Today's depressing headline du jour reads "Two Trillion Wiped Out of Retirement Funds". As my dear friend Paul Poto would say, "that's a lot of cannoli's."

But, as I learned in college, macro economic facts do not equal micro economic facts. Simply put, what happens to the economy at large has little correlation to an individual or single families economic situation. Case in point, yesterday some peoples net worth increased to all-time highs.

This financial mess should be like getting hit over the head with the obvious stick to all of us. We should realize that we each need sources of income that are independent of our day jobs and investments. It's obvious that these can vanish pretty quickly. We need a source of income that flows to us in good times and bad, in sickness and health, and when we're swamped or on vacation. 

When we have passive supplemental income flowing in, the good financial times become great and the bad times become less bad or maybe even good.

The key here is passive income, income you don't have to directly work for in order to get paid. A dentist can be very well paid, but if he calls in sick he doesn't get paid that day. He's an hourly worker who receives an hours pay for an hours work. Nothing wrong with that, but if you already have a day job that's not practical. What I'm saying is that we all need to have a sizeable supplemental income that doesn't require our direct labor.

One of the easiest ways I know how to generate this is electronic publishing. Today anyone with a computer and Internet connection can reach a worldwide audience virtually for free. Let me repeat that in case that point didn't hit home — Today anyone with a computer and Internet connection can reach a worldwide audience virtually for free!

Everyone, has topics that they are interested in and knowledgeable about. That interest can quickly and easily be turned into multiple electronic products (written/audio/video) that can be sold around the world. You create it once and sell it thousands and thousands of times. Each day you wake up in the morning and see your bank account increased overnight from sales that came in. Dr. Joe Vitale (of "The Secret" fame) has a great ebook - The Ultimate Guide to Creating Moneymaking Ebooks - that walks you step-by-step through the entire processs from creation to marketing. You'll soon realize that you can earn a substantial passive income, even if you can't write or speak to save your life.

And I'm sure that when you start putting your mind to it you'll come up with many other ways to generate a supplemental passive income for yourself. For example, you can see what I did with my Business 911 service. The important thing is that you start figuring this out for yourself and your family right now.

We all need to heed this wake up call. It's high time that we take control of our ultimate financial security, so we can stop relying so desperately on our companies, government and investments.