You won’t be rich until you think rich. This is a fact that most people will never truly understand. When your mind is not prepared to receive wealth, you will never achieve wealth. Wow, that rhymes, and I believe I just made it up.
How do you prepare your mind to receive wealth? There are many ways, but the easiest way is to educate yourself. Education allows our minds to envision the possibilities of wealth. Once our minds are open, we can then begin to accept wealth as it arrives.
Most of us have a scarcity mindset that comes from childhood. “A penny earned is a penny saved.” Do good in school, get a good job, save money, and retire at age 67. These are concepts we grew up with and needed to identify early. It’s not our parent’s fault. Their parents probably grew up during the Great Depression and became savers.
Are Limiting Beliefs Keeping You From Greatness
This scarcity mindset lets us believe that we are not in control of our financial situation. We are “lucky” to have a job and need to always be prepared for the day our job disappears. Save, save, save. I wrote about saving in the article, “Is Saving Money Bad?”
I believe that achieving an individual status or job title in the world would solve my financial issues. I wasn’t at all horrible with money, but I never seemed to get ahead. I remember thinking, “Why couldn’t I take my wife to a $200 meal once and a while?”
By the grace of a higher being, I started researching the words Passive Income. It started by looking for ways to earn money overseas. My wife and I were looking into living in Turkey- where her family lives. I would have a military retirement, but I didn’t want to use it to pay expenses. I wanted it for assisting the kids or traveling back to the States.
So I started researching how to live off of a savings account. Keep in mind that I was 38 years old and had been in the military for precisely 20 years. I looked into high yield savings account from Discover. At the time (June 2019), the interest rate was 2%. I remember thinking that this would give me $2,000 a month. The more I researched, it turned out that the $2,000 was annual. So I would be getting roughly $166/month. Hardly enough to live.
I then started researching how to get a higher rate of return. I came across the words Passive Income, and it changed my life. I then learned about dividend-paying stocks and bonds. I studied hard and opened up my brokerage account and high yields savings account. I opened a Fundrise account, which is a crowdfunded Real Estate Investment Trust. I started a whole portfolio. I figured it would take me ten years to get to $100,000. Come to find out, when you become serious; things move much faster. My wife and I have $70,000 invested in less than two years.
20 Books That Will Make You Rich
Also, as you become more focused, you will want to learn more about passive income. It becomes a mindset. You will want to reduce expenses and increase revenue. After about a year of investing, I read the book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad.” Another life-changing event. Robert Kiyosaki’s preachings on Assets and Liabilities are second to none. I have read another eight books of his. Needless to say, he is my favorite author.
I read another 34 books in short order- now reading is a significant part of my life. I created my investment and retirement strategy called Retirement 4-50. The plan separates our passive income into four pillars- retirement income, rental income, investment income, and business income. My first major book, “Don’t Gamble With Retirement,” is 70 of my articles broken up into these pillars. Before you get into these pillars, you have to prepare your mindset. This book will be broken up the same way. It is the companion book to “Don’t Gamble With Retirement.”
How do you use these two books to improve your financial mindset and your financial situation? Great question: I can break it down into three different steps- education, sacrifice, and action.
Education. (training and education) Education is the first step in the process of changing one’s situation. You have to learn that another path is available or possible. Most of us think that we have to work until 67 and live off our 401K and social security- will we settle for this as the only way?
So You Think That You Are Middle-Class? …. Haha
Education can be broken further down into education and training. Education prepares your mind to handle any situation. It is an abstract way to consolidate different information and experiences into a future course of action. That is why reading books is so vital. You can use your experiences, but you will be able to use other people’s experiences to formulate different action courses. It is like taking someone’s life, accepting their triumphs and failures, and adding it to your palette.
Training is step-by-step learning on how to accomplish something very particular. Training is something like how to build a website or an app for a cellphone. Education is why doing such things is essential in the digital age.
Sacrifice. I hate to use the word sacrifice, but in today’s world, that is how it will be perceived. Now that you have an education on financial freedom, you will have to make some “sacrifices.” We all think that we deserve a big house, two nice cars, kids in private school, grand vacations, nice furniture, etc. But these things will not help us on our journey to financial freedom. Please read the article “Living a Middle-Class Life is Stressful.”
You will need to “downgrade your lifestyle.” Not to worry, you will be able to return to your bigger life, if you choose, at a later time. But if you have to work a job to survive, then you are not rich. I learned this the hard way. Here is another article on this topic, “Minimalism: 7 Way it Leads to Financial Freedom.”
Action. However, I do not consider downgrading your life as taking action- this is just right-sizing your life. Now we need to build passive income, and it requires education and then effort. For example, if we don’t have rental income, we need to get smart on real estate ventures. Then take action to start creating that sweet passive rental income. Taking action to create retirement income, rental income, business income, and investment income is the only way we will be successful in our pursuit of a financially independent lifestyle.
A quick example. I was reading and taking notes and realized I do not have any income from royalties. I am now “sacrificing” my time writing articles and books on things I have learned. I am proactively building a portfolio of truly passive income.
How to use this book. This book is broken down into five different categories, a total of 175 takeaways from necessary mindset and wealth books. Read through this book and find any book that piques your attention; look into it. Over time you will see why I choose so many diverse books. I might never own land, but it is excellent to understand the process of buying land at a discount.
Keep the Job, Quit the Mindset
Just because I may not own land does not mean that my children may not be interested in it. Reading allows you to learn anything you want. Eventually, all this knowledge will be of some use. Either from you doing it or passing this information to someone else. Consider this book as a quick reference guide of ideas. Build your financial mindset and then start vetting ideas and see what sticks.
Set some goals for passive income. It can be something like $100/month each from investments, rental income, and royalties. You can look over the different books and see how to achieve these. Then start training yourself to build this income, step-by-step.
Thank you for looking into this book, and I hope it gets your brain moving in a different direction. These are the 35 books I have read over the last six months. I am still reading, and I plan on doing another book that covers my next 35 books. Hopefully, you will start your journey towards financial independence and financial freedom. The most important question I can ask you is, “What is your rich life?”
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Disclosure: I am not a financial advisor or money manager, and any knowledge is given as guidance and not direct actionable investment advice. I am an Amazon Affiliate. Please research any investment vehicles that are being considered. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
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