When it comes to passive income, few people alive today have performed quite as well as legendary investor Warren Buffett.
Buffett earns hundreds of millions of pounds of passive income annually in the form of dividends from companies in which he invests. Over time, that has added up to billions of dollars.
Such an achievement may have little obvious relevance to the majority of people. But when it comes to earning money without working for it, a few lessons from Buffett’s approach could help me along the way.
Think like a business owner
Rather than seeing shares as just pieces of paper, Buffett thinks of them as a stake in a business.
So when considering whether to invest in companies such as Bank of America or Apple, he looks at the overall business and decides whether he thinks it has attractive commercial prospects. Only if it does – and he finds the valuation attractive – does he invest.
In other words, Buffett never touches a share solely because it currently offers a high dividend yield.
Compound dividends now for the future
Not only does Buffett own a lot of shares, his company Berkshire Hathaway owns stakes in a wide variety of businesses. Berkshire throws off a lot of spare cash each year, yet it does not pay a dividend. Why?
Buffett prefers to reinvest the money in building Berkshire, for example by buying more businesses’ shares.
As a small private investor, I can do the same thing to try and build my passive income streams. Rather than taking out dividends as cash, I can simply reinvest them in more shares.
In the short term, that means I would not see the dividends hitting my bank account as cash. Over the longer term though, it could enable me to build my share portfolio even if I did not put in any more money myself. That could hopefully enable me to earn more passive income in future.
Admit mistakes
Buffett has made some great investing decisions. But he has also made ones that turned to be very expensive mistakes. An example was the Tesco stake he built then sold at a large loss around a decade ago.
Sometimes, when owning a share that has generated substantial passive income in the past, it can be difficult to recognise that the business is changing and is unlikely to be as lucrative in future. But dividends are never guaranteed and past performance is not necessarily an indication of what will come in future.
So, like Buffett, whether buying or already owning shares, I try to take a level-headed view of how I think a business might perform in future.
If I think it has a strong competitive advantage that could help it generate sizeable cash flows to fund future dividends, it might merit a place in my passive income portfolio!
The post Warren Buffett has earned billions in passive income. Here’s how! appeared first on The Motley Fool UK.
Our analysis has uncovered an incredible value play!
This seems ridiculous, but we almost never see shares looking this cheap. Yet this recent ‘Best Buy Now’ has a price/book ratio of 0.51. In plain English, this means that investors effectively get in on a business that holds £1 of assets for every 51p they invest!
Of course, this is the stock market where money is always at risk — these valuations can change and there are no guarantees. But some risks are a LOT more interesting than others, and at The Motley Fool we believe this company is amongst them.
What’s more, it currently boasts a stellar dividend yield of around 8.5%, and right now it’s possible for investors to jump aboard at near-historic lows. Want to get the name for yourself?
setButtonColorDefaults(“#5FA85D”, ‘background’, ‘#5FA85D’);
setButtonColorDefaults(“#43A24A”, ‘border-color’, ‘#43A24A’);
setButtonColorDefaults(“#FFFFFF”, ‘color’, ‘#FFFFFF’);
})()
More reading
A once-in-a-decade opportunity to buy Scottish Mortgage shares!
Is the dividend safe for the FTSE 250’s Ashmore?
How I’d snap up cheap shares now to prepare for a 2024 market boom
I’d build a second income with shares of this banking giant
How to think as an investor
Bank of America is an advertising partner of The Ascent, a Motley Fool company. C Ruane has no position in any of the shares mentioned. The Motley Fool UK has recommended Apple and Tesco Plc. Views expressed on the companies mentioned in this article are those of the writer and therefore may differ from the official recommendations we make in our subscription services such as Share Advisor, Hidden Winners and Pro. Here at The Motley Fool we believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors.
(The post is shared from syndication feed, it is not edited by Analyzing Market Team.)
