The minute you walked into my friend’s house, you knew. He had all the usual trappings of wealth—the high-priced sports car, million-dollar home equipped with all the high-tech gadgets you could ask for, expensive furniture, the works.
You could say my friend had it all. But there was only one problem. And that problem was…
…he was never home to enjoy any of it.
In fact, he typically worked 80-100 hours a week. He maybe got to ride in his sports car an hour a week. He never watched his large plasma screen TV.
But to those around him. He was someone to be envied. “Look at all that he has. If I had that, I’d be so happy.”
And those people are not alone. When most people think about wealth, they view it in terms of possessions. Don’t believe me? Go take a look at those late-night info-mericials selling courses on real estate and other business opportunities,
What do they show? People on yachts. People in fancy houses. People in high-priced sports cars. You get the picture.
But I define wealth differently. I define wealth as having the time to enjoy your life. The time to spend some tie with the people you care most about. And most importantly to have the time to spend on your own personal development.
Some people envy “the rich”. But I know better. I’ve seen too many of the “rich” work so much that they never see their kids and their house staff enjoys their homes more than they do.
That’s not wealth. That’s just having money. Wealth is not just having money, it’s having the time to enjoy it.
So, when you map out your career, don’t just consider how much money you will make. Think about how much time you will get to enjoy it. Then you will be on your way to true wealth.
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Posted: October 16th, 2007
Categories:
Balance,
Financial Freedom,
Simplify Your Life,
Wealth
Tags:
defining_wealth,
enjoy_your_life,
personal_development,
possessions,
time_is_money,
true_wealth,
Wealth
Comments:
6 Comments.
Do what you love and the money will follow. Heard that before? It sounds like an old tired cliché. I wouldn’t blame you for rolling your eyes or being cynical when you hear it. Personally, I hate those kinds of sayings. The reason is that although it’s easy to say “do what you love and the money will follow” it’s another thing altogether to actually do it.
I should know. When I