7 Frugal Passive Income Ideas For 2026

Summary

Podcast Summary: Frugal Friends Podcast | Episode: 7 Frugal Passive Income Ideas for 2026

Hosts: Jen Smith & Jill Sirianni
Date: January 30, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Jen and Jill debunk the myths surrounding “passive income” and lay out seven realistic, frugal passive income ideas for 2026. They draw from personal experience, emphasize up-front work, and focus on accessible strategies for everyday people. Their signature blend of practical advice and playful banter runs throughout, making the content relatable and motivating. Each idea is broken down for feasibility, long-term returns, who it's a fit for, and practical next steps.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Truth About Passive Income

• Passive income is often misunderstood as “easy money,” but it always starts with significant up-front work.
• Jen: “Passive income is so misunderstood because you do a lot of work up front and then you make money passively off of that work. And nobody wants to hear that or say that.” ([00:55])
• For most ideas, expect an initial investment of time/effort, with true passivity coming later.

2. The 7 Frugal Passive Income Ideas

1. Platform Building – YouTube as the Standout

• YouTube is the optimal platform for building lasting passive income, due to its searchable content and enduring visibility.
• Social media requires continual output; YouTube pays for old content as long as it gets views.
• Jen: “People who made videos seven years ago are still getting paid per view for that video if it's showing up on search or suggest. That's the nature of YouTube's algorithm.” ([03:30])
• Especially good for teachers and those with a knack for explaining or demonstrating skills.

2. Affiliate Marketing

• Easiest to tack onto other platforms (YouTube, blogs, newsletters, Instagram).
• Referral-style links—get paid a small kickback for every sale or sign-up driven by your content.
• Jill: “If you can find a way to be able to do that...that'd be a great platform to be able to have some of those multiple layers of income.” ([07:22])
• Real-life examples: Gabe Bolt earned $20,000 with only 2,000 YouTube subscribers reviewing niche high-ticket products ([08:20]). Jamie Trull helps people select bookkeeping software and earns “tens of thousands of dollars a month” via affiliated reviews.

3. Selling Digital Products (e.g., eBooks, Spreadsheets, Templates)

• Easy barrier to entry using tools like Canva; can be mentioned within YouTube videos for added exposure.
• Jen & Jill sell budgeting and meal planning spreadsheets as a form of “evergreen” income.
• Jill: “In order for it to be truly passive, someone could be buying this product while you're sleeping. You've got to know how to set up a landing page, be able to take money, have that product be delivered to the person who purchased it.” ([12:12])
• All the tech knowledge needed is freely available online.

4. Print On Demand Merchandise

• Offer custom-designed items (shirts, mugs) using services like Printful, Printify, Amazon, or Etsy—with no inventory risk.
• Success relies less on art skills and more on catchy/clever text designs and leveraging trending topics.
• Jen: “Honestly, it's better if you're not an artist because trending shirts that just say words on them honestly did best for me.” ([13:20])
• Note from Jill: Sustainability and intentionality matter; “most of us don’t need another t-shirt or mug.” ([14:31])

5. Mini Courses (Online Learning Platforms)

• Create short, targeted courses on skills you know—a good fit for people with specialized experience.
• Focus on affordable, actionable courses ($1–$500), hosted on platforms like Skillshare or Masterclass alternatives.
• Jen’s advice: “If you have a skill or know something that you could make a 1 to $500 course on, then that could be really helpful.” ([16:52])
• Vet teachers carefully; avoid learning YouTube from “people who only make money teaching people how to make money on YouTube.” ([19:08])
• Both hosts stress: You just need to be “one step ahead” of a beginner; women in particular underestimate their expertise. ([21:07])

6. Self-Publishing (Books, Guides, Planners, Workbooks, Journals)

• Publish short, focused books or low-content items on Amazon or other self-publishing platforms.
• Jen: “Self publishing is what…makes me passive income…at least a couple hundred dollars a month…since 2017.” ([24:10])
• Nonfiction “how to” is accessible; fiction can be lucrative if you build series/collections.
• Recommend reading “Launch” by Chandler Bolt for a self-publish roadmap.
• Jill: “You could also do what's called low content or guided books, planners, workbooks…” ([27:55])
• No big audience or platform needed if you master keywords/search optimization.

