My own journey to wealth was long and arduous. When I was 29 years old, I set a goal to retire early at age 45. It took me four years longer than my goal, and when I stopped working I was very afraid that I had made an irreversible mistake. I had given up a good career and moved from the big city to a cheap backwater. There were no jobs in my experience in the area I moved to, so changing my mind about the entire company would be like changing destinations at sea on a leaking ship.
I got rich doing essentially two things: going back to school and starting a career in a field that was in high demand, and then developing an incredibly cheap monastic lifestyle, forgoing the luxuries that most people in developed economies give up. for granted. At first, the difference between my low living expenses and my above-average salary from a new career was faithfully invested at every opportunity in run-of-the-mill low-risk, hence low-return investments. I eventually developed a modest level of investing skill. On average, I estimate that I made a 10-12% pre-tax return each year.
That average is better than you can expect from most professional financial advisers or mutual funds. With each passing year and increasing leverage, one begins to learn to invest safely, just as one learns to drive a car, taking only acceptable risks and not going off a cliff in Monaco on a hairpin turn.
I see ads everywhere for people to buy products or books that tell how you can make money hand over fist practically overnight. They are selling a get-rich-quick premise, boldly stating that if you buy their product, you are virtually guaranteed to become rich beyond your wildest dreams. Buy our software, it will choose the winning stocks for you like magic. Buy my letter of advice, I made 1,013% in one year, and you can too. What these people are whipping up is a dream: a money-for-nothing scheme that only requires you to step out of the paradigm long enough to see yourself in fabulous wealth, all available if you only believe it can happen to you. , if you accept these dreams, what you want is something for nothing, and it is probably because you believe that people with money got rich through the use of a scheme. You believe in the underlying dishonesty of the plan and intend to make it right, leaving all those other suckers in the dust as you rush away from the exchange with a suitcase full of money.
In how i became a millionaire I speak of my journey in a biographical way because I feel that what led me to reach my goals were my values. I learned about life from the wrong parents and friends with the wrong values and had to make a lot of adjustments in my thinking as a young adult before I began to succeed. No money at all, sorry, just hard work. Get up at six, make a brick, sell a brick, net a dime, repeat. Accumulate and invest. I am pushing the novel idea that wealth arises when you decide to give more than you receive when it comes to a transaction, that added value leads to counterparty satisfaction and therefore a satisfied employer or customer. I am selling the idea that there is no quick scheme, no magic formula for selecting actions, only honesty, self-denial, willpower, and character.
Selflessness is a big part of the discussion because even if you make a million dollars a year, there are plenty of ways to spend it. Most professional athletes who earn big salaries at a young age retire in their mid-thirties, virtually broke because they never learned how to manage their money. Selflessness has to happen then, no matter how much you earn! Whether you’re making a hundred thousand a year and really want that Porsche or you’re making 35,000 a year and really want that new Honda, it’s all the same no matter who you are; you must deny yourself what you want and limit your purchases to what you need. If you’re making 35,000 a year and really want a Porsche, well, you’re in trouble. Maybe you should be reading Dr. Phil!
To achieve self-denial and still feel good about yourself as a human being, you must learn to be cynical, because every commercial on TV, every magazine ad, every billboard you see will work to undermine your goals. You want to retire at 50 or earlier, but if they have their way with your psyche, you’ll be working until you’re 90. Advertisers are all about getting you to substitute what you NEED for what you WANT. Once they make you want a product, it’s a sure bet you’ll become a customer. Such subversion of your needs by your wants is counterproductive to your goal of achieving enough wealth to retire early, so you’ll need to learn to spot your techniques. Some of them, the dirty scoundrels, will even use your sexuality against you; they have hired expert psychologists to delve into your brain.
How they did it? Part of this is very subtle and, in my opinion, reprehensible behavior. Product placement in movies and TV shows is everywhere these days, but what if an entire segment of a commercial show was devoted to promoting one product? What would you say to that? Would you believe that a high-tech smartphone maker would buy a segment of a commercial reporting program to include their product in what appears to be a legitimate news report? They showed lines of people struggling to pay $500 for a smartphone, jostling each other to be the first to own one, creating a line mentality for the weak-minded. I can guarantee that none of those people who line up in front of a store at midnight and fight for a smartphone have control over their finances. If this is you, I apologize, go back to my comment about Dr. Phil.
Truth be told, most people who want to be rich need a psychoanalyst instead of good stock picking software or an instruction book, because really, getting rich independently is more about changing the way you think. than any other factor. I wrote the book as a guide for young people who are struggling in life because of a series of wrong principles passed down to them by their parents and peers. I know the story well, I was one. The goal of becoming prosperous must be based on the need to self-actualize above all else. The need to define the purpose of your life should be before setting financial goals. It will give you the reason for all your future suffering, self-denial, and ego-bashing when those closest to you question your behavior. Since you will have given yourself the ultimate goal for the meaning of your life, you will not feel the need to justify yourself to others.
Only weak people feel such a need. Let them be the ones buying the mountains of consumer goods that prevent them from retiring from the rat race and getting on with what they really want to do with their lives. The sad reality is that most people do not have a self-actualization goal. And without a clear goal in life, how will you know if you’ve reached it? If your goal is to impress people with what you can buy or how much money you have accumulated, you may succeed at that, but unfortunately only jerks will be impressed by you! You need a supreme goal that is above all that, and divine in its purpose, that gives your life and others some meaning and joy. When you have such a goal of self-actualization, it gives you the strength you need to live a life of deprivation and hard work that leads to your goals in happiness.
The money you accumulate will help you do what you really want to do with your time on Earth, and simply working towards that goal will make you feel fulfilled and fulfilled. Your Gross National Happiness will skyrocket no matter what stage you are in the project, whether you are in school starting your new career or retired and volunteering for those in need. You will even settle for denying yourself something, knowing that you will reach your goals sooner. Other people may be impressed with you and your achievements, but in the end, their opinion is little. In the final analysis, you just have to be satisfied with what you have done with your time, which is truly the only resource you have been given to change for the things you want in life.
