Is it worth working at home to earn money? Can I earn more money working at home?
I think the right question you should ask yourself is: Can i work at home? is it possible? do I have a calm, private place at home to work from? what will be the motivation while working from? If you got answers to these questions, you will find if you can get money from home or not, because any place you can do work from will give you money, just work! I don't mean to be rude, but if you have to ask if you can earn a living from home, the answer is 'probably not.'  Most people are more financially productive at a traditional workplace, otherwise more people would quit the jobs they hate and work at home or develop their hobbies into businesses.   Making a living from home requires being a self-starter and finding clients/customers who accept such arrangements. First, be assured no one earns a living stuffing envelopes, being a mystery online shopper, or selling low to moderate quantities of stuff to their circle of friends.  A few earn a living flipping houses, cars, or shares, or stuff on eBay, but with considerable risk, capital, effort, luck, contacts, and experience/skill.   A few more find success by inventing something or developing a business. Once again, not as easy as it sounds.   You can look for professional work freelancing, or find grunt work on something like vWorker. But these are easily as competitive as the job market, perhaps moreso.  In the case of vWorker you are competing against people in southern asia who almost surely can beat you on price. "It completely depends on what type of work you intend to do. Are you intending to run/setup your own business? Or stay with your current employer, but work from home instead of going to the office? If thats the case, then yes it is a good idea, since you will save on commuting costs amongst other things If you are asking about working from home under one of those ""work from home piecework"" schemes, I would be wary. Many of them require you do an insane amount of piecework, for literally peanuts, so it might not be worth the effort (since you could earn 2, 3x as much in a supermarket shift of the same duration)"
It is great that you came up with a plan to own a rental home, free and clear, and also move up in home.  It is also really good of you to recognize that curtailing spending has a profound effect on your net worth, many people fail to acknowledge that factoid and prefer to instead blame things outside their control.  Good work there.  Here are some items of your plan that I have comments on. 11mo by aggressively curtailing elective spending How does your spouse feel about this?  They have to be on board, but it is such a short time frame this is very doable. cashing out all corporate stock, This will probably trigger capital gains.  You have to be prepared to pay the tax man, but this is a good source of cash for your plan.  You also have to have an additional amount that will likely be due next April 15th. redirecting all contributions to my current non-matched R401(k) This is fine as well because of the short time frame. withdrawing the principal from a Roth IRA This I kind of hate.  We are so limited in money that we can put into tax favored plans, that taking money out bothers me.  Also it is that much more difficult to save in a ROTH because of the sting of taxes.  I would not do this, but would favor instead to take a few extra months to make your plan happen. buy home #2 How are you going to have a down payment for home #2?  Is your intention to pay off home and save a while, then purchase home #2?  I would do anything to avoid PMI.   Besides I would take some time to live in a paid for house. Overall I would grade your plan a B.  If take a bit longer, and remove the withdrawing from the ROTH, it then becomes an A-.  With a good explanation of how you come up with the down payment for house 2, you could easily move to an A+. To generate a passive income you need lots of TIME or MONEY, you are short of both. As other people have said, do whatever you can to reduce you spending and start saving.  Don’t think “I work very hard, therefore I deserve xxx”, start thinking “x cost y hrs of work, is it truly worth it?”   (Remember to consider your take home pay per hr, not you before tax pay!) What would it take to get paid more per hr in one of your jobs?  Maybe investing a little time/money in training would increase your pay.  Doing your job a little better can often lead to a good outcome. (I see from your profile that you are a new computer programmer; I assume that one of your jobs is programming, if so put your time and effort into it.   As you become more skilful within a few years you will start earning more.   Maybe even give up one of the other jobs by spending less so you can do better at programming) Then as your incomes goes up, don’t allow your spending to increase, save the additional money. "Here's what Suze Orman has to say about it: Good debt is money you borrow to purchase an asset, such as a home you can afford. History shows that home values generally rise in step with the inflation rate, so a mortgage is good debt. Student loans are, too, because they're an investment in the future. Census data pegs the average lifetime earnings of a high school graduate at a million dollars below that of someone with a bachelor's degree. Bad debt is money you borrow to buy a depreciating asset or to finance a ""want"" rather than a ""need."" A car is a depreciating asset; from the day you drive it off the lot, it starts losing value. Credit card balances or a home equity line of credit that's used to pay for indulgences—vacations, shopping, spa days—is bad debt." Are you kidding me? There's only one reason. Greed. If CEOs pay their workers less they take more home for themselves. Period. There is no other reason.  