7. Investing (The Only Truly Passive Option)

• The one truly passive income: investing in tax-advantaged accounts (401k, IRA, HSA, etc.), letting compound interest work over years.
• Jen: “Investing and compound interest is the only truly passive way to make money without doing anything. And I'm not talking about real estate investing. No, real estate investing is a lot of work.” ([30:37])
• The earlier you start, the more time your money has to grow and weather market fluctuations.
• Jill: “Earning interest on your money is the most passive thing you could do.” ([33:17])
• Emphasis: Requires significant up-front commitment to funding the investments in your earlier years.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Passive Income Reality:

  • “Nobody wants to hear that…passive income requires a lot of work upfront.” —Jen ([00:55])
  • “Every one of these does require a bit of entrepreneurialism.” —Jill ([04:53])

• On “Just Getting Started”:

  • “If you're thinking that wasn't going to take work, I'm so sorry.” —Jen ([04:53])

• Gender & Expertise:

  • “You don't have to be an expert; you just have to be one step ahead.” —Jen ([21:07])
  • “A man who played basketball in high school will be like, ‘Yeah, I’ll coach my son's basketball team,’ … a woman's like, ‘Oh, I didn't play in the WNBA.’” —Jen ([21:48])

• Practical Wisdom:

  • “The more effort you put in, the more you make.” —Jen ([24:23])

• Humor & Relatability:

  • Jill: “When you get money in the mail that you weren’t expecting…that's passive income.” ([37:26])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [00:42] – Introduction to passive income, busting myths
• [02:06] – Overview of the 7 ideas; promise of realistic advice
• [03:15] – YouTube as the best platform for beginners
• [06:10] – Affiliate marketing: layering revenue streams
• [09:00] – Niche affiliate examples (Gabe Bolt, Jamie Trull)
• [10:50] – Digital products and spreadsheets as passive sales
• [12:52] – Print-on-demand merch (no platform needed)
• [14:31] – Merch cautions: sustainability & intentionality
• [16:49] – Mini courses: low-cost, trust-based learning
• [21:07] – Overcoming “expertise imposter syndrome”; especially for women
• [24:10] – Self-publishing experiences, tips, and book-length secrets
• [30:37] – Investing & compound interest as the only “pure” passive income
• [35:54] – Compound interest in practice: why front-loading matters
• [38:57] – Hosts’ first experiences with passive income
• [41:28] – Jill’s YouTube “what if?” story (living in a motorhome; lessons about sticking with it)

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Additional Insights

• Build multiple layers of passive income where possible—stack affiliate, product, and course income for compounding returns.
• Passive income streams often interact. For example, books can contain affiliate links, digital products can upsell courses, videos can promote all of the above.
• Investing deserves priority for everyone—“I hope that everyone's at least going to invest, minimum. I hope that for you.” —Jen ([44:20])

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Takeaways for Listeners

• Start with what excites you, but be ready to put in the work.
• You don’t need to be an “expert”—just be one step ahead and willing to teach/share.
• Time, consistency, and intentionality are worth far more than hype or shortcut promises.
• True passive income is a marathon, not a sprint; but small, persistent actions (especially in investing) pay off hugely over time.

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Episode’s Tone and Feel

Realistic, encouraging, witty, and practical.
Jen and Jill’s interaction is friendly and relatable, blending humor and actionable advice.
Listeners will leave informed, motivated, and equipped with practical next steps—without the pressure or illusion that passive income is ever truly “easy money.”

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Further Engagement

• Visit frugalfriendspodcast.com
• Subscribe on YouTube for more content and community
• Share your own passive income stories or questions in the comments

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For a taste of both laughs and insights, the potato banter and Jen’s musings on multitasking are a delight in the post-show. Real ones comment “potatoes” on YouTube.

Transcript

[Jen]

7 frugal passive income ideas.

[Podcast Announcer]

Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity and live a richer life. Here are your hosts, Jen and Jill.

[Jen]

Welcome, Frugal Friends. I'm Jen.

[Jill]

I'm Jill.

[Jen]

And if you ask the Internet about passive income, it will tell you that all you need to do is buy one guru's course and make a course yourself and then you will wake up rich. And that is not the case, as you know.

[Jill]

So close. I've become a little disillusioned with this concept of passive income thinking, okay, just, I just do like one little thing and then I just get money. And it just hasn't been my experience.

[Jen]

It's. Passive income is so misunderstood because it does come with essentially you can do a certain amount of work over years and get paid incrementally. Right? And what passive income is, is you do a lot of work up front and then you make money passively off of that work. And nobody wants to hear that or say that. And yes, the cumulative of the work you do up front is less than what you would do, you know, throughout the same time period. Given if we're thinking about side hustles or whatever, but they are missing that really key piece that passive income requires a lot of work upfront. And so we wanted to do an episode that is about passive income, but realistic passive income. Our experiences with passive income, because we have done all of these things, what you can realistically expect to earn or to work or to expect from. And then you can figure out if this is something that you want to do because it isn't for everyone. It doesn't have to be for everyone.

[Jill]

So with that in mind, we've got seven ideas to share with you. These are not scams. This isn't buy property and rent it out. These are real ideas for normal people. But it is work. Let's remember, like it is going to take work.

