Everyone is busy—especially when you hit your 40s. This phenomenon is something that I have begun to notice as I move deeper in my 40s. I don’t know why it is so vital that everyone is overbooked to their limits, but it is something that I want to dig deeper into today.
Why does everyone want to seem busy? Many people feel it is a status symbol to have their days full of engagements, appointments, meetings, and meal plans. We always watch movies where the successful entrepreneur is booked solid with appointments.
It makes people feel like their lives have an external meaning when they are out and about town. With the advent and rise of social media, things have become even worse. Now, we can take a look inside everyone’s house. And guess what? Everyone is busy—from homemakers to construction workers to entrepreneurs.
Financial Security vs. Financial Freedom
Being busy is the new measure of success, at least in the view of most people. When running around town, going to soccer tournaments, and parent-teacher association meetings, people feel that they are an essential part of the community.
Are people hiding from something? I do not know. I have my own beliefs, which I will spell out later. However, I don’t know if people are looking towards being busy to seek fulfillment and purpose. I do find it funny that people complain about being busy when almost everything they do is optional.
Look, I’ll be honest. There are only two reasons to be busy, spending quality family time and building wealth—everything else is filler. Now, once you are rich with passive income, you can be as active as you want. I may be alone in my assessment, but that is truly how I feel.
I am building various passive income streams so that I can spend high-quality time with my family. That is my life’s mission statement. When my sons grow up, I will spend quality time with them building businesses, investing in real estate, and reviewing dividend portfolios. After a hard day of building wealth, we can have a beer and celebrate being rich.
My wife and I spend hours on our porch, spending quality time talking about life—past, present, and future. We have an amazing view of our acreage, and we can sit out there from morning to nightfall. We don’t need to be busy because we have each other.
Do Men Want to be Providers?
While we sit on our porch, passive income is coming in from various sources. We have dividends, rents, royalties, and cash from an automated business. That is the magic of passive income—it frees your time to speed how you like and with whom you want.
In my first year in Japan (from August 2020 to August 2021), I was probably busier than most can imagine. I was working my full-time military job and, on the side, creating multiple income streams. I read 61 books, completed book reviews, wrote 550+ articles for my blog, published 170 ebooks, and learned about affiliate marketing.
But you will never find me online bragging about how busy I am. That is because I am not doing these things to be engaged; I am doing these things to be “not busy.” In “Rich Dad Poor Dad,” the author writes that his rich dad said, “The less work I do, the richer I become.”
What is Your Rich Life 2?
This quote is so powerful because only people who understand it can appreciate its complexity. He doesn’t mean that he is lazy and avoiding work. He suggests that the more automated systems, out-sourcing, management, etc., are put into place, the more other people and systems build wealth for him.
My goal is to free my time, not create tasks that have no inherent value. I no longer hang out with friends who are just acquaintances. I have a couple of friends—that’s all. I no longer feel the urge to go downtown and spend tons of money drinking. Been there and done that.
We spend too much time keeping up with people who have added no value to our lives. Most of them are unhappy and won’t rest until you’re the same. They don’t value family or relationships, so they turn to friends who tell them exactly what they want to hear.
Our children are now over-tasked and overworked. Then, when they move out into the real world, they do the same things as us—fill their schedules with bullshit. We need to stop this before it gets out of hand.
I remember going to our grandparents’ house in the California desert when I was a kid. The family would spend time cooking together; then, we would eat together. The kids would run around and explore the land together. Those were the defining moments of my childhood—not soccer practice.
Over-Budgeting 2: Low Expenses, High Income
How do we determine what is truly important? When all is said and done, love and money are the driving forces behind everything. We send our kids to soccer practice, violin listens, and student clubs because we want them to get into college. We send them to college to make more money. We want them to make more money to support their future family and have a great life.
Passive income is the key to everything. If we, as adults, learn about passive income, then it will compound our lives exponentially. First, it will free up our time to spend real time with our kids. Second, we can teach our kids how to become rich (with or without college). Third, our kids will learn the meaning of family and time.
We have to understand the value of time. Let’s look at a quick example of how two young people spend their time.
- Josh went to college and got a job making $100,000/year. He has a wife and kid and works 60 hours a week. His wife Kris stays home with the child. The kid goes to private school, they drive nice cars and have a decent house. After all expenses, they have $1,000/month to spend/save/invest.
- Dan went to college and has a job that pays $50,000/year. He also has a wife and child, but he works 30 hours a week. They live on one side of a duplex, and the other tenants pay the mortgage for both sides—they live rent-free. They also own four more rental properties. They have used cars, and the child goes to public school. After all expenses, they have $2,500/month to spend/save/invest.
The second couple has more time and more money because of living a more humble life and earning passive income. The time they spend together will be more quality because it involves less stress. These are the lessons that we need to pass on to our children.
Become a Lifelong Learner. Become Rich.
How do we convert our mindset from Being Busy to Living Passively? I always recommend reading as the best place to start. Books give you the ability to live someone else’s life in about one week. Here are some books I recommend to start your passive income journey.
“Passive Income Aggressive Retirement” walks us through multiple ideas we can leverage to build passive income streams. The author is a big fan of real estate and coin-op machines like ATMs and arcades.
“The Passive Income Myth” is an excellent book on some things people assume are passive but may not be as easy as they seem. Blogging was something he said is challenging, and I agree.
What’s So Great About Being Independent?
“How to Make a Living with Your Writing” is for future writers of the world. I love writing, and there are so many ways to monetize this profession.
“The Compound Effect” is a book on building the life of your dreams, one step at a time.
“How to Retire on Dividends” is how to retire on the most passive of all income sources, dividends.
“The Biggest Book on Passive Income Ever!” I’d be remiss, not to mention my most giant book of all time. I also have the Web Edition if you prefer to read via the web and the Art Edition to look at all the pictures.
I would start with these books, and after reading these, you will begin to see the world in a different light. Time is our most valuable asset. We need to buy our freedom from the workforce as soon as possible to spend our time as we choose.
Once we learn how to buy back our time, we need to teach our children the same. We don’t want them caught in the same rat race that we ran for 20-40 years, do we? Being busy with superficial, meaningless stuff is not in our (or their’s) best interest.
We need to build passive income streams, buy our freedom, teach our kids, and spend quality time with family—this will make us truly content.
- Build Passive Income: 21 Passive Income Ideas (book)
- Free PDF Downloads: Download FREE PDF books here
- Financial Mindset: Become CEO of Yourself (book)
- Retirement Planning: Retirement Planning at Any Age (book)
- Investing: How We Plan to Retire on Dividends (book)
- Cryptocurrencies: My First Book on Cryptocurrencies (book)
- Real Estate: Financial Independence through Real Estate (book)
- Business: Retire Rich, Retire Comfortable with a Business (book)
- Everything!: The Biggest Book on Passive Income Ever! (book)(Web Edition)(Art Edition)
- I bought a Kindle Oasis: Check it out Amazon
- Read My Books for Free: Free Kindle Books Schedule
- Sign up to Access our “Hidden” Free Kindle Book Schedule
- My first Children’s book: A Child’s First Book on Passive Income (book)
- Book Reviews: 54 Takeaways from 54 Books (book)
- Want to Build Passive Income from Books and Affiliate Marketing? (Learn here)
- Writing: Can Grammarly Make You a Better Writer? (direct)
- My Favorite Chromebook: The Ultimate Chromebook (direct)
- Follow us: On our Facebook Page and Join our Facebook Group
- Amazon Author Page: Check out my author page on Amazon
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.
Leave a Reply