Well, let me introduce myself. I’m Matt. Hello, hola, 你好. You can say I haven’t lived the most typical life, but it has been full of experiences and now, slowly but surely, I am aligning all of the seemingly unlinked skills and passions I have developed into a common direction: developing passive income streams. As an American, I have become well aware of how fortunate I am, but I hope to open up the world to you wherever you be from. All you need is a computer, a will to learn, and consistency lasting years.
Leaving the Rat Race (sort of)
Probably as most others, I have failed countless times in my endeavors. I could be pretty wealthy by now if I had followed the 9-5 “American Dream” life planned for me by society and my family. But after taking on this college debt to get a not-so-useful-for-me degree, I came to a realization in an unfulfilling job, that this type of life was not for me. So I left my $17 an hour cubicle job, packed up my backpack, and set out to Colombia. I wouldn’t let the system force me onto a path that I didn’t desire.
Driving to Survive
After this trip throughout most of South America, returning to normal life wasn’t easy. I got a job pretty quickly. It was cold-calling and I quit within a week. After this, I stepped into one of my all-time favorite jobs: Uber/Lyft Driver. In the San Francisco Bay Area, pay was decent if you took advantages of the promotions offered each week. I could earn up to $5000 a month as a full-time driver and the best part was the flexibility. Month-long trips weren’t out of the question, and I could just start driving again the day I returned. Passengers were also interesting to talk to as they were so diverse and full of new perspectives.
Uber opened my eyes to the world of possible paths, and I learned about many things. But I received no advice better than this: “It only takes one good year”. The old man I had picked up from SFO told me about his journey and we had some similarities. He had struggled to find money and fulfillment in his career, but one good year when he was 52, changed all of that. It inspired me and made me know I was on the right path.
You Can Drive, Too
If you want to get a start with Uber and Lyft, check out my link. Based on your location, you may qualify for a nice sign-up bonus! You don’t need to be full-time, drive whenever you like as long as you meet the requirements!
Driving was great for a couple of years and I was lucky enough to have a room at my parent’s house to stay in at that time. I paid off $2000-$3000 a month on my student loans and paid down $30k. I started breaking the shackles that kept me feeling stuck in a rut. But it was time to move on to something new.
Opening up to the East
I still had (and now still have) an itch to see the world. I studied international business in university, and during this course, I took a short 3-week study abroad class in China. It was unlike anything else I had experienced and by the end of the three weeks, I was ready to return.
But after my subsequent travels and letting everything from my past sink in, I decided I would return to China to become an English teacher. It was one of the best and most fun jobs of my life.
This is seriously a great option for anyone looking for a change of pace in life. Foreign teachers in China live like kings and queens with salaries up to 8x the local average. Life is easy there and a lot of the propaganda you hear about China, is a bit exaggerated, albeit there is some truth to it. I will discuss this in more detail in other posts, but for now, check out our Top 10 Places to Teach ESL in 2024 article.
Teaching Can Open the World to You
If you want to become an ESL teacher, you will first need a TEFL certification. I did with this International TEFL Academy online with a responsive teacher and all! They even have some cool in-person programs that you can do in other countries!
China, and Asia as a whole, are great places to be. They are all relatively well connected, with great transportation and they are quite cheap. Plus, the food might be the best in the world. So much diversity in what’s available to eat. But for me, it isn’t an authentic experience unless you take the time to learn some of the language and meet the locals.
Developing my Mandarin skills took a lot of effort, but it was so worth it. It allowed me to forge friendships with those who couldn’t speak English, which is a vast majority in China. It opens new opportunities you could never have imagined and gives you an understanding you couldn’t otherwise get. Check out our article about Learning a New Language if you are thinking of doing this soon!
病毒 Bingdu
After my first year of teaching, I took off for a couple of months to continue seeing the world. I intended to return to China for six more months on a student visa. But while on a trek in the Himalayas in Nepal, I learned of this new thing starting in China. 病毒 Bingdu, or COVID as we call it, broke out in Wuhan. My return flight to China was within the week and everyone I knew in China was warning me. My parents didn’t want me to return. But I had to.
Arriving to Kunming airport from Kathmandu was like arriving to an apocalypse scene. No one was there, my flight had less than 30 people, fever detectors were already in place. It was only January 26, 2020. Long before the Western world knew the ramifications of how it had already penetrated all parts of Earth.
Propagated Fear
A sense of panic I had never experienced before set in. Many foreign teachers fled the country out of fear, some to get locked out of China for good. But after a couple months of serious lockdowns and border closures, the lockdown lifted. We could go to bars without masks as long as we followed the tracing procedures. I did not know a single person in China with COVID as long as I was there. This was until May 2022 by the way….
The quick suppression of the virus in China may come as a surprise to many, but it’s just a fact. We were free to be out in China while most of the world didn’t want to cooperate, extending lockdowns in most places.
But things began to change in summer 2021. A couple cases here, a few there and if you were in that area at the time, you were immediately locked away. As the world found out about the reality of the virus, China was fed propaganda about the seriousness of the illness. Almost every Chinese person I knew feared 病毒, while the remaining foreigners friends and families back home had all acquired the illness at one point or another.