[Jen]

And there is only one of these that is truly passive and does not require a lot of work upfront, but will pay you passively forever. That's number seven. So it's a little different from one through six. But stick with us because it's one that, that I think everyone can do. Beginners, savants, whatever, everyone can do number seven. But we'll start with the first one, which I believe is platform building. And I'm going to say what I think the best place to build a platform on right now for beginners is, and it's YouTube. It's why we're here because we have been. I have been a blogger, I've been a freelance writer for finance blogs. I have been a podcaster, a social media influencer. I say that with quotations. Social media will never be passive because you can make a lot of money, but you will never stop churning out content. You will not get paid passively on the work you have done just because of the algorithm, of, of the nature of it. But something that does really support well to passive income is YouTube. People who made videos seven years ago are still getting paid per view for that video if it's showing up on search or suggest. That's the nature of YouTube's algorithm. So it's just heads and tails differently. So both can be profitable. But when we're talking about passive income, YouTube I think is the best place to be building something that can be passive.

[Jill]

Yeah, this can be really great for teachers, people who are good at explaining things, or you've got a certain skill set in a niche. Wherever you're at, you probably have something to be able to teach another person. And it doesn't necessarily mean that you've got to start a whole, whole business around it. It could mean that you put a video out a week or every other week on something that you know people are asking, that people are asking you maybe in real life, or you're seeing people are asking online and you've got a good way to explain. Could be worth your time and energy to create that video and see what happens and, and keep building from there. But every one of these does require a bit of entrepreneurialism. So, like, if you're thinking that that wasn't going to.

[Jen]

I'm so sorry.

[Jill]

Yeah, but the really great thing to also tack onto some of the things you listed about YouTube is its searchability function. And one of the reasons that we are placing such emphasis on this while still doing our podcast is because it's far easier to search for the type of content that you want to look for on YouTube than it is in like a Spotify or Apple podcast player. You, you go to a specific podcast because it's been recommended. They're not coming up in a recommended for you. You're not searching for topics within Spotify. We are on YouTube and we are watching YouTube far more than any other entertainment platform. Apparently it is outpacing Netflix, Hulu.

[Jen]

It is the number one streaming app on tv. Like it has beat Netflix watching every other. Yeah, so it's number one. And it is the number one place for people to listen to watch podcasts. So it just makes sense that, that we be here. And I think starting out, I would have started out a lot earlier here. And if you're starting out, I think YouTube is the best place. If you want to create a passive income stream, that is your ultimate goal.

[Jill]

Okay. The next category is affiliate marketing. And this kind of tacks onto anything that you might do, Whether it is YouTube or a blog, or you have an email, or you choose to try and grow an Instagram channel. Affiliate marketing is something that could help to make you money passively without needing to have your own product that you're selling. So that's where you are talking about a brand that you believe in. And for every conversion that happens to that brand because of you, you get a kickback. So for instance, for us, CIT is an affiliate brand for us where whenever somebody signs up for a high yield savings account at cit, we do get some money for that.

[Jen]

Only if you use frugalfriendspodcast.com cit, which we hope you do. And we. You hope that the creator only promotes things that they truly believe in. And usually, you know, that is the case, especially with affiliates. I think you can trust that more with affiliates than you can with brand deals. But yeah, so that's something that you can promote and make small kickbacks on forever. That link works in perpetuity.

[Jill]

And a lot of people do this on a smaller scale. Right. If you have Rakuten, they've given you an affiliate link, right? It's that refer friend. Yeah, yeah. People will call it a referral link. And so there are times that we in our regular everyday life will refer someone to the credit card we're using, refer someone to the cleaning product we like, and we might get a kickback for that. So it's, it's that concept only trying to get it out to a larger audience. So if you can find a way to be able to do that again, whether it's on Instagram or you want to start a newsletter, or you are thinking about YouTube, then that'd be a great platform to be able to have some of those multiple layers of income. Right. You can earn money just off of the views that you receive on a YouTube video, but you could also be talking about an affiliate brand and whoever signs up for that, you also get money for. So thinking through having multiple layers is also going to be really beneficial for long term monetization.

[Jen]

Yeah. And you can make a lot of money through affiliates. So I'm thinking of two YouTube creators right now. Gabe Bolt does a Like a minimalism channel. And he has like, I don't know, like 600,000 followers. But he started a second channel where he, I think, reviews portable saunas or something. Like something very niche, but an expensive product, something he's interested in. And his channel has maybe 2,000 subscribers or something. And he said he had made with that little few subscribers, $20,000 because he's using affiliate marketing for these sauna reviews. And so if you find something that's very high ticket that you're very passionate about, then you could do a review channel on it. There's review channels for treadmill mills, for ice baths, for all kinds of trendy things. Now, obviously, the more expensive you go and the less platform you have to start with, you'll probably have to buy some of these before they're just given to you so that you have that startup capital to think about, right? But this can be something where you can make a substantial amount of money if you know about the product. If you're passionate about the product or the service, you can make it quickly. Our friend Jamie Trull on YouTube, she helps business owners choose bookkeeping software. So she has an affiliate partnership with several bookkeeping softwares and does review videos. And when somebody signs up for that product through one of her videos, because of one of her videos, they click on her affiliate link, she gets a kickback. And she makes tens of thousands of dollars a month with not a large channel. So you can scale very quickly with affiliate marketing. If you do some of that initial groundwork with a YouTube channel specifically, you're not going to do the same thing with social media. I don't think you can do the same thing with a newsletter even, because even that you're going to have to keep sending over and over. You can get a separate set like a email sequence that goes out on automation. But I just think YouTube is the. Is the best passive platform for that. Next is selling digital products. So we criticized this a bit in our last episode, but here's where I think digital products can truly be a passive money maker. So they're not that hard to get started. You can get a free Canva subscription and, and do a lot with a free Canvas subscription. And it's so affordable, you know, two or three hundred bucks for the year and you can do even more. And then you can t. You can mention that in your YouTube video. We have three digital products. They're spreadsheets. We have a spending planner, which is a monthly budget. We have an annual finance planner where you can literally plan your entire life in a couple tabs on a spreadsheet. And then we have a meal planning spreadsheet where you can organize all of your meal planning and prepping and food inventory. So we'll link to those in the.

