There was an article on Yahoo Finance yesterday about monetizing hobbies as part of a retirement plan. This is something I have been writing about for a long time (this oldest post I was able to find was just from February 2007) and so it is nice to see it covered elsewhere.

The article profiled a photographer, a guy who makes mobiles and the writer of the article is himself retired doing a little writing. None of these people make a lot of money but they enjoy what they do and something that could take 10% off of the burden of your portfolio and gives you purpose is absolutely a positive.

And I think 10% could be a low number with a little of planning and leg work done ahead of time. I have made many references to my 77 year old neighbor who charges $60 per hour for backhoe work and he can have all the work he wants. I have another neighbor (whom I’ve mentioned) who has plow on the front of a snow cat.

Are you a car buff? What about house calls for cars? Are you handy? How about working as a Mr. Fixit? What about something related to your job or, if you don’t like your work that much maybe something related to some aspect of your job you do like?

Are you a sports fan? We have had two minor league teams come to our town in the last couple of years and there may be another one and there is work available there too. One family member in a bigger city was offered part time work for a major league baseball team, there is work available in these sorts of places.

None of it pays much, or at least should not be expected to but so what? The key is that this is something you one way or another enjoy being around and again if you need your portfolio to generate $60,000 in 2008 dollars (which implies a pretty big portfolio) do you think $6000 might be realistic? If it is realistic then you can see how it would be beneficial to reduce the draw on your portfolio.

There are infinite possibilities for this.

Last 5 posts by Roger Nusbaum

• The Big Picture for the Week of November 15, 2009 - November 14th, 2009
• Process Drilldown - October 23rd, 2009
• Sunday Morning Coffee 10-18-09 - October 18th, 2009
• A Little Followup From This Morning - October 8th, 2009
• Wednesday Roundup - October 7th, 2009