The 19 Year Old Who Taught A Circus Girl the Term Passive Income

I am a 30 year old retiree. When say this to people outside my industry, they assume I:

1. Retired by choice

2. Am Totally set for life

I wish. Modern circus artists are a small niche group of people and there is not much data collected about us. The closest I could find was this 2004 cross cultural study of dancers from 11 different countries. It's a pretty interesting read, if you're into that sort of thing. If you're not, let me summarize:

92.3  percent of dancers enter the field aware that their career will be relatively short but have no plans for what to for income after.

And this was me. I just arrived in Montreal from my final tour in Australia. I knew I had quit performing, but I had no clue what to do next. All I knew was:

• I wasn't done travelling the world.
• I couldn't work in circus if I wasn't performing.
• I didn't want to be one of those people who were shocked at 50 when they realized they had no retirement savings and had to work 3 jobs to even think about catching up.

And then, I met Julia in a pho' restaurant on Rue Jarry (a place I highly recommend for good pho', life changing conversations not guaranteed). Julia is 19, following her boyfriend as he does his contract with Cirque du Soliel, and always on her phone. Also, she told me, she just got her first mortgage. My actual response, word for word was:

"Wait. WUT."

"Yeah, when Rikki is done with his 2 year contract on Cirque, we'll have enough money to travel the world without working at all."

...

Let's take a second to process something: being a performer for Cirque is like being an experimental brain surgeon. You have an impressive job for which you are earning active income. However, a lucky entry level cirque artist may make around $30k, a far cry from the salary of an entry level neurosurgeon ($400k). There is no WAY that this guy could possibly leave cirque and take his girl across the globe unless...

"Yeah, we are just generating lots of passive income."

Oh. Of course, passive income.  

What in the name of Olga Pikhienko* is passive income.

I went home that night and started googling. Turns out, passive income is the exact opposite of a job in Cirque du Soliel, but with all the sexy benefits. I found BiggerPockets and I was hooked on the concept but could I pull it off in practice?

*famous Russian contortionist