^[2]The holy grail of financial management has been to find a system, a magic bullet, or a golden key that will require work in the beginning but pay off forever –sort of a goose to lay the golden egg. There are legitimate ways to make extra money ^[3] but they mostly require a continual input of work to function.

Artisans in many creative fields receive the benefits of royalties and other licensing agreements. By working on a song, a book, a screenplay, or software for a period of time, these craftspeople get paid for their work multiple times (except for pirated versions of their work).

The real question is: can the average person like you and me develop a “royalty” system that pays us over and over for work we do only once? Does a system like that actually exist? Yes it does, but maybe not in the form you’re thinking.

The average person can get “royalties” from:

• Budgeting ^[4]
• Insurance shopping
• Savings accounts
• Refinancing a mortgage ^[5]
• Reducing expenses

Budgeting

Spend some time setting up a budget ^[4], and get ready to get “paid” over and over. Seriously, the minutes you spend formulating your spending plan will come back to you in the form of recaptured dollars over and over. You cannot recapture these dollars unless you know where they’re going. Once you’ve caught them and plugged the leaks, you can redirect those dollars into a savings account ^[6] and later into a well diversified investment plan. The positives from a budget ^[4] just keep on compounding.