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If you’re looking to boost your income in 2025, you have options. You could pick up a side hustle and see what it pays you. Or, you could take the easier way out and set yourself up with passive income.

But it’s important to be realistic about the amount of money each option will pay you. If you’re hoping to see your income increase by $300 to $500 a month, you’re going to need a side hustle unless you happen to have a lot of money to work with already.

But if you’re happy with a small income boost and you value your free time, then you may want to go the passive income route. Here are three moves to look at in that regard.

1. Get a better rate on your savings

Your savings account probably isn’t going to make you rich. But the more interest you earn on the money you have in savings, the more passive income you get to enjoy. And even if it’s a small amount, hey, money is money.

Right now, a lot of top savings accounts are paying around 4% APY. The tricky thing, though, is that savings account rates aren’t guaranteed, and they could fall in the new year.

But let’s say you have $10,000 in savings and those 4% rates stick around. That means you could end up $400 richer at the end of 2025 with the right bank account. So if you’re only getting 2% or 3% on your savings now, shop around for a better rate.

And even if you’re getting close to 4%, you never know if you might be able to do better. Check out this list of the best high-yield savings accounts to get started.

2. Open a CD

The nice thing about savings accounts is that you can withdraw your money at any time. With a CD, you have to commit to the term you sign up for or else face a penalty, the exact amount of which depends on your bank.

But unlike savings accounts, CDs do allow you to lock in an interest rate on your money. So if you have $10,000 to put into a 12-month CD and you’re able to snag a 4.5% APY, you’re looking at earning $450 in passive income. If you like the sound of that, click here for a roundup of the best CD rates available today.

3. Start investing

Today’s savings account and CD rates are pretty strong. But they pale in comparison to the S&P 500’s average yearly return over the past 50 years, which is about 10%. So if you open a brokerage account and start investing, you could set yourself up with a much larger amount of passive income over time.

To be clear, though, investing is something you need to do on a long-term basis to make money. You may luck out and see your portfolio value increase in 2025 if you start funding it now. But that’s not guaranteed to happen.

So while a brokerage account might earn you some passive income in 2025, you shouldn’t count on it. Instead, you should plan to hold your investments for many years so they’re able to gain a nice amount of value over time.

If you put $10,000 into a stock portfolio and leave it alone for 20 years, you could end up with a little over $67,000 if you’re able to earn a 10% return in your portfolio during that time.

If your goal is to bring home hundreds of dollars extra per month in 2025, then passive income may not be the way to get it. But if you’re happy with a small boost in the course of the upcoming year (or longer, in the case of investing), then it pays to explore these passive income streams that reward you for doing basically no work.

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