H.Yi and Ash.S both mentioned something about “trading time for money”. The proposed alternative is to make your money work harder to provide for livelihood [3], so you don’t need to do it yourself. So you could spend your time on something else. What’s that something else? For me, it is some form of office work, rather than endless vacation. Therefore, I willingly trade time for … something to engage me.

[3] If we could _control_ exclub comparison, then livelihood burn rate can be taken care of already, so we don’t need to trade time for money since last year.

— babysitting still required… in reality. Very few nonwork incomes are truly passive and buy-n-forget, like CPF.

In the proposed alternative, you still need to spend time managing your portfolio. Some people like to say “It requires only 30min a day” but I suspect that’s partly exaggeration partly cheating. The individual needs to commit herself, review past trades, apply mental energy, take it on as a serious business.

REIT and div-stocks require babysitting when DYOC declines.

Rental properties (like mine in SEAsia) require some work with the local agents.

If the passive income stops being passive, then you are still trading time for money. That includes rental property management and day trading.