[Ad Voice 1]

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[Jen]

That's it. That's a simple mention that if it fits in with the review of whatever you're doing. Like I also have a digital product that's an ebook that tells you like my journey into getting into this or can better explain how to do it or whatever as a tack on then within the digital product you can even include affiliate links where it makes sense. So then you have them on the video and in the digital product.

[Jill]

All of this does take some back end knowledge. Things that you could, you could understand and YouTube videos will help you to be able to do. But in order for it to be truly passive, someone could be buying this.

[Ad Voice 2]

Product while you're sleeping.

[Jill]

You've got to know how to set up a landing page, be able to take money, have that product be delivered to the person who purchased it. There's a lot of automations that you need to set up and some kind of technical things to know.

[Jen]

But again learnable, all available free knowledge on the Internet. You don't need to buy anybody's course to learn how to do those things. All available for free.

[Jill]

Okay, this next one you have more knowledge on this, but it is print on demand merch. So being able to have a design, whether that's T shirts or hats or mugs or whatever it is that you don't actually have to have the inventory for, but the designs for allowing people to be able to purchase them. And once they're purchased, those products are then made and shipped to them. Could be a way for you to make money.

[Jen]

Yeah, you can do this on Amazon, Printify, Printful. Printful is what I use and you can sell them on Etsy. Etsy, Amazon. So you don't actually need a platform to do this. The algorithm on Amazon or Etsy can really like get you far if you're using the right keywords. You also don't need to be an artist. Honestly it's better if you're not an artist because trending shirts that just say words on them honestly did best for me. You know, seasonal like Halloween, Christmas, as long as not copyright and copywritten just like very like funny shirts that say funny things on them that are very relevant to whatever's going on in the world right now. Like that's going to do Best you could pay to run ads to them if you do some good, like search engine optimization. So like good keywording, then the algorithm will, will push it out pretty well.

[Jill]

Which could be fun if you're especially witty. You've got some good ideas. But I think it's worth considering just the sustainability side of things, which I think is the reason, I mean, why we don't have a merch shop for frugal friends, which sometimes is a bit of a bummer, but also realizing most of us don't need another T shirt or mug.

[Jen]

It's a. So for us not having merch is an intentional move. Um, but you can, if you build a community around your YouTube, have merch with funny inside sayings. So I'm thinking of Pat Flynn who is known for smart passive income. That's his, his brand. But then he started a YouTube channel with his son just for fun, which I, which has honestly become more of his business now about like Pokemon and so they say like weird Pokemon related things in the video and they have made merch based on those like phrases. So that is an option that just becomes. It's another one of those compounding things.

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[Jen]

Yeah.

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[Jill]

Don't love it. Don't love it at first.

[Jen]

Okay, so people will pay for shortcuts for the things they need to know so you can buy. I think if you're going to learn passive income, buying a mini course is a safe bet. There is no reason you need to pay a thousand, two thousand, five thousand dollars to learn this. There is absolutely no reason. But if you're going to spend a couple hundred dollars, no more than 500 from somebod you've listened to a lot and you trust that could be an easy way to find out about these websites where you need to sign up for to learn how to set up the automations that you need to set up to make this stuff passive. So all these like kind of nuanced things that you can learn on your own but you want to learn them faster all in one place from one person that is really good. And so if you have a skill or know something that you could make a 1 to $500 course on, then that could be really helpful and that could be an addition to your, you know, your platform that you have that you're already making passive income on. But then there are also these new mini course sites like it started with Masterclass but now there's a ton of them where people can just go and find mini courses on different things and then just sign up for them. So there's also now, which is why I think mini courses are the way to go now. There are places people are already going where they want to learn random things and are searching through mini courses. And I don't know if you know any of those sites like off the top of your head, you can put them in the comments. I think one of them might be School with a K Skillshare. But yeah, there's a lot of new ones. So I think putting it on that can help you get it out there with if you're starting out without an audience it can just be like one extra place to get it out there before you build the main thing.

[Jill]

Yeah. Which is kind of like if you've got Ideas for a YouTube channel this would kind of translate to that too. Like you could do a more extensive explainer on something that is, you know, an upsell to people.

