Making 5 Streams of Income Straight Out of College

The simple truth of starting to build your wealth as soon as you start working (or even before then).

Don’t get me wrong, I am in no way in much better of a financial position than a lot of my peers that have also recently graduated college.

After what ended up being five years and a few major shifts in my life’s plan, I am now the proud recipient of a BBA in Financial Planning… and about $30k of debt.

Fortunately, I used a lot of my free time at the back end of my college career to build up a couple of income streams that are helping me crawl out of debt quickly, and start building true wealth earlier on.

Here are what they are.

1.) Full-Time Job.

Despite what the entrepreneurs of the internet are saying these days. The first and foremost stream of income for damn near anyone today should be their full-time job. Especially if you are just getting out of college (or still in college for that matter).

Landing a 9–5 job, in my opinion, should be a priority for just about anyone that is looking to make money, and it comes with a whole lot of benefits that don’t get enough credit.

Solid pay (in most cases) along with benefits and a good work schedule is honestly hard to beat. Over the long term, you can obviously make a lot more money with freelancing or your own business. But a job is where you should start looking if financial stability is what you need.

In a lot of cases, your full-time job will also play a huge role in developing you and your skills into what they will need to be to see success at a business further on down the road… if that’s the route you want to take.

Otherwise, you can get promoted at your job as you are developed, and that, of course, leads to a larger income as well.

The bottom line is to realize full-time jobs are a great source of income, and it most cases will be a person’s primary source of income. There is nothing wrong with that. It’s where most success starts.

2.) Part-Time Job

Now, who would’ve guessed that you could build yourself two streams of income by getting…. well… two jobs?

I apologize if you feel like you are wasting your time reading this article now… but I can assure you moving forward you won’t find anything revolutionary.

Soon after graduating college, I managed to land a part-time job in sports that I was able to do outside of my work hours, and also still have time for my freelancing career. (Whoops… spoiler alert)

The best advice when it comes to landing a part-time job is to try and find something you will enjoy, and don’t go for whatever the highest paying job is. Go for what will help you grow the most as a person.

I have always had a knack for finding a way to monetize my learning, and this job in sports was no exception. It was a job to work on the media production team for a minor league baseball team, and I saw it as a huge opportunity to learn more about video production, writing, and content management, which are all skills that could greatly help me advance my career.

Aside from that, the job paid just enough to cover my car payment during baseball season.

Not a bad deal.

3.) Business

In college I had taken it upon myself to start creating content, and not too long after I started creating my own content, I found myself charging to help others create theirs.

In short, I have been making money by charging for video editing, podcast production, writing, and other services for the better part of three years now.

There was actually a decent period of time where this is what I was doing full-time… so there was enough money coming in to cover the bills.

Don’t let that discourage you from having a side business even if it isn’t enough to cover the bills though. Over time I have learned that having a side hustle can be even better than having a 7-figure business in a lot of ways.

Whether you use the money from your side-hustle as play money, rent money, or just extra money to cover bills… it can really make a huge difference in your financial health long-term.

Starting with a service business can yield results relatively quickly… just make sure you find something you will want to spend your time doing.

4.) Content

The cat’s out of the bag on this one… I have made some “passive income” off of Medium.

While this stream of income has BY FAR been the least successful for me… I can say first-hand that making real money online is possible.

Some months I will still get a deposit of maybe $0.21 dropped into my account from an old article or old podcast somewhere on the internet… but even that is enough to leave a little hope that content can become a substantial source of passive income at some point.

5.) Investments

Last but not least we have investments.

In this case, I am talking about simple investments in index funds, ETFs, dividend stocks, etc.

No crazy amount of money is being brought in yet through real estate or cryptocurrency, but getting started with some basic investment income is a good move out of college, of course.

You don’t need to do much more than putting some amount of your income into a retirement account or other investment account, and you can slowly but surely start building up this stream of income.

It doesn’t matter who you are.