If you work a 9-6 job, the odds are against you.
You will never be rich.
It took me awhile to learn this lesson.
I really hope you learn it quicker and less painlessly than I did.
Being caught in the Rat Race, endlessly repeating weekly cycles of forcing myself up in the cold mornings before the sun has even risen, dragging myself to work for the whole day and leaving for home after the sun has already set.
Sitting at your desk all day, dealing with office politics and other miscellaneous “corporate bullshit” truly can become life-draining real quick.
One day I asked myself “what am I doing with my life?”
Do I really want to continue living like this for the next 10, 20, 30, 40 years or however long I will live?
Can this even be called “living?”
It doesn’t take a genius mathematician to extrapolate…
I did some quick sums of wages and wage growth, extrapolated and realized at this rate:
I will never be rich or more importantly, what we all crave, to be free.
At this rate I would just be burning away my “life-fuel” (i.e. time) in years in exchange for a small but steady paycheck.
I looked around me and saw that almost no one I knew who was rich or retired young were employees with jobs.
Think about it, have you ever heard of someone becoming rich or retiring young from working at Taco Bell or even fancier “white-collar” office jobs?
Certainly this is rare to non-existent.
Sure the exception is if you spend 25 years you may climb to be CEO or close but the corporate ladder is a pyramid with only a few at its apex. The climb is hard and long and you must be willing to put up with a lot of crap to get there. Worse still, you will most probably have to sacrifice a lot of time with your family in exchange.
The Solution: you have to “mind your own business”
The only way to be financially free is to have your own business.
There are many reasons for this, chief of which is the rules of the game are simply stacked against you as an employee.
Ask most people, whether they realize it or not, tax is one of their biggest expenses. Before you even see your payslip, the government has already taken a sizeable chunk from it.
Then everyone else takes a cut: rent/mortgage, food, utilities, transportation, broadband, education and clothing to name a few.
You get paid last.
The only way to get ahead is to operate in a different tax structure which isn’t possible as an employee.
Whereas those in business with companies pay themselves first, deduct many of their expenses and then pay their government taxes last.
They play by a different set of rules than everyone else in “job land.”
Action points/notes to self
- If nothing changes, nothing changes.
- Albert Einstein once quipped: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” I have to do something differently.
- Consciously work towards building a business in order to become financially free and more importantly time free so that I can spend my time with loved ones, which is really what counts.
Question time
I am genuinely interested in how most people feel about their jobs? I’ve always wondered, is it just me?
Or am I being ungrateful that I even have a job?
Is it wrong to think and dream of financial and time freedom?
I would love to hear your thoughts.
Leave a message in the comments below.
Until next time.
Godspeed,
Tony Lee Jacobs
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