[Jen]

And here's one place that I'd be careful finding information people who are on YouTube making money telling you how to make money on YouTube. Because if you're telling people how to make money on YouTube, where is the place everybody's going to be going to learn YouTube. So of course they're going to be really popular on YouTube if you see that. I want to see them having a B2C which is business to customer, not business to business or business to consumer. I want to see them having a totally non related YouTube business that's current that they are currently running and they know currently what is working.

[Jill]

Yeah.

[Jen]

So just vet who you are learning from because the data could be. They could be really good at building businesses about YouTube, on YouTube, but are they good at building businesses about other things on YouTube?

[Jill]

Again, I feel like this is such an area for teachers. I know that we often feel like, okay, teachers don't have much room to be able to increase their salary within that specific role. And it does stink that, okay, you'd have to have this like, side business. But it could be you take one summer to put in some extra effort to do a mini course on how to build out curriculum or lesson plans week to week. If you are really good at your job, which most teachers are, there's a reason you went into it.

[Jen]

There's a reason you're still in it. Because if you ain't, you ain't good. You probably ain't in it anymore.

[Jill]

Yeah, you do one course on classroom management, whatever it is, you know, the, the stuff that you didn't actually learn in college and now you've had to had real life experience and you've come to the. You don't have to be an expert in it either. You just have to be a step beyond somebody else that you're teaching.

[Jen]

Oh, my gosh. Hear that again. You don't have to be an expert in it. You just have to be one step ahead of the girl who is just starting out. Okay. There's value in that perspective because experts who get so far ahead forget the perspective of a beginner. And as somebody who's not a quote unquote expert, you're probably more of an expert than you think you are. But somebody who just considers themselves a little bit ahead of the journey can empathize with that perspective in a modern way that somebody who maybe remembers what it was like to be a beginner 20, 30 years ago could never. So there is room for you and there's a need for you if you have something to teach. And we, especially women, always think we have to justify our expertise with some kind of like, accolade. And. No, I think it was Alana Mar. The rugby. No, she doesn't play rugby. I don't know. I'm so sorry, Alana, you're not listening to this. So. But she was saying how, like, a man who played basketball in high school will be like, yeah, I'll coach my son's, you know, basketball team or baseball team or whatever, whereas a woman's like, oh, I didn't play in the wnba. I didn't play in college.

[Jill]

Like I can't coach.

[Jen]

I can't coach, right? No, like if you have experience that's a little, if you played in high school, you're gonna be better than somebody who like is in elementary school who hasn't even been to high school.

[Ad Voice 2]

Right.

[Jen]

You know, like you don't need to be this out of touch expert to be helpful to the person coming up behind you. And I think we would all do better to just internalize that wisdom.

[Jill]

Yeah. So yeah. So consider, what are you, what are you good at? What are people coming to you for? There could be room for you to.

[Jen]

Make a course about it.

[Jill]

Okay, number six, I really like this one. I know a lot of people who this has worked for, including this one sitting right here. Self publishing, hear me out. It is, it is high effort. But that return on time energy investment can be real decent if you can write a good book and it doesn't even have to be a long book, it can be short book, but something again kind of similar to like creating a mini course. This is just writing. You don't have to use your, your verbal voice at all. Put something down on paper that could be an explainer or a how to or some sort of guide. This could even be planners, workbooks, journals. Right. It doesn't even have to be you writing out a whole fiction story. But if that's your jam, go for it. And not needing to get the contract with a big publishing platform, you can actually make more money by self publishing and thanks to Amazon and you might be able to make by getting signing with a publishing company.

[Jen]

Yeah. So self publishing is what one of the big things that makes me passive income. Literally. It is truly passive income. And I make at least a couple hundred dollars a month.

[Jill]

Just even now.

[Jen]

Even now.

[Jill]

So how long have your books been out?

[Jen]

Since 2017. So it's nine years. A couple hundred bucks a month. It used to be a lot more when I was doing more promotion when the books were newer. So it ebbs and flows. The more effort you put in, the more you make. Duh. Okay, let's. If you haven't gotten that by now, you haven't been listening. So tune back in. The more effort you put in, the more you make. Right. So at least in this. Not if they tell you that in an MLM or network marketing, they're lying. Okay, that's where this doesn't apply. But for self publishing, I don't put any effort in and I still make a couple hundred bucks a month. But I did put a ton of work in on the front end. So mine is a shorter book. It's maybe like 20 to 30,000 words. Whereas buy what yout Love Without Going Broke, our traditionally published book that is available at libraries, bookstores, online, everywhere. That one is closer to I think 60,000. Yeah, 60 to 70,000. And even that for a traditionally published book is short. So you don't have to write a super long book. Mine's also in nonfiction. It's the no Spend Challenge Guide. And I also have meal planning on a budget and pay off your debt for good. But no Spend Challenge Guide is the one that makes the bulk of the sales annually. So you have a couple options for for self publishing I recommend going that route of taking one thing literally as niche as no spend challenges. Let's not go really broad but one how to that you can really write a guide that you can insert your experience. And this is something you don't need a platform for either. Again, just like print on Demand if you've got some good search engine optimization. If you read the book Launch by Chandler bolt, he owns self publishing.com that I think is the ultimate like everything you need to know about how to self publish online. I don't think you need his course. But the book is fire. So doing all of that to a T every single thing in the book will get you good results. You got to do everything though. And so that's like a lot of effort into the front end for that really passive income on the back end. Literally all I do, I log in every three months, set up a series of Kindle countdown sales and I log back out. That's all I do for maintenance. So I think that is really good. If you're a fiction writer, I think you could turn this into a full time business as a fiction writer because fiction readers are voracious. If you write a series with six books in it and you do that three times, you could be making a full time income. 20 books to 50k is a group on Facebook where they help people do that. But I think they have a website and maybe some articles too. But kind of that's the concept. If you write 20 books you should be able to earn 50,000. Now you're going to have to get those books edited. You're going to have to pay for a cover on each book.

