What is a good side income for retirement?

Question

45 now and it's hitting me I'm 10 years from a plausible retirement age. I have a cushion of stocks but would like something a bit more income generating. Doesn't have to be a unicorn, doesn't have to be software. Just something to generate a reasonable amount of moderately-passive income so I'm more comfortable retiring at 55.My wife wants us to go into real estate, but for whatever reason it doesn't appeal to me. It seems debt-funded and one bad renter or contractor can blow through your earnings. Is there anything else anyone here has had positive experiences with?

smt88 · Accepted Answer

Your question can't really be answered the way you want it to be. Anything that generates more income than stocks is also going to be riskier. If any of us knew a way to beat that law of investments (i.e. knew of an arbitrage opportunity), it would be immediately negated when we posted it here.
Real estate is generally a bad investment vehicle. You may want to look into self-storage franchising instead. It's almost zero work and (at least a few years ago) had fantastic ROI.
Definitely don't put your money into any kind of startup.