Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Lately I have been thinking about how I can diversify my income by picking up self employed trades that have inversly correlated (or at least independent) demands.

When I graduate I would like to start tutoring math/science and eventually start investing surplus, but I am also thinking about picking up another trade that would help to decrease variation in income early on and help insure against the risk of prolonged periods of economic downturn in the future (when both investments and demand for education would suffer).

One idea I have concidered is computer repair. I imagine in a depression the demand for a working computer would still be decent. This would mostly be independent from the demand for education, I think.

Have you concidered how your income streams correlate with one another? What trades would have inversly correlated demands?

Computers are moving towards all in one disposable items. Making a living doing repair will be tough.

I think you are dancing around the concept of demand elasticity. Certain industries, like insurance, have very inelastic demand. This raises job security, but comes with other trade offs. Lots of regulatory BS to deal with, for instance.

IMO you are better off looking for areas where those who have money also have need, and specializing in what they value. Specialists in hard to fill niches get paid far more than generalists. Information security is a sample specialty.

Diversify when you allocate the resulting capital.

The thing is, I just really do not want to specialize. It sounds awfully boring to me even if it is just for a few years. I know it is more efficient though.

I was thinking more on the software side of computer repair. Your right about the increasing trend towards all-in-one devices with hidden complexity. I imagine many people just getting a new iPhone when something breaks that would otherwise be a very simple fix by taking it apart (which is getting harder and harder to do).

If you tutor math and run a debt collection firm at the same time, you should have something to do no matter what the economy looks like

There's probably good money to be made in repairing and re-selling the stuff (including computers) people get rid of because it's 'broken'. Ego regularly profits from items that he finds that are barely broken (or not broken at all).