Locked Up
It finally caught up with me. It had to eventually, right? In summer 2021, I had summer break from my kindergarten teaching job, got my vaccine, and went off on a solo journey within China. First stop, the famous Guilin, which is worth a trip for sure. Next up, Zhangjiajie, famous for inspiring the Avatar scenery. This park was a highlight of my entire time in China. But a day after leaving for my next destination, some news came out…
Zhangjiajie had an outbreak. Eight cases were found. Not within the park, nor anywhere near me actually. But I had Zhangjiajie on my tracing app.
This will most certainly have a post of its own, but in short, I arrived to a small village bus station in a Tibetan area in Gansu and I was locked up for 12 days. All I was given were a bucket and lie after lie. Being told that I just needed a negative test and I would be set free, to seven days and two tests, to eventually 12 days (14 total since being in Zhangjiajie) and three tests. There wasn’t even a shower here.
But wait, that’s not all!
I immediately returned to my city, Sanya. The Chinese call this the Hawaii of China. It’s nice, but no comparison to real Hawaii. After COVID ruined my summer, I began my new job as the foreign teacher manager of my school, which I actually loved doing.
This was the most traumatic event of my life and I did not want to leave my little island again. In March 2022, a huge outbreak happened in Shanghai and to escape the lockdowns, many Shanghaiers made their way to the island paradise, bringing along a little bug with them…
There was a small outbreak in a nightclub. First, 5 cases, then 25, then 70, and we entered another full-blown lockdown. My community had a metal fence put up surrounding and drowns patrolled the outskirts making sure no one escaped. We had to do COVID tests daily for 11 straight days, ironically lining everyone up closely to each other each time.
With flashbacks of my previous experience, and now this 22 day lockdown in April 2022, I decided to get on the first flight out of China. I gave up a $10,000 bonus to leave two months early, with no regrets. A couple months later, Sanya went into a 45 day lockdown. I would have went insane, especially knowing the reality wasn’t too serious.
The return flight the US was a trip. Once we got within an hour of LA, the Chinese flight crew all put on their hazmat suits as if entering a biohazardous warzone. Entering the airport felt weird. No one was wearing masks except us, who were conditioned to.
After a week in the US, I got what I had avoided for so long: 病毒.
How I Started Developing Passive Income
While the whole 病毒 thing had been happening and I had been teaching, I continued looking for ways to get out of working for the man. I wanted to stick it to the man and create my own income sources. I tried various things without success, but then I got an idea. My Chinese co-teacher asked me where I get my PowerPoints that I used in class. I told her I made them and this surprised her.
She had thought that I buy them and told me I should sell them. This put me onto the path that I’m on today, and while my passive income is still modest, I have seen real results!
Language learning resources became my niche and creating printable materials to sell on TeachersPayTeachers.com (TpT) and Etsy.com became my first source of truly passive income.
After low sales and changing my strategies, I ended up making over $2000 in 2023 without much lifting, and I expect it to continue growing with a bit of effort here and there. While this is one nice source of extra income, it isn’t particularly a lot.
Other Paths I’ve Gone Down
Crypto has been another area that I have spent a lot of time dabbling in. But well, sometimes you get burned. For a while there, I was happily riding out the high returns and bonuses from Celsius, Blockfi and the works, but we know how that ended up…
But the worst of the worst for me was Luna, and the dealing of the shady Do Kwon. Hearing about the absurd returns (something like 18%) on the Luna stable coin, I jumped on it and turned my $20,000 into USDT. I had been warned by my dad, but I drank the kool-aid.
I turned $20k into $12k overnight. It could have been even worse if I hadn’t made the transaction at the time I did…
Now I just stick to the big boys in crypto and invest just a bit, but Wealthfront has a nice 5% on USD right now for another source of, hopefully safe, passive income.
Check out our article for more passive income ideas you can start for under $500 based on your own skills and passions.
Into the Future
Nowadays, I am in Australia on a Working Holiday Visa, which is a pretty cool opportunity for young people. Research your own country’s eligibility. There are various options for some and none for others…
Being young, you can experience so many things here, but as I am no longer that young, it is not a very appealing option for me anymore (details eventually), and I am off to my next adventure.
I’m heading back to Asia for the foreseeable future! I need to return to China to get the money I have stuck there from a failed transaction upon my swift exit mentioned earlier. By the way, the Luna losses happened the same day I learned that I couldn’t retrieve my money earned in China until an in-person return, effectively losing access to $25,000.
After recovering this money, my focus will move to Bali and giving the Digital Nomad lifestyle a whirl. Working full-time on this site while completing a Divemaster course!
Forcing myself into this make-it-or-break-it type of atmosphere is what will propel the urgency to achieve success.
Anyways, 2024 is the year I embark on the true journey of self-reliance with my income. While my TpT earnings are seasonal, it should cover cheap rent in Bali and other parts of Asia for now, but Passive Nomader is where everything will be documented!
Have an amazing 2024 and bring in the year with a new idea, fellow Nomader.
Love and Learn,
Matt
