HARSH TRUTHS ABOUT MONEY

 

HARSH TRUTHS ABOUT MONEY

Money is damn simple to understand. The problem is that the gurus of the world focus on what doesn’t matter. Money is counter-intuitive. We wanted to believe money had to be complicated and to have any level of wealth was a crime against humanity. That mindset kept us poor. Instead of doing work we enjoyed, we traded our time for money. We stayed back at work until 10 pm so we could look cool for the dictator bosses.

What changed was when our mentor forced us to understand money. Not to get rich, but to be free to do whatever the heck we want. These are the harsh truths about money that you can’t   g o o g l e.

As soon as you see luxury possessions, you’re not talking to a millionaire. You’re talking to the fake rich who want you to notice what they buy so they can feel better about their broken lives. That’s not a rich life. That’s poverty.

Rich people invest their money in assets like stocks and crypto. You can’t see their money because it’s doing the hard work of compounding so they can have zero meetings in their calendar. Their goal isn’t millions of dollars. Their goal is passive income that pays for their living costs. Great investors sit around all day reading. Investors make a lot of money. Those who successfully do it full time, don’t sit around all day looking at charts and what CNBC says is going to happen in the markets today. They couldn’t give a crap about price movements in stocks or crypto for the next twelve months. Great investors are long-term. The book “Richer, Wiser, Happier” showed us that the best investors like Warren Buffett don’t do a lot of meetings. They trade looking at prices and falling for hype in for reading. They read annual reports. They read the financials of the companies they’re interested in. They read a company’s new business strategy. Get rich enough so you can read books for an entire day if you want. The idea is to put effort into your work and be open-minded enough to continually iterate so the work gets easier. As the work gets easier your results compound and you can reinvest the returns into a new area.

Doing the same hard work over and over until retirement is the definition of insanity. Work gets easier when you notice the nuances and experiment with them. Questions lead to experiments. Experiments allow you to iterate. Iterations lead to superior results that make you more money, so you can eventually work less. Success isn’t an end state. Success is having the freedom to pursue the continual grind you most enjoy. The idea of financial freedom is messed up. We’re taught to believe there is an end state and we just work hard until we reach it.

The crucial lesson is to find the grind you love doing. Then do it for the rest of your life no matter how much money it makes you. The grind is actually hard work you’ll look back on and be proud of when you’re at the retirement home on death’s door. The person who is calmer makes more money. Calmness is a financial superpower. So much of our energy is wasted  through anger and anxiety. It destroys our best work. It makes us have crazy people thoughts that write over our creative ideas. Anxiety makes you go inward when the financial opportunities are outwards. Pure motivation doesn’t come out of anxiety. Pure motivation comes from calmness that gives you energy to be creative enough to come up with the ideas that generate value, money.

“Money is numbers and numbers never end. If it takes money to be happy, your search for happiness will never end.”

Singer Bob Marley has an unusual way of explaining happiness with this idea. He’s spot on though. Meet a “possession chaser.” They’re miserable sons of guns. The pile of stuff and the numbers get larger and larger, yet they’re not happy. They continue to set the bar higher with bigger financial goals. There is no way to win the game. Numbers are infinite so the game is infinite. This is another definition of insanity that rots your insides.

Numbers don’t drive us. The main thing that makes us happy now is freedom. The rest is bullshit. Make money while you have the energy. Not when you’re old and crusty and can’t enjoy it. The final harsh truth we’re told is to work hard until retirement. Then we will have free time to spend the money we’ve made and enjoy ourselves. The idea of conventional retirement is screwed. When you retire at 65-years-old, you will have a lot less energy than now. Your body will have aged. Your skin will be old and crusty. You should enjoy life while you have the highest levels of energy, which is right now. That means you need money to serve you now. That means you have to reject the “get into a lot of debt to buy real estate game” — that takes multiple decades — and live within your means.  It means you need to invest money in stocks and crypto that have decent growth and don’t take a lifetime to provide tangible results. Frugal living, side hustles, and better investing strategies allow you to live life before the typical retirement age. Energy levels and money should be thought about in the same sentence.