It's wrong, because the front line workers are the ones who make the company work. They're the ones who earn 90% of the money. But they get 10% of the profits. It's crooked, and it's greedy, and that's all. Ask any successful person, what's more important, time or money, they'll all say the same thing--time. One can always make more money, but you'll never get the time back you invest. Now, would YOU rather invest 40 hours of your time at $13, or 30 hours of your time at $15. Tell me what's asinine. Choosing to give up your time for less dollars per hour or more? "Neither you nor others have mentioned the costs of being a homeowner.  First, there are monetary costs. If you own a house, you have to pay taxes. They will vary by jurisdiction, but are usually not zero. You also need insurance, which again comes with monthly rates.  Then, once in a while, you'll be hit with unpleasant lump sum payments. In 30 years, the mortgage is over and you own the house - but by that time, it will probably need a new roof. That's in the price range of a new car. And over that time, you'll rack up several other repairs which your landlord covers when you rent.  Another thing which feels less like an expense emotionally but ends up thinning your wallet is the cosmetic changes you make just because it's your own home. You wouldn't put marble floors in the bathroom if you rent, but you might be tempted to if you live in the house. It might be even worth it from a life satisfaction point of view, but we are talking finance right now, and that's a minus.  And then there are the opportunity costs. A house binds you geographically. You may pass up on a nice job offer because your house is too far away, for example. Or you might experience liquidity problems, because a house is difficult to turn into money in a hurry. If you are able to do so, it is usually a much larger sum than you need, and you are paying the costs inherent in that large transaction. These are just examples, you can probably come up with more costs.  Then, it is not sure how much money you can get of the house if you change your mind. Say you take this job at the other end of the country, or you become a parent of four and need more space. At the time you decide to sell, the market may have gone down due to the overall state of the economy, or to the house location's popularity, or your own house may have turned undesirable (what if you get a mold infestation which would only go away if you strip it to the concrete and rebuild?) You could let it to renters, but that's a hassle of its own. It takes time to find renters, it may be expensive (income tax, regulations like Energieausweis in Germany), it is risky (if they don't pay, you might not see money even if you sue them).  Then there is the problem that prices reflect not some kind of ""true"" value, but the intersection of supply and demand. And the home market is not as efficient as in a first semester microeconomics textbook. The buyers of private homes deal in small volumes, have little knowledge in the market, pay intermediaries' cuts, and are emotionally attached to the idea of ""owning my own house"". This drives demand up and creates higher prices than if you had perfectly rational actors on both sides. People pay money for the feeling of being home owners, so those who forego spending on that feeling have more money to invest in something else.  Owning something always causes expenses. You have to calculate the savings of having the house vs. the expenses of having it, before you can decide if it is a good deal or not. If you only calculate one side of the equation, you'll be badly mistaken." Did you plan on providing evidence or were you just arguing without any support for your claim?  Why does working 70 hours/wk make your chances improve.  I know plenty of people in finance who have no chance of 250k and work 70hr weeks. &gt;Hourly rates aside   Really? The guy who defines success by the $ they make doesn't want to compare hourly rates?  Ok, let's compare standard of living.   My buddy lives in Thailand at the moment. He travels around but has been there about 6 months.  He has a passive income of $55k derived from rental units here in the US, his blog, and online business.  He works about 5 hours a week.   He rents a beach house for $450/month and his expenses are about $20/day to live quite well eating out every meal, working out, etc. That $55k is about 15x the local median wage.   Your $500k in the US is about 10x the average wage in the US and if you live in an expensive city like NYC, DC, or SF then it's much less.  You work 80 hours a week and he works 5 and has a higher relative standard of living.    Who is more succesful?  &gt;I'd rather have the half mill annually  I'm sorry you never learned that we should work to live, not live to work. Its truly sad.