[Jill]

You have to write all those books. Let's not forget 20 books.

[Jen]

But it's not super expensive like covers and editing. You won't pay more than $1,000 per book and if you're really on a budget and your books are shorter, you could get that down. The bulk of it is editing. So that's where I think fiction and nonfiction books are, where I think really the money is. You could also do what's called low content or guided books, planners, workbooks, journals, logs and trackers. Those are also a good option. But I do think self publishing, if you're not into building a platform, print on demand and self publishing are your best options. And when you add them again to a platform, it's just those like diversifying the passivity, incomes. It will just add on top of each other and be brilliant.

[Jill]

Yeah, this one's the most tempting to me, honestly, now that I have co written a book, I'm like, okay, maybe I could self publish something.

[Jen]

It is a. So I'm a writer at heart and the like planning out a journey for a reader to take to start at one point, which is I'm hopeless, I'm desperate. I need to figure out how to solve this problem, empathize with them on different parts of the journey and answer those questions that they may have. Which again is why it's good to be closer to the start than further away from it. Not even considering yourself an expert expert, but just a little bit ahead of the journey because you can empathize and remember all of those struggles and questions you had throughout the journey and then lead them to a desired outcome is really gratifying. And it's not. Yes, I do believe you need to be an expert to write on certain things. I think in the medical for sure. Or if you're writing about personal finance in general. Yes, but like small things. Like I wrote the book on literally meal planning on a budget. Right. One thing. How to pay off your debt for good. One thing, no spin challenges. So one thing, you don't need to be like the ultimate expert. You just need to have accomplished it and have enough perspective on that one thing to be able to take somebody else on the same journey.

[Jill]

And we've gotten there, folks. The Last 1, Number 7. That is the only actual truly passive way of earning money.

[Jen]

If you heard 1 through 6 and you're like, no, not for me, tune back in. Because number seven is for you. I don't care who you are. Seven is for you. It's investing. And hear me out, hear me out. Investing and compound interest is the only truly passive way to make money without doing anything. And I'm not talking about real estate investing. No, real estate investing is a lot of work. I'm saying investing in your 401k or your IRA and if you've maxed those out, your HSA taxable accounts, stuff like that. So when you put a dollar into an investing account, it grows, say it grows 7%. It's growing, it's growing, you know, 7 cents. That 7 cents you can put back in. And now your $7 grows at 7% and then more compound interest. So maybe it goes to seven or $1.14 and then we're compounding, right? We're never. Just a dollar is just adding right simple interest like your loans are. No, we're going, we're going up, up, up.

[Ad Voice 1]

It's.

[Jen]

That is compound interest and that is the best way to get paid passively. So if you are not into a side hustle, if 2026 is not the year of hustling for you, you need to be prioritizing investing like a maniac.

[Jill]

And to be fair, we're not talking about for being able to live off of that investing income within that year or the next year. Like primarily when we talk about investing, it is for retirement, right? Most of us don't have the level of wealth to start being able to draw from our investments. That's what we do in retirement. But this is still us earning passive income for ourselves. Maybe at a later date. It could be that because you've become so good at this and you do earn more and you do have some of these other passive incomes that you are able to eventually get there. That's not going to be where you start, right? We're going to start with the tax advantaged retirement accounts, but eventually it could be, it may be that you end up being able to earn money, pull that money out year over year from your investments. It's not currently what we're talking about. It is possible, but at the end of the day, earning interest on your money is, is the most passive thing you could do.

