Chapter 15: Make money serve you
The key to financial freedom
and great wealth is a person’s ability
or skill to convert earned income into passive income
and/or portfolio income. ― Robert Kiyosaki
If you’re like most people,
you’ve probably grown up with the programmed mindset
that you “have to work hard to make money”.
However, it is also very likely
that you have grown up with a different way of programming,
that you must know how to make your money “serve you”.
Working hard is really important,
but if you work hard alone,
you will never get rich.
Look, in the world there are millions,
billions of people working hard day
and night, but are they rich?
No! Are most of them rich?
No! Most of them are poor or close to it.
On the contrary,
who do you find loitering around at outdoor sports clubs
around the world?
Who spends their afternoon playing golf,
tennis or sailing?
Who spends weekdays shopping
and weeks vacationing?
Please, that’s the rich man!
So let’s put it this way:
The idea that “you have to work hard to be rich”
is lacking in factual basis.
When it comes to work ethics,
Protestant scriptures say,
“A dollar worth of work pays for a dollar.”
There’s nothing wrong with that statement,
it’s just that people forget to tell us
what to do with the dollar we get paid.
Knowing what to do with that dollar
is the starting point for you
to move from working hard to working smart.
Rich people can spend many days of the week relaxing,
entertaining,
because they know how to work smart.
They know how to use leverage.
They hire other people to work for them
and they make “money” work for them.
One must definitely work hard to earn money.
However, for the rich,
hard work is only a temporary solution,
while for the poor, it lasts forever.
The rich understand that they have to work hard
until the money they make is enough to serve themselves.
They understand that the more their money works,
the less they will work.
Remember that money is energy.
Most people put in labor energy and earn money energy.
Those who achieve financial freedom have learned
to replace labor energy with other forms of energy,
including using other people’s labor,
business systems at work,
or capital investments.
In general,
you still have to work hard to earn money first
and then let money work to serve you.
When entering the game of money,
most people have no idea what to do to win.
When will you win this game?
What is your goal:
three meals a day,
$100,000 in annual income,
to be a millionaire or a millionaire?
At the Millionaire Mind course,
we often tell our students that the point of the money game is
to never have to work again,
unless you want to,
and if you can,
you will “do it” work out of love,
not because of compulsion.
In other words,
your goal should be financial freedom as soon as possible.
My definition of financial freedom is pretty simple:
it’s the ability to live the life you want without having
to work or financially depend on others.
However, you need to be aware that your “dream lifestyle” will be expensive.
So, to be truly free,
you need to make money without having to work.
Income that you get
when you don’t have to work is called passive income.
To be a winner in the financial game,
your goal should be
to earn enough passive income to cover your desired lifestyle.
That means you only become financially free
when your passive income is greater than your expenses.
I have identified two main sources of passive income.
The first source is “money that works for you”,
which includes investment gains
from financial investment instruments
such as stocks,
bonds,
bills of exchange,
or money markets, mutual funds,
as well as ownership of collateral
or other assets value added
and can be converted into cash.
The second major source of passive income is the “business that works for you”.
This source generates ongoing income from business activities
that you are not personally involved in on an ongoing
and regular basis,
including real estate rentals,
book royalties,
music ,
or software,
copyright ideas,
become a franchisee,
own multiple warehouses,
own vending machines
or video game consoles,
network marketing.
The idea here is Those businesses,
not you, have to run and deliver value to people.
Like network marketing, for example.
This job usually does not require you
to immediately spend a large amount of capital.
Moreover, once you have completed the initial basic work,
the source of income continues to “flow” continuously,
year after year.
This is another form of income generating idea,
no need for you to work directly.
Does the job that you have to plug into every day bring the same income?
I do not want to emphasize the importance of creating passive income streams.
It’s very simple:
without passive income,
you can never be financially free.
But, and this is the big BUT,
did you know that most people have a hard time generating passive income.
Here are three reasons.
The first is because
thoughts have formed in the mind.
Most of us are programmed not to generate passive income.
For example, you are a teenager and you need money.
What would your parents say then?
Do they say,
“Okay, create a passive income”?
Sure is not!
Most of our parents tell their children,
“Go to work and earn money yourself”,
“Find a job to do”
or something like that.
We are taught to work to earn money,
and the concept of “generating passive income”
is completely foreign to most of us.
Second, most of us were never taught how to generate passive income.
I also wasn’t taught Passive Income 101 in high school,
but was taught how to build furniture and forge iron
(you’ll notice both are jobs)
and I made a beautiful candlestick for my mother.
We don’t learn how to generate passive income in school,
so where can we learn that?
Nowhere.
And so most of us know nothing about that income,
and do nothing to earn it.
In the end, since we are never approached
or advised about passive income and investments,
we don’t pay much attention to it.
We have let our careers and business options depend primarily on income from work.
