans than other sites such as Prosper.com and lower interest rates as well. The interesting twist with Fynanz is that they help share the risk of the loan by guaranteeing up to 100% of a loan’s value should it default. Additional coverage of Fynanz this week can be found here.
• Looking for a High-Yield Savings Account? Provident Direct Could be an Answer - Sun’s Financial Diary gives readers a heads-up about a new online savings account I hadn’t heard of yet, Provident Direct. I don’t have any experience with them, so naturally I don’t have an opinion yet about the account. It is still offering a 4.50% APY return right now, which is extremely high. My bet is the rate will come down due to the recent rate cut, but may likely still be one of the highest rates out there.

And finally, the one that gave me a chuckle was FinanceGirl’s 10 Signs You Have Finanacial OCD (thanks Karen Datko for the heads up!). Wow, I thought I was persnickety with my money. At least I now know there are people more particular with money than I am. As for #’s 2, 5, and 10… uuuhhh, I have no comment!

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Lots of food for thought this week:

• Finding Passive/Alternative Income Streams - Million Dollar Journey shares some thoughts on expanding your income beyond just your job.
• The Dividend Guy Investment Process - The Dividend Guy has been running a multi-post series explaining his strategy to dividend investing. Day 1 is here.
• Pre-Screening Dividend Stocks - Part I - Dividends4Life has also been running a multi-part series of posts, this one focused on how he screens stocks.
• Don’t Rate Chase High-Yield Savings Accounts - Blueprint for Financial Prosperity makes some nice points on why you shouldn’t rate chase.
• Laddered CD/MMC Safe Investment Plan - Another thought-provoking post from Blueprint for Financial Prosperity. This time, it’s on laddering CDs. This reminded me of a neat post a while back by Jonathan at My Money Blog about laddering with U.S. Treasury Bills.
• Mr. Toad’s Wild, Prosperous Ride - Prosperous Land has some tips for avoiding riskier Prosper loans given the economic downturn and shares a couple pointers on what types of borrowers may be safer.
• Credit Cards - Looking at the Cost of Paying the Minimum Due - Tricia from Blogging Away Debt points out why it’s a bad idea to just make the minimum payment on your credit cards.
• How to Get Paid Without Working - This one made me shake my head in disbelief. Free Money Finance discovers a guy that made $500,000 in passive income, however I wouldn’t recommend you model your strategy after him…

Tricia’s post got me thinking. As readers of my cash back tutorial know, it’s best to not only make more than the minimum payment, but to pay your card off in full each month. For people already carrying a balance that’s too large to pay off, this isn’t an option. I’ll be sharing some ideas in an upcoming post here about how people in this predicament can get to where they can start paying off their credit card in full.

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