Not Another 'Get Rich' Article

Everything you've ever heard about getting 'rich' revolves around some sort of 'save your money' bullshit.

Get an education, get a good job, save money, retire rich. Family, teachers, counselors at school, even friends will tell you this lie.

Reality is, saving will never make you rich. Sure, if you save 400 dollars a month for 40 years at 8% you'll have a million dollars when you're 65, that you can withdraw 60k out of per year and it should last you about 25 years, but here's the reality, those numbers don't mean the same thing in 40 years. Most people forget to bother accounting for inflation. Inflation is a beast, at on average 3-4% per year over 40 years it could turn your hard earned savings of 1M into a measly quarter of that. Try retiring today with only 250k. Sure it's doable, and it's still more than most people have, but it's not rich. It's maybe live in a 3rd world country and bitch about the cost of mojito's rich. That's not rich.

You can't get rich by reducing your latte consumption, canceling your cable or eating at home. You will only get rich by ditching the 9-5, becoming a producer of a good that you sell over and over and over again until it sells while you sleep and your income soars through the stratosphere.

You've been lied to. Bill Gates isn't rich because he saved. Steve Jobs wasn't rich because he saved. Mark Zuckerberg isn't rich because he saved. Sure these guys are tech giant billionaires, but the one thing they all had in common was the fact that they skyrocketed their incomes by producing something and selling it.

Let's not get technical, cause their main source of wealth may have been from shares in the the company they grew (or helped grow), or from stock options awarded, but the point is, they were owners of income producing assets.

Right now, the only income producing asset you have in your life is your time. Sell your measly 8 hours a day for 100 dollars an hour for 5 days a week for 52 weeks a year and you'll need to work 24 years and not spend a DIME to be a millionaire. And that's at 100 an hour, lawyers and doctors need only apply here. You're more likely making 25 an hour, that'll take 96 years.

Of course you could sell 16 hours a day and be done in half the time, but that's still 50 years of not spending ANY money. Not feasible, not at all...

Saving money is a passive thing, and those that try to make that their source of future wealth are just lying to themselves. Producing money however, is completely limitless in potential and the true key to any form of wealth. I'm not talking about forging or counterfeiting, but making money from sales of something you create, or a service you provide. For the people of Jersey Shore and Honey Boo Boo, they sell entertainment, and for some, a life they can live vicariously. For Eric Schmidt, it's ad space, for Samsung it's phones, TVs, appliances. For Stephen King it's books he's written, and for you, it can be anything you care about.

Wealth is not a bad thing, people hear "I wanna be a millionaire" and they cringe. Why? What's wrong with wanting to live the best sort of life you can, fully free to do what you want with your time every day of the year. People spend 8 hours a day sleeping, 8 working, 1-2 hours in traffic, 1 more in the gym, 1 cooking and eating. That's basically 20 hours out of a typical day wasted, gone, destroyed. Tack on the average American's 2-4 hours a day in TV and you've got yourself a full 24 hour period where there is no time left to do anything else. Feel free to substitute anything in here, walk dog, take kids to soccer, go out and drink (which usually cuts into sleep). The basic understanding is there are so few hours in the day to be productive.

Sure, you can get by with less sleep, if you work at something you love, and you allocate the rest of the day to things you most like to do you can have a fairly good life, but what if those hours you spent working at something you love went into creating something that could KEEP working for you even when you stop? Like an online retail store, or a book you wrote, or a product you've invented, or a business you've started with a staff that keeps working after you go home. That's the secret to getting rich, if you can make money in your sleep, you've already doubled your income potential, because those hours you're sleeping add up with the ones you actually work. Now if it keeps going while you're at the gym or on vacation, then you've successfully monetized every hour of every day, and at 100 dollars an hour, for 24 hours a day, everyday of the year, it only takes 1.14 years to become a millionaire.

You've shortened the 96 year rat race to a mere 1 year and a little over a month. Keep it going, keep it growing and look at yourself after 5 years, you've made more money now than most people make over their lifetimes...and you can retire, not with 250k, but with 2.5M (or more of course)...

Let's go over some details. You will not get rich by saving your money, but you can be poor by spending it all. Most people are a paycheck away from poverty. If your car breaks down, and it costs 1k to fix it, most people can't come up with it, and will have to take the bus to work. Or lose their job and go homeless.

Any extra time you have is best utilized in creating a wealth generator. This can be a business idea, an invention, a book, or a service. Any extra money should be saved to fund this wealth creator and you should work your ass off to make it happen. You may work for 5 years to make it happen, but the alternative is to slave away for 40 years. Oh, and as your own boss you are in control of your destiny, as an employee, you're jobless during the next recession...take your pick.