If you understood from a young age
that your primary financial goal is to generate passive income,
you’ve probably reconsidered some of those career options, haven’t you?
I often advise people to boldly choose,
even change their business or career field (if necessary)
to find a new direction so that generating passive income is natural
and relatively easy.
That’s especially important,
because too many people work in service industries these days,
where they have to be physically present
and directly put their energy into making money.
There is nothing wrong with working in the service industry,
but unless you invest exceptionally well,
you will be “tied” to work and you will never get a break.
By choosing business opportunities
that have the potential to generate passive income,
you’ll get the best of two worlds,
income now and passive income later.
Unfortunately, almost everyone is programmed to only have income from work
and opposes passive income.
That attitude will be completely changed
after you attend the Millionaire Mindset course.
There, we change the financial plan in your mind
with techniques experimental technique
so that generating passive income becomes a natural and natural instinct for you.
The rich are farsighted:
they always balance current expenditures
with investments for future financial freedom.
Meanwhile, the poor only think about the immediate future
and drive their lives towards instant gratification.
The poor argued:
“How can I think about tomorrow,
when my money is barely enough to survive today?”.
The problem is that sooner
or later that “tomorrow” will become “today”,
meaning that if you don’t care about tomorrow,
when tomorrow comes,
you will have to repeat the same sentence just say that.
To become richer,
you have two choices:
either to earn more,
or to spend less money on daily living.
I don’t see anyone pointing a gun at your head
and telling you how to live in the house,
what kind of car to use,
what designer clothes to wear,
or what food to eat.
You have complete freedom to choose
and decide your lifestyle.
It’s a matter of preference.
The poor choose “now”.
Rich people choose “balance”.
For 25 years my wife’s parents owned a small grocery store
that retailed cigarettes,
candy, ice cream, gum,
and soft drinks.
They don’t even sell lottery tickets.
The average selling price per item is usually less than a dollar.
In short, they made little money from that little business.
They don’t go to restaurants,
don’t buy food trendy clothes
and using an old car.
They lived comfortably and simply,
and yet they paid off their mortgage,
not to mention they even bought half of the building with their shop in it.
At the age of 55,
by saving and investing sensibly like that,
my wife’s parents were able to retire.
For most people, shopping
for instant gratification is nothing
more than a futile attempt
to hide our dissatisfaction in life.
Often, spending stems from the need to express inner feelings.
That syndrome is very common
and is known as “shopping syndrome” a psychological disease of people
who always spend more than they need.
The shopping syndrome
and the need for instant gratification have nothing
to do with the items you buy,
but with your feelings of dissatisfaction.
That excessive spending habit is the result
of the financial plan in your mind.
Natalie, one of our students,
said that her parents were extremely miserly people.
They always used coupons to buy anything,
even her mother had a box full of coupons
and all clearly categorized.
Her father had a rusty 15-year-old car
and Natalie was embarrassed
when others saw her sitting in it,
especially when her mother came to pick her up from school.
Every time she gets in the car,
she always prays that no one will see her.
During vacations,
her family never rented a hotel room,
never took a plane,
but drove 11 days across the country
and camped right on the side of the road.
Same every year!
For her parents, everything was “too expensive”.
The way they acted made Natalie always feel that her family was very needy.
But no, her father had a pretty high income at the time, $75,000 a year.
She found this difficult to understand.
Because she hates their miserly habits,
she decides to do the opposite.
She wants her everything to be luxurious and expensive.
When she moved out and started making money,
she didn’t even realize that in a flash,
she had spent all the money she had.
Natalie spends so much
that she cannot pay for the most basic needs.
That’s why she enrolled in the Millionaire Mind course,
and she said that it saved her life.
During the Millionaire Mind course,
when she got to the “money personality” part,
Natalie’s perspective changed completely.
She suddenly understood
why she spent all her money.
That’s how she reacted to her parents’ too meager lifestyle.
It’s also her way of proving to herself
and the world that she’s not stingy.
After that course,
along with a change in financial planning in her mind,
Natalie no longer felt the urge to spend money so stupidly.
Recently, while walking through a shopping mall,
Natalia said, she noticed a gorgeous light brown suede coat
in the store she often stopped by.
She suddenly thought:
“This shirt suits me, especially with my blonde hair color.
I need that shirt,
and I don’t have a nice coat yet.”
So she went to the store.
When she tried on the shirt,
she glanced at the price tag
and saw the number $400.
She had never spent so much money on a coat.
In her head, she said, “So what?
The shirt looks great!
Let’s buy it! I’ll get that money back later.”
That’s when she discovered how much the Millionaire Mind course had impacted her.
Right at the moment her instincts suggested buying the shirt,
her new positive mind spoke up:
“I should stop this and put that $400 into my Financial Freedom account!
What do I need that shirt for?
