Multiple Income Streams

Recently I have seen several serious articles about retirees needing multiple income streams for a good retirement. The last one I read mentioned that 7 income streams would be the best. That is a lot of different income streams!    

I began to add mine up and I think I may have the 7! I am a federal retiree and the federal system is a three tier system in which you draw a pension, 401K (Thrift Savings Plan TSP) and Social Security. The TSP portion can be small or large depending on your personal savings rate during your career. Some employees choose not to save much and thus their balance at retirement is pretty small. Some employees may max out their savings and have that part of their retirement be pretty substantial.

So, my retirement from the government gives me three income streams of #1 pension, #2 TSP withdrawals and #3 Social Security. I work part time doing a little contract work. Last year I made about $200 I think. The work was there for me but the will to get back into the working class was not too great last year. So, my part time job is income stream #4. I get a little interest off a savings account at my bank, so there is stream #5 interest income. This income stream is more like a trickle as the interest does not add up to much but was greater than stream #4 last year.  Now I really have to stretch to add additional income streams. Every year I throw any found coins into a wooden bowl on my bedroom dresser and then count it and cash it in at the end of the year. This is my income stream #6. I counted my bowl as of this date and for the first 3+ months of 2023, that income stream has a total of $6.93. Also in that bowl are numerous coins that I found in CoinStar reject bins at the grocery store that are from Mexico, Canada and Israel. I can't even spend part of the found money stream in this country!

I've talked about my hobby of metal detecting in past posts. Guess what? This is my income stream #7! Much like my found money, my detecting coins also are saved, cleaned and counted at the end of the year. My best year so far has been $85.03. I know, I know, not much of an income stream. I'm not sure if the authors of the "multiple income stream" articles would approve of many of my streams being income streams, but it works for this guy! My wife and I live on #1-3, the rest are just extra pocket money. 

Have you read about multiple income streams recently? I would think if you had one large stream, you could retire just fine. Do you have multiple income streams that make up your retirement? I can imagine there are a lot of retirees that collect income on dividends, part time jobs, rental properties and other traditional income producing investments. Do you have any income trickles, like several of mine listed above? I posted once on side hustle jobs. Maybe that is one or more of your income streams.

Oooh! I just remembered I have an upcoming cruise to Mexico, maybe I can spent that 50 pesos in my found money bowl!