The definition of wealthy

So… now you are motivated to do something with your life.  What now?  There are several areas in life that everyone needs to work on.  Those are, in no specific order…

1)      Financial

2)      Health

3)      Spiritual

4)      Family

5)      Personal

Now, let’s look at the financial part.  I start with that one, because all of these have to be done every single day.  This is not something you can work on step by step, process by process.  It has to be done all at the same time.

Anyways, in order to be “wealthy”, one must first define “wealth”.  The dictionary says wealth is “an abundance of valuable possessions or money.”  Which is a really worthless definition.  Buckminster Fuller provided a better definition.  He said wealth is a measure of how long you could live if you quit working tomorrow.  A person is “wealthy” when the income produced comes from efforts that are not their job.  That’s a big can of worms…  so let’s make this simple. 

1^st example.

Let’s say you have $1,000 in expenses every month.  Your investments and other income aside from your job equates to $100 a month.  Your wealth could now be defined as 1/10^th of a month. 

2^nd example

If you have $2000 in savings, $1,000 per month in expenses, and $100 per month in  income.  Then your wealth is now…  

First month…  $1000 expenses, minus $100 in income.  Leaves $900, so take that out of savings.   So you now have $1,100 in savings. 

Second month.  $1000 in expenses minus $100 in income.  Leaves $900.  Take that amount out of savings.  Leaves $200 in savings. 

Third month.  $1000 in expenses minus $100 in income.  Leaves $900.  Minus $200 from savings.   Leaves you with a $700 deficit.  Your wealth has lasted you 2 3/10ths of a month. 

3^rd example.   You have $2,000 in expenses per month.   Your income from investments and other (non-work) methods is $2,100. 

So long as this person continues to live within their means, then this person would be considered wealthy, because that person can live effectively forever without ever working again. 

So, that’s my definition of being wealthy.   Now that we have that part considered, let’s look at what we can do.   Your best bet is to follow the Dave Ramsey plan.

1)      $1,000 cash in the bank.

2)      Get rid of all debt except your house.

3)      3-6 months expenses in the bank.

4)      Save for retirement

5)      Save for kids college.

6)      Pay off the house early

7)      Build wealth, and give a bunch of it away.

IN THAT ORDER.

Why do you want to do this?  Remember our 2^nd example.  The person with savings lasted much longer without a job than the person without savings.  The next part, elimination of debt, is to decrease our expenses so we can become wealthy faster.   It’s a lot easier to get $1,000 per month in income you don’t work for than it is to get $5,000 a month.   In my case, I only need about $1,500 a month to reach the definition of wealthy.  At that point, I could quit my job and survive indefinitely without ever getting another job.  

All making sense?  I hope so.  This is the easy part.

The end of excuses, and a new beginning

Back to where I was yesterday.  I’m going to finish this last part. 

Race/Ethnicity/Gender:  Also blatant, pointless excuses when it comes to reaching your goals.  Think race matters or gender matter?  Examine the habits of Oprah Winfrey or Jay Z.  Both probably end up fairly close to what Tom Corley identified with his study of the habits of the rich.  See, behaviors are gender/race/ethnicity independent.  If you spend three hours a day in front of the TV after work, it doesn’t matter what your race or gender, you are going to end up going nowhere.  But if you spend those three hours a day working on your goals, then you will achieve your goals. 

If you haven’t guessed, most excuses are pointless.  And stupid.  So quit making them.  Next time you start stating why you can’t do something, add the mental sound of a crying baby behind it.  It will strike you as hilarious and make you realize your excuses are just as ridiculous as the temper tantrum of a two year old.

Now that we know excuses are a waste of time, let’s start looking into what it does take to succeed.  Let’s throw an example out there.  Let’s say you want to be an author, but you have no idea how to do it.  Well, the first thought is come up with an idea.  Once you have an idea for your book, the next step is to write.  And this is the part where most people fall apart.  They have an idea, but action is never put towards an idea.   So how long would it take me to write a 100,000 word novel?  I mean, that’s a lot of words, right?  

How about 300 words a day?  Can you write 300 words every day?  Yeah, that’s much more reasonable and shouldn’t take more than an hour a day.   If you write on average 300 words per day, at the end of one year, you will have written 109,500 words. 

Wow.  So you just wrote your 100,000 word novel, 300 words at a time in a single year.  If you can produce 400 words a day, then you can write your 100,000 word novel Monday through Friday and have the weekends off. 

See, we’ve been told a nice Hollywood lie.  We are taught and told that success happens in great giant bursts.  It all gets crammed into a five minute training montage.  And that’s just crap.   Success in anything is a matter of eating an elephant.  How does one eat an elephant?  One bit at a time.  For a long time.  Success is a matter of constant, small accumulations.  It’s going to the gym seven days a week for a year.  It’s saving $20 a week for a year (that’s $1,040 in a year without any effort). 

So, your goal for the rest of your life is daily accumulation of effort.  Can you produce 400 words a day to achieve your goal?   I mean, you do want to achieve this goal, right?

Excuses are like something something...

I’ve thought about posting more about myself on my blogger profile, but I think that is a pointless idea.  It all narrows down to blame.  Successful people don’t worry about blame.  The assignment of blame is the least important thing to them.  All the other people in the world make sure the blame doesn’t rest on them. 

Now, let us break down the difference between the two ideas.  If you are successful, then 1) A problem happens, 2) identify the problem 3) determine a solution for the problem 4) determine what caused the problem 5) act on part 4.   If you are part of the rest of the world, then your flow chart is…  1) a problem happens, 2) blame someone else, 3) blame society 4) blame some other external aspect 5) identify the problem, 6) determine where the blame should be placed 7) place the blame 8) move on.

