Turn Your Hobby to Income

It is fun to have an hobby. It is also good to have one to relieve stress by spending some time doing your hobby or doing something totally different than what you always do in your daily work. Some hobby need time, money and energy to do. When you are young, time is abundant. While money may be just enough for your life. And, energy is easily replenished.


A hobby should complement your life, not totally separated. Yes, a hobby is used to get away from your daily life. By doing different things than what you do at your work place, your brain can have some rest and re-energized. But, it must be calculated into your budget planning, lifelong learning, and future life you want to be. As you get older, your expenditure increases due to having a family, or enlarging your family members, some of your children go for further study, buying larger car, and so on.

Thus, it is important your hobby can generate some income. And if you are persistence with your hobby, it may become your main income. I was formally trained as an electrical engineer. My hobby was to write computer programs, play chess, read books and do community service. As I began my journey as a consultant or electronic design engineer, customers began to ask to also provide software solutions. Hence, my hobby became my additional income. A few years later, writing programs is a norm in electronic engineering study and practice. Thus, I have no problem to adapt to this new demand.

While involving in community services and design consultant, I realized that property investment is crucial in personal wealth growth. I saw many problems related to small business, house and shop rental. After purchasing my first two houses, I started to plan to buy a shop. I finally managed to do so six years later. My financial didn't immediately improve. Like playing a chess, when you grab a material, you need time to stabilize your financial. In order to improve my investment, I read a lot of books related to personal financial planning. The best book that ever inspire me was THE RICHEST MAN IN BABYLON which I first encountered in 2009.

You learned a lot when you are in a difficult situation. So did I. The book inspire me so much that soon I translated the book into Malay language. I did some analysis to better adapt the knowledge to the modern financial instruments. It took a few years more before I can really adapt the knowledge in the book into practice. Surprisingly, some of the knowledge in the book was given to me by different people in different manners. But, the strategic and psychology behind them are the same.

The main point is you should have more than a hobby in your life. As you grow older, you should have more hobbies. Be mindful, as you grow older, it becomes harder to replenish your energy. You will have more responsibility which means you will have less time for yourself. Thus, you should learn and adapt to make an income from your hobbies. Therefore as you grew older, your hobbies may support your future life. The latest hobby in my life is property investment. There are many activities associated with property investment. Choose what you like so that they can be your strength.