I already have a coat.”
She sent the shirt back and promised to come back the next day,
instead of buying it right away like her usual habit.
And she never came back to buy that shirt.
Natalie realized that her material gratification “profile” had been replaced
by her financial freedom “profile”.
She no longer felt the need
to spend to assert herself.
She knows it’s time to apply the best that her parents have modeled for her,
which is the habit of saving,
but she still doesn’t forget to reward herself with small joys
with the growing amount of money in her Account.
Her enjoyment.
Then Natalie took her parents to a Millionaire Mindset course
so they could create a more balanced life.
She happily announced
that they were now living in small roadside hotels,
buying new cars,
learning how to make money work for them,
and they were enjoying the lives of true millionaires.
Now Natalie understands
that she doesn’t have to be frugal like her parents
to have a comfortable life,
but she is also aware that if she continues to spend mindlessly,
she will never be free.
Financial. Natalie said:
“Great, now I can control both my mind and my money.”
As such, our ultimate goal is to make money work to serve us,
just as we worked hard to earn it,
and that means you have to save and invest,
not convert.
The act of squandering money becomes a must-do in life.
There is a surprising contrast here.
The rich have a lot of money but spend little,
while the poor have very little money
and spend too much.
The poor work to earn money now,
while the rich work to earn money for their investments,
and those deals will pay them off in the future.
Rich people buy assets that are likely
to increase in value in the future,
while poor people “buy” expenses as money.
It will depreciate in a short time.
The rich accumulate land.
Poor people accumulate bills.
I often tell my children: “Buy real estate”.
It’s better to buy properties that can provide a positive income stream,
or any type of property,
than if you don’t have any.
Of course, the value of real estate will fluctuate according
to market demand
and may increase or decrease,
but then in 5, 10, 20 or 30 years from now,
its value will certainly be much higher today.
And maybe that’s all you need to get rich.
Buy what you can afford right now.
If you need more capital,
you can collaborate with people you know and trust.
The only time you get in trouble with real estate is
when you expand your business too quickly
and are forced to sell at a time
when the market is down.
As long as you heed my previous advice
and manage your money properly,
the chances of this happening will be extremely low,
even almost never.
People say:
“Don’t wait to buy real estate.
Buy real estate and wait.”
I told you the story of my wife’s parents about the effectiveness
of investing in real estate,
but now I will take the example related to my parents.
My parents are not poor,
but just middle class.
My father worked hard,
and my mother stayed at home to take care of my brothers
and sisters because her health was very poor.
My father was a carpenter and he noticed
that construction contractors were constantly expanding the land
they had purchased years earlier.
He also realized that they were all very rich.
My parents decided to also use their meager savings
to buy a plot of land of more than 3,000 square meters about 30 km
from the city where they lived.
The land was then worth $60,000.
Ten years later,
a real estate development company decided
to build a large shopping center on that land.
My parents sold the land and made $600,000.
Subtracting the initial amount,
they have an average return of $54,000 per year on this investment,
whereas my father only makes about $15,000 to $15,000 per year
on this investment $20,000 from his carpentry work.
Now my parents are retired and living a very comfortable life,
but I guarantee that without this real estate sale,
they would still be living very frugally today.
Fortunately, my father recognized the power of investing,
especially in real estate.
Now you know why I amassed land.
The poor look at the dollar and only “see” a dollar
that can be exchanged
for something they want in the present moment.
The rich see a dollar as a seed that can be planted
and reaped hundreds of dollars more,
which can then be planted to yield thousands more dollars.
Think about that.
Every dollar you spend today can cost you hundreds of dollars tomorrow.
For me personally,
every dollar is an “investment warrior”
whose mission is to bring “financial freedom”
to their owner,
Needless to say,
I am very careful with my “freedom fighters”
and never allow myself to use them arbitrarily and easily.
***********************
Rule of Prosperity No. 34:
The rich see each dollar as a “seed”
that can be planted to reap hundreds of dollars more,
which can then be planted to reap thousands more.
The secret here is that you must have knowledge
of the investment field.
Get acquainted with a variety of investment
and financial instruments such as real estate,
mortgages,
stocks,
bonds,
mutual funds,
currency rates, and more.
Then, pick an area and dig deep to master every detail like a true professional.
Let’s start with that area and then gradually expand to other areas.
In short, the poor work hard
and quickly spend all the money they earn,
and the results, that they have
to work hard all their lives.
Rich people work hard,
spend sparingly,
and invest their money so they never have to work hard again.
Speed is the currency that you want
to maximize on today.
Most people just go too slow.
They think too long
and they never take any action. – Grant Cardone
DECLARATION:
Place your hand on your chest and say…
“My money works to serve me and bring me more money.”
Then you put your hand on your forehead and say…
“I have a Millionaire Mindset!” We are self made millionaire.
