Without knowledge, money can be difficult to earn.
That’s why it’s been so easy to convince you that you must chase, acquire and save money for 40 years before you can retire.
That just isn't true. In fact, I can't think of a more difficult way to achieve financial freedom and early retirement than to work and save and invest for decades.
Retired millionaires know things that your financial planner does not. If your financial planner isn’t retired himself, why in the world are you taking his advice?
Maybe it’s time to listen to someone who has actually achieved what you want.
1. Money isn't everything but it sure determines the parameters of your life.
2. Don’t listen to advice from anyone who isn’t already financially independent. They have theory. We have results.
3. Retirement accounts are merely a promise to pay. They’re just paper and digits. They’re not real money until you receive and spend them. I can't think of anything more risky than allowing strangers to hold your money for 40 years.
4. REAL inflation is 12% a year (ShadowStats.com). Any investment that earns less than that is a LOSER, no matter what the statement says. Despite all your saving, there’s a 90% chance that your retirement accounts are MELTING in purchasing power, not growing.
5. It’s not what you make, it’s what you keep. The amount of money is meaningless, what that money will buy is everything. The value of money is constantly changing (mostly losing its value).
6. Money is merely an energy exchange. You are trading value for money. Create more value, earn more money.
7. Become your own expert. Most “experts” trying to influence you are only parroting conventional wisdom.
8. Ignore conventional wisdom. Only 5 people out of 100 are millionaires. The other 95 are following conventional wisdom.
9. Time is far more valuable than money. So trading your time for money is a bad trade. 40 years of work to retire? Bad, bad, bad trade.
10. There are many ways to earn income. Jobs are the worst way for a dozen reasons. You’ll keep that job until you make the time to learn those reasons. "10 Reasons Why You Should Never Get a Job"
11. Every dollar you’ve ever earned started as a thought in your own head. Richer thoughts lead to more dollars.
12. Feed your brain by self-education. Your brain is your money machine. If you lose all your money, your brain can earn it back.
13. To gain passive income and financial independence, make it a study. All the how-to advice you need is just sitting there online, in books and in the minds of other millionaires. Read, ask, take action!
14. Your study will focus on learning how to BUY already-existing businesses or income properties that generate passive income. The training will include how to buy them with little money down, or how to buy them using your existing savings. It's likely you already have enough money to BUY your passive income and retire within the next 12 months.
2. Don’t get smug or lazy. Everything is temporary. Keep doing what needs to be done to attain and maintain the results you want. Peril can arrive in a heartbeat.
3. Don’t trust others to hold your money. They don’t care about it as much as you do. Worse, they don’t care about YOU as much as you do.
2. Realize that tough love doesn’t mean NO love. Be kind. Be empathetic. Everyone doesn’t have the skills, ambition, confidence or mental capacity to become financially free. But if you do, and you’re not using those abilities, you’re living a smaller life than your potential. That hurts you for sure, but also hurts everyone you love and everyone you influence. They deserve better. So do you.
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Mike Johnson made the journey from jobs to freelance writer to entrepreneur to passive income and early retirement. Today he teaches people how to skip right to passive income and early retirement at WorldsBestWriter.com .
Once I learned how to BUY passive income, I stopped chasing the bucks and the bucks started chasing me!