Note that in both examples, things start the same.  Something happens.  In the first problem with the successful person, the goal is solving the problem.  In the second example, solving the problem becomes secondary as soon as the proposed solution doesn’t work. 

Now that we’ve looked at the process, let’s examine common things to that people blame. 

The economy:  For being blamed so often, the economy is a giant nebulous thing that is hard to pin down.  In fact, the problem is so vague that the problem becomes indefensible.  It is that vagueness that makes blaming “the economy” so popular.  In this situation, the real truth is this: the economy in my job sector/city/state is bad, and I refuse to go where the jobs are.  If you are looking for a job in Detroit, then good luck to you.  But if you drive down I-40 in Amarillo, Texas, you’ll find almost every building you see has a “we’re hiring sign” on it.  So if the economy is bad in your area, pack up and move.  In the end, blaming the economy is just another of the overly vague excuses people use to excuse their failure.

The man.  Point of fact: the isn’t even aware you exist.  And if by the man, you mean the police then you need to quit breaking the law.  There is no reason to move into the illegal realm when there is plenty of opportunity in the legal one. 

No money: now this one can be fixed.  First, start getting your spending under control.  Work off a written budget and identify and remove wasteful spending.  If cable TV is getting in the way of your goals, get rid of cable TV.  $100 a month can lead a long way to getting your finances under control.  Secondly, examine what you need the money for.  If you have a generic nebulous idea, then form that idea into something solid.  Search the internet for prototyping tools and try to build your idea without spending a dime to see if it works.  I’d guess most of the time people say they need money, they really don’t have a solid idea.  By the time you apply money to your idea, you should already have a general idea and something concrete to start working on. 

There are others, but I think I will cross those later.  And to invalidate all your excuses, here’s a video of a kid with down syndrome getting into college. 

Screw popularity. Get achievement.

I read this article about a book by Greg Gutfeld.  It was completely awesome.  It’s very easy to get caught up in the someone else’s agenda, and let their ideas rule your thinking.  I think these quotes from Greg Gutfield are completely spot on. Gutfield talks about cool versus not cool.   And his definition of cool is “popularity without achievement”.  I agree with him.  That’s pretty much the exact opposite of what I preach and believe.  Because achievement is everything. 

In working on the program Drive, I one day came up with the statement: Time is precious.  Use yours wisely.   And I think that embodies everything I’ve been learning and teaching for a long time.  Too often people spend a lot of their time on useless exploits that get them no closer to their own goals and often lament where their life went.  That’s just stupid.  Spend time on what you want to know and what you want to learn.  Don’t waste your time doing something that is a waste of your time. 

These are your goals and your dreams.  Why are you wasting YOUR time on someone else’s goals?  Is that person even a part of your family?  I can understand if it is your significant other, or maybe your child.  But some person you never met?  Get real.  If you spend time working on their goals, then you will achieve their goals.  If you work on your goals, you will achieve your goals.  It’s that simple. 

Get motivated, and quit worrying about failing.   Failing is okay and failing is normal.  You are not going to get it right the first time.  That doesn’t mean you should quit.  It means you should learn from your mistakes and get back to working on your goals.  Did you succeed the first time you rode a bicycle?  What about the first time you drove?   What about the first time you tried to read?   I doubt it.  But guess what: you tried again and again, and eventually you succeeded.  That’s the way life works.  You try.  You fail. You learn.  Rinse, lather, repeat.  In life there is no “get out of the shower and do it again tomorrow”.  It’s a constant repetition of try, fail, learn.  Eventually, your failures get smaller and your successes get bigger.  That’s how it works in real life. 

So quit being afraid and get started.  Like right now.  Really.  Like right now.  

Rude People

I had a site upgrade Monday night due to a debit/credit failure.  Because of the nature of the failure, I didn’t shut the entire store down to do the upgrade.  During the upgrade, we had signs on the door saying debit and credit was down.  Some guy walked in and started off with a very rude attitude.  I don’t think he liked the company I work for, but he was shopping there anyways and being quite rude about it.  He was constantly rude, and was trying to start a fight.  I don’t know why.  He was very grumpy.  And he started asking me questions.  The kind of what do you do, why are you here questions.  At which point he found out I worked on networking equipment.  And suddenly his attitude changed.  He went from total jerk to “we’re best friends” mid-sentence.    It was suddenly a situation when he wanted to know if I did work on the side.  And my “polite” answer was I work too much and that I don’t have time to do side work. 

The correct answer would have been that I would never work for a person like him.  He was rude, belligerent, and a complete bum.  You can tell a lot about a persons’ character by seeing how they interact with others.  Being rude and inconsiderate to the people at the bottom is one of those things that drives me up the wall.  I dealt with people like that from time to time, and they were all complete and utterly worthless.  In the Marines, I dealt with people like that until I could get rid of them, or the project was done.  In the civilian world, I’d never go work for them.  If I ended up working for them, then I wouldn’t continue working for them. 

In the end, no matter how smart you are or how great your design, the people at the bottom of the chain are those selling your product and making you money.  There’s a place for them, and everyone is necessary in the chain.  Treating the people who pay you like crud is unacceptable.

In the end, I was polite as the last thing I wanted to do was go off on some idiot in my work uniform.  There’s no point in starting a public relations fiasco over an idiot.  And just generally rude is the kind of people we deal with on a daily basis.  “Putting them in their place” sounds like a great idea, but in the end shouldn’t we treat others as we want to be treated?  Even if it means being nice to rude people.  Of course, I’d also have to add the second part…  never mistake my kindness for weakness.