[Jen]

And that doesn't take away that it requires more work in the beginning, right? This, just because you don't have to do more physical work, you know, like building a business or making videos or whatever, does not mean you won't do work. You will do more work to invest more in the beginning. Because the more time money has to sit in the market, the more it makes, the more it can withstand market dips and still continue to compound so that you get to a point where your money is making the amount of money you need to live in a month. So if you need $4,000 to live eventually Your money gets to a point where it is earning $4,000 a month. And that is when you can get to a point where you can living entirely on your passive income, which is, you know, what the fire community wants to do. It's not what everyone needs to do or will do. But that is kind of like the idea. So starting early, what we did was in our 20s, we maxed out everything we could. IRAs, 401ks, we just maxed out everything. And now in our 30s, when we had kids and we're paying for daycare and a lot of other expenses, we're not investing, but that money is going. So say we invested an extra $50,000 by doing that. That $50,000 invested in our 20s versus had we had just spread it out over our 20s and 30s, it will make us more in the end that we did it in our 20s versus spreading it out over our 20s and 30s. We will end up with more money as a result of the same $50, $50,000 being invested. It's wild. You can, you can invest $50,000 over 10 years and let it grow 20 or over 15 years and let it grow 15 or over 20 years and let it grow 10. You will always end up with more money in the end. All things given the same if you invest more upfront, if you invested it over that 10 years and then let it grow in the 20, obviously if you keep investing like you're going to end up even better. But all things the same. The more time your money has to sit in the market, the more money it will make you while you sleep.

[Jill]

And you know what feels like passive income? We set it up once, it just keeps happening. I feel wealthy after.

[Jen]

I know we threw that link up there and we just keep getting paid dividends every single week in our sleep.

[Jill]

The bill of the week.

[Podcast Announcer]

That's right. It's time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name is William. Maybe you paid off your mortgage, maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. Duck Bills, Buffalo Bills, Bill Clinton. This is the bill of the week.

[Listener Sarah]

Hi, frugal friends. This is Sarah. My bill of the week is awesome. I got the best kind of mail today. It was an unexpected refund check from my GI doctor for over $300. And I had completely written that money off, so getting it back feels like free cash. It is such a nice surprise and a reminder that sometimes good things pop up right when you least expect them. Thanks for everything. You do love listening to you. Bye.

[Jen]

Aw, Sarah. Yay.

[Jill]

This is so fun. This is so fun. I love getting money. We love you.

[Jen]

You do love getting.

[Jill]

When you get money in the mail that you weren't expecting.

[Jen]

That's passive income.

[Jill]

That's some passive income.

[Jen]

Probably a refund. And do. Don't girl. That's true.

[Jill]

Don't girl.

[Jen]

That. That's not girl math.

[Ad Voice 2]

Yeah.

[Jill]

Here's the downside of that, though. Every time you go to the mail, you start to think, maybe I'm gonna get a check today. Like most days you don't get random checks.

[Jen]

I don't go, and I think I'm gonna get a bill today. I think most people go to the mail and they think they're gonna get a bill today. I don't know why you think you're gonna get money.

[Jill]

I've experienced getting money in the mail like refunds and. And then it just kind of like makes me think this is just gonna keep happening to me now. And it doesn't. But it's a good day when it does. And I. Sarah, glad it happened for you. Enjoy that refund check. Please spend it values based, values aligned. If you are listening and have a bill that you want to share with us. If it has to do with random money being found in your mailbox or found on the ground or found in your pockets, I love that. I love found money. Or if it has to do with being Bill and maybe you're dropping money. Okay. Doesn't matter. Your name is Bill. We want to hear from you. Frugalfriendspodcast.com/bill. Can't wait for it. And now it's time for.

[Jen]

All right, what's the first passive income you ever tried? And how did it go?

[Jill]

You first.

[Jen]

So I was trying to think back and I think I. I think I started with affiliate marketing when I was a baby blogger. Signing up for referrals and affiliate links was what I tried first. And when I. Then I think self publishing was next, I added a resource page. Kind of like we have in Buy what yout Love. We have a resource page that you go to. You can get the link when you get the book and it's got all these resources on it. And I did the same thing with no spend and put affiliate links in there. So it was good. All of these things that we mentioned, they build upon and they are intertwined. Like if you're going to do one, you might as well do the other six, right? So there's just no reason not to. And I yeah, that was the first thing I did, and it went well. And I still do it on things that we truly believe in. You know, we've got CIT for savings accounts. We've got ethos and ladder and fabric for life insurance, which we, like, believe are super important. Rakuten, which can save you a ton of money or get you cash back on, like, literally things you're already buying online and all the other things, you know, that. That we mention. Yeah, Mostly in the friend letter. So if you're not getting the friend letter. Frugalfriendspodcast.com, we send an email every time we upload an episode, and we'll also kind of, like, give something educational, and oftentimes that will include an affiliate link to a relevant place.

[Jill]

I'm realizing that so much of my trying to earn money is so, so active, which I'm gonna have to dig into the reasons behind that later on my own. But Eric and I did try to have, like, a vlog at one point, like a YouTube channel when we were living in the motorhome, like, documenting the renovation of the motorhome lifestyle within the motorhome. And, Jennifer, if we would have stuck.

[Jen]

With it, that video. I. I saw it. The video did well.

[Jill]

If we would have stuck with it, we would have done so.

[Listener Sarah]

We would.

