How Much Money Do I Need to Invest to Make $3,000 a Month?

Buy an Online Business

On Flippa and similar sites, you can find thousands of opportunities to invest in an online business. You can find investments ranging from e-commerce stores through content sites generating revenue from ads to subscription-based apps. You should be able to find good, stable businesses that you can buy by paying 2.5 to 3 times their annual profits. By this calculation, to get $3,000 a month, you would need to invest around $108,000 in a revenue-generating online business. Here’s how the math works:

• A business generating $3,000 a month is generating $36,000 a year ($3,000 x 12 months).
• If the business owner is asking for 3x its annual revenue, that’s a price point of $108,000 ($36,000 x 3 years).

A growing online business is likely to give you more than $3,000 a month. Furthermore, you can sell the online business at any time, possibly make extra money which you can then reinvest.

If you find a good deal, an online business is a quick and low-effort way to make $3,000 a month.

Invest in Rental Properties

Buying rental properties is a popular real estate investment strategy used to generate passive income.

For rental properties, the rate of return will depend on your specific area, vacancy rate, whether you are taking out a mortgage to buy the property, and many other factors. In general, most real estate experts agree that the expected yearly return in rent will be around 10% of the property’s value in the USA.

We then have to take into consideration maintenance costs, so let’s assume that apart from the maintenance costs, you make a yearly net profit of 8%.

In this case, you’ll need to invest roughly $450,000 in a few properties to make $3,000 a month. Here’s how we calculated this number:

• If we want $3,000 a month, then we want $36,000 per year ($3,000 x 12 months).
• If we invest $450,000 in rental properties that generate 8% annual returns, then we can get that $36,000 per year (8% of $450,000 is $36,000).

On top of the rent that you’ll be collecting each month, your properties could continue to appreciate in value, so if you decide to sell them in the future, you would also make a profit on the sale.

Alternatively, you could buy properties with mortgages, paying less upfront. That means you also generate less profit, as you have to pay for your mortgages. The upside here is that someone else is paying your mortgage for you – your tenant. A good strategy to consider in this case would be house hacking – investing in a larger property, keeping one part of it for yourself to live in, and renting out the remaining space.

Invest in ETFs

Another popular option used to generate passive income is through investing in stocks. For example, the return on investment for the S&P500 index is different every year, but an average return over the past 90 years was 9.8%.

It’s impossible to know how much the return on investment for the S&P500 will be in the future, so we’ll use the average from the past 90 years as a guide.

One could think that we could simply do the following math:

• If we want $3,000 a month, then we want $36,000 per year ($3,000 x 12 months).
• If we invest $367,347 at 9.8% return rate, then we can get $36,000 per year (9.8% of $367,347 is $36,000).

A safer approach is to follow the FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) proposal.

According to FIRE, your portfolio should cover 25 times your annual expenses. Then, if you withdraw 4% of your portfolio every year, your portfolio will continue to grow and won’t be compromised. We can apply this formula to the goal of making $3,000 a month like this:

• $3,000 x 12 months x 25 years = $900,000.
• Assuming you invest that cash into the S&P500 index, if you now apply the 4% safe withdrawal rate over $900,000, you get $36,000 a year and, consequently, $3,000 a month forever.

Conclusion

There are many different ways to generate passive income and make $3,000 a month. In this article, we analyzed just three different approaches you could take. As we have demonstrated, the initial investment varies considerably depending on the approach you choose. The approach you decide to take will depend on your risk profile, how much money you have and are willing to invest, as well as the time and effort you’re willing to commit to generating the returns.

There are many other ways to invest your money and make $3,000 a month. You can find some other ideas in our article on alternative investments. You have to find the most appealing investment assets to you, build knowledge, and take action when ready.

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