$20k/month salary or $10k/month in passive income?
Most people will spend 40 years chasing bigger payslips…and still die broke. Not because they didn’t earn enough, but because they didn't build anything that could outlive their payslips.
Let’s raise the stakes: Would you rather $50k/month salary vs $10k/month in passive?
I’d still take the $10k. Every time.
Why? Because I’d rather spend my active energy chasing asymmetric upside - subscription software, cashflowing assets, anything that can scale beyond my time and effort.
Here’s the problem: a high-paying 9-5 job isn’t success. It’s modern day wage slavery dressed up as “career advancement”.
Whether you’re earning $20k or $50k a month, your lifestyle doesn’t change much. Maybe you upgrade your apartment, buy property, or splurge on a car. But now you’ve got a fatter mortgage and bigger bills to pay. Same hamster wheel - just running faster.
And here’s the kicker: the more you earn, the heavier the chain.
Climbing the corporate ladder means more responsibility, more stress, and often less time for health, family, or creative pursuits. I’ve been there. The higher you go, the more accountable you are for the company’s P&L. And the higher you rank, the bigger you are as a cost centre to the company. And when the economy turns? High earners are expensive to keep…and first to go.
What shocks me most is how many people who’ve “made it” in corporate life are still trapped.
That’s why the vehicle matters.
Someone quietly growing a SaaS product or a cashflowing asset is compounding month after month. Customers accumulate. Cashflow stacks. Meanwhile, many top corporate performers I know could be building their thing - but instead, they’re building for someone else.
Freedom doesn’t come from wages. It comes from ownership.
And no - starting a one-man consultancy isn’t the answer if it just means working longer hours for the same trap. That’s trading one cage for another.
That said, working a 9-5 can make sense - if it’s a means to an end. Your take-home pay is ammunition. Use it to buy assets that generate $10k/month in passive income, and you’re buying your future freedom. The danger is when the job becomes the plan instead of the stepping stone.
Yes, there are exceptions. RSUs, ESOPs, partnerships, CEO seats with equity. But they’re slow, political, and rare. RSUs only pay on a liquidity event (if it ever happens). Partnerships take a decade of billable-hour grind. And CEO seats? Usually drenched in office politics (yuck!).
You can play their game…
Or you can build something you own, where your upside isn’t capped by your salary.