[Jill]

I wouldn't be sitting here right now. I'd be truly retired. I'd be 100% retired.

[Jen]

Well, it's just another, like, sell for YouTube that they said it and forget it and they never got monetized. Yeah, but, like, without any promotion.

[Jill]

Yeah, we've got, like, 20,000 views on one of the videos.

[Jen]

Yeah, those videos popped off, and YouTube did that for them. Yeah. Yeah.

[Jill]

And this was 2016. This was before everybody was making, like, the big YouTube channels now, talking about, like, van life or minimalist life, whatever they they are after they watch your video.

[Jen]

I'm like, no, I just. There's, like, three of them.

[Jill]

We couldn't keep up with recording and editing, and it just felt like so much work.

[Jen]

It's work up front, which is why the first thing you hire out is editing.

[Jill]

And you don't know. You're not making any money off of it. So you don't know, like, is all of this effort gonna work out for me? So there is an element of, like, you really have to enjoy it to some degree to be able to keep going with it. But, yeah, man, I look back and I'm just like, if I had kept going. But you know what? We've Kept going with this and I'm so grateful for that. Like, we can say we weren't making any money off of it. We just loved it enough to keep with it. And the consistency has paid off.

[Jen]

Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

[Jill]

Well, thanks, everyone for being here. Thank you also for reading our book, which we did get traditionally published so that you can get it from library. Okay, so if you read the book, even if you've read it because you got it from the library, please leave us a review like this one from Karen. It's five stars. I just love Jen and Jill. Their podcast is one of my favorites. And so I bought this audiobook. I'm really glad I did because it was just as enjoyable as listening to the podcast.

[Ad Voice 2]

Yes.

[Jill]

This book isn't a nuts and bolts finance book. It's way more than that. This gets into what money is as a tool and what emotions dance around money. The soul of what life is like, dealing with money and making decisions that uphold your values and goals rather than budget graphs and piles of numbers on a chart. If you're sick of a capitalist society and Dave Ramsey in equal measure, but know you still have to buy stuff and pay attention to finances, this will help you keep your soul intact at least.

[Jen]

Karen, what a phenomenal review you get us.

[Jill]

We feel seen.

[Jen]

Oh, my gosh. Thank you so much, Karen, for reviewing. If you've read the book, we would so appreciate a review on Amazon. Even if you didn't buy it there, we would love if you would subscribe to the YouTube channel. It helps us grow. This channel, which we just told you, is so important to the foundation of everything that we do. Even if you're an audio listener, if you come over here and just hit subscribe on YouTube, we would be eternally grateful. And let us know in the comments what you think about passive income, what you're going to do or what you're not going to do, what you've tried. I hope that everyone's at least going to invest, minimum. I hope that for you. And we will. We'll see you next time. Bye. Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni. Jill, when you were making notes mid episode on our last episode, you wrote photos, but initially you wrote photos like potato like you would potatoes. Like. It was a mashup of photos and potatoes.

[Jill]

Oh, wow. Did you correct it?

[Jen]

No, you corrected it.

[Jill]

Oh.

[Jen]

And you were there and I was just like, oh, potatoes. And you love potatoes.

[Jill]

I do love potatoes.

[Jen]

And then that's what I thought about.

[Jill]

So now you're hungry.

[Jen]

These are the things that I think about when we're recording episodes is not always the episode that I'm thinking about or the top. The subject matter. Sometimes I'm thinking about, like, oh, potatoes. Jill loves potatoes.

[Jill]

It is wild how our brains can not, like, totally multitask, but kind of just be in a different place while still semi present. Like, there are so many times when.

[Jen]

I look at you dissociate from reality.

[Jill]

I'm also looking out the window and there are so many interesting things that can happen out there. Like for. Since at one point you were talking and I could see the moon and a small airplane coming in for landing, and I was just like, that'd be a cute photo. I wonder where they're landing at. Like, are they going to St. Pete Clearwater or are they going to. What's that smaller airport?

[Jen]

The one.

[Jill]

Yeah, yeah. And then there's also another building being built and there's cranes happening and things going back and forth. And sometimes I'll try and get a look at, like, what's the progress happening? You can. A lot of times, like in the video, where I'm just like, clearly looking at something far off in the distance.

[Jen]

And I'm thinking about potato. I'm looking at my screen, but I'm thinking about potatoes. So that's a behind the scenes of a passive income. And, you know, every podcaster is doing the same thing. When you look at Alex Cooper, Joe Rogan, you know, at some point she was sitting there looking at Cardi B Being like, potatoes. Maybe not Cardi B, but somebody.

[Jill]

I mean, they're probably. You all are probably listening to us thinking about potatoes randomly.

[Jen]

Yeah. Thinking about if you're. If you're a real one, you're still here. This doesn't play on the YouTube version, so why don't you go over to the YouTube comments and comment potatoes and let us know you're a real one.

[Jill]

Ooh, that's a good challenge.

[Jen]

All right. Okay, bye.