This Place is a F*cking Prison! On Planet Bulls**t! In The Galaxy of This Sucks Camel D*ck!
I don’t like it anymore, so I’m leaving. You can come with me if you want.
We are all born into the gilded chains of soft modern slavery. Our governments take a portion of our income. It’s the price you pay to live in modern civilization! The brainwashed government tax slaves chant.
Advertisers blanket us with the latest cool thing to own. If you just had this thing, everyone would look up to you and be amazed at your status. Don’t have the money? No problem! Buy now, pay later (with 25% interest). Become a consumer of stuff you don’t need, become a debt slave to have it all now.
We need money to pay off all these debts. Got to go to work. You get Christmas and New Years off, and two weeks a year. Oh, you need to be available 24/7 otherwise. That’s 97% of the year. Oh well, everyone has a job. Work is your life now. Become stressed, become depressed – don’t worry pop a Prozac like everyone else and use your credit card to buy that Chanel cashmere sweater, it’s GORGEOUS! Keep running on that hamster wheel, you wage slave.
It’s a pretty common story in the developed world. Work, work, work. Buy, buy, buy. There is always something else to buy to make you another day poorer and deeper in debt. Think of how much money you have earned over the course of your life, then think of how much you managed to keep. If you have had an average income of $50K for 20 years, you earned $1,000,000!
Of course the government wants their piece, and the bankers theirs, and you bought what the advertisers told you to. How much did you keep for you?
For most people, it’s a darn small amount.
Of course, if you earn $50K a year you are living in a comfortable slavery. But still, you are a prisoner of the system. You can’t decide to take the day off and go fishing, you don’t have that freedom. You need that income and you would need to check in with your master and see if they’ll LET you.
To channel my inner Forrest Gump:
I’ve been running on this hamster wheel for 17 years, 10 months, 20 days, and 6 hours. I’m pretty tired of it… I think I’ll find a way off.
Some things, like the government, I can’t change. So if it is out of my control, I just have to deal with it. I put that out of my mind so I stay sane.
The ancient philosopher Epictetus, who was once a slave before earning his freedom once said: Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not. It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you can and can't control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible
I can control being a debt and wage slave. So that is what I will change. Here's how the plan of escape works.
Change Your Mindset
Understand that we are exactly where we deserve to be in life. Our way of thinking has brought us to this exact situation at this exact point in time. It wasn’t anyone else’s fault, so you cannot blame anyone but yourself. Take responsibility for your actions, past, present, and future. You need to have an internal locus of control. YOU make things happen, things do NOT happen TO you.
This is the difference between thinking that ”I can determine my future” and the slave thinking of ”There is nothing I can do about my future.”
Minimize expenses, become frugal
In his book The Millionaire Mind, Thomas Stanley states that nearly every self-made millionaire doesn’t look, act, or live like they have that much money. They drive older cars and wear jeans and a t-shirt. Realize that it doesn’t matter if your phone is 2 years old, it still does what you need it to. Stop buying things that do not improve your happiness in the long term.
You need to live WAY under what you make. If you can live on 50% of your take home pay, you just saved up enough money to live without working for a year. Then you invest that money and over time it grows and frees you from more days of being a wage slave.
Build up a pile of F*ck You! Money
Destroy Your Debt
The same goes for anything with a motor, it is most likely losing value AND costing you even more in interest payments. So many people have huge loans for something worth FAR less than they still owe.
These debts are a cancer, they are killing you! Cure yourself.
Work A Side-Gig
Many times this action becomes a sort of business. For example, I sell things on eBay or Amazon FBA. But it could be just that you mow lawns around your neighborhood, walk dogs, drive for Uber, or rent a room on Air BNB.
Find something you can do to bring in extra money. You will see that you are able to provide for yourself, and between that and a pile of F*ck You! Money you will sleep easier at night.
Make It All A Game
I never remodeled a kitchen before, but when I bought my house I got it at a great discount because it was pretty ugly. Some people more frugal than me would have just left it, but I decided to find cheap ways of making it look much nicer than it was. I searched and haggled to find the materials for the cheapest prices and I improved myself by learning new skills.
Keep ‘score’ by using a service like mint or personal capital. By tracking your spending and investments you can challenge yourself to spend less in a category like electricity or groceries. You can challenge yourself to put more money into your investments than you did the month previous. Always be striving to earn a new ‘personal best’!
The end goal is for your money to be busy making you enough money so you don't have to work if you choose not to.
If you want to be free, become free. Then it's party time.
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Great post, as always, @getonthetrain! I picked up “The Millionaire Mind” by Thomas J. Stanley two days ago on Amazon and am reading it now. So a lot of what you’re talking about in this post resonates with me deeply. And not just from reading that book for the past two days. That’s just 1% of my inspiration. The other 99% come from the past 20 years of experience, living on my own (or supporting myself and a partner), being frugal with my resources, earning, saving, investing, running an enterprise on a side. As a result, I’m now saving about half of my monthly paycheque, investing it smartly (the latest great investment was Bitcoin), piling up F**k You!-money, and – slowly but consistently – getting closer to full financial freedom and independence. Day by day, step by step.
I am thankful for your posts that keep me motivated and inspired to live this way and pass on this wisdom to others! Keep up your great work and steem on!
Great to see you so motivated Oleg! That's how it is for nearly everyone, a slow build up of a snowball that just gets bigger and bigger every year. It's not glamorous so we stay focused by reading and sharing our experiences with others along the same path.
Save, invest and wait. Save, invest and wait. Gotta keep it fun!
You're doing excellent! :D
Fantastic article, bro!
I reckon those less well off than the rich are playing the game of "proving". They can also enjoy the best of things like their so-called better off counterparts. The rich just have nothing left to prove. It you can buy anything at all, does it still hold the same levels of satisfaction and importance?
Keep up the fantastic and informative posts, brother! :)
Pretty much what you said. It is like the human version of animals that are harmless but look just like the other animal that is poisonous. Except this one is for status, and makes the faker less likely to join the wealthy side.
Thanks for the encouraging word @ezzy :D
Wow this is great man! I love the bit about living on 50 percent of what you earn to reach up the spare cash. You never think, at least I rarely do of saving more than a very small amount of your wage but if you aim big like this you could make a huge difference
So many people have realized that it is possible, and they keep trying to improve the amount. Of course many people doing are engineers and the like, so it isn't as difficult. Still, there are normal earners that do it. If you are married with two incomes, live off just one and the other spouses income is for investing.
Here is a chart that shows you how long you have to work with each savings rate percentage. 50% is about 17-18 years.
I would suggest the book Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin
https://www.amazon.com/Your-Money-Life-Transforming-Relationship/dp/0140286780/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1482528757&sr=1-3&keywords=your+money+or+your+life
This book teaches you a lot about money. Instead of teaching you to budget, it gets you to accurately look at where you are spending money, and how much happiness those expenditures is bringing you.
I have given away many copies of this book. It is that good.
Well, except for the last chapter on investing. That was written during a time when govern-cement debt was absolutely safe and paid good interest.
Agreed, one of the best books about personal finance there is! Good to see someone else here on steemit agrees with me. :D
Very informative post :) i especially second the idea of having a side gig. It'll keep you up and about and life's always more rewarding when you have many plates spinning
Every man should have at least one side gig! http://www.artofmanliness.com/2012/07/30/the-company-mans-guide-to-starting-a-side-hustle-part-i-confronting-your-objections/
Damn I love Step Brothers. Watched it probably 10x.
Ha, yea I can watch it over and over again too. Great movie. :)