After a half a century of life, being married, and divorced, twice, supporting 8 kids, I have learned a lot about surviving financially. I have worked 3 jobs at once, started and run retail store front businesses, built MLMs, direct sales and many other things to keep the wolves from the door. I have written articles on financial issues, which I will take excerpts from and expand upon in future blogs. In every blog I will give you at least one invaluable tip to compress the learning and experience curve for my readers, so you can quickly get where it has taken me 39 years in the school of hard knocks to arrive; retired at 56, with no need for social security. (I was on my own at 17.)
Let's start with this: The model most of us are taught for financial survival doesn't work well. That model is; get a job that pays the bills. Work 40 hours a week plus travel time and relax the rest of the time. Try to figure out how to advance at your job, if you can stand working there long enough to have an opportunity to advance. Eventually retire at 70 or so and live on social security.
Maybe your model is more along the lines of; get a good education so you can get a good job that pays a lot, and slowly accumulate wealth by working 40 plus hours a week for 40 years and retiring in relative comfort at 65 on a pension and social security. This model is better than the previous one, but still requires decades to complete and historically offers only a somewhat better outcome at the end. The majority of white collar workers, and even many types of professionals end up living primarily on social security at the end of their lives, just like blue collar workers.
A better model for financial success is; get a job that will meet your survival needs and takes no more than 50 hours a week, including transportation time, and then dedicate an additional 6 to 18 hours per week to building stable residual income streams. As your residual income streams increase, decrease the time spent laboring for a living and more time building residual income streams. Eventually, in a few months or a few years, retire and be financially secure for the rest of your life without help from the government.
How quickly the latter works depends on how dedicated a person is to making it work and in doing the right things during that dedicated residual income building time. An hour a day, 6 days a week, properly invested can enable a person to retire from the job market in a year or less. Poorly done it can allow a person freedom from the job market in a few years. The key is consistent effort. Work on it EVERY working day.
Bottom line - If you want to retire you have be committed to setting aside at least 6 hours every week, and preferable more, to building residual income streams. (The recommended amount is 18 hours/week; 2 hours/weekday and 8 hours on Saturday.) (Always give yourself a full day of rest each week, success requires you to keep fully charged, and all work and no rest makes a person sick and broke in short order.)
"Nine to five you make a living. Five to nine you build a life."
Next blog: What are residual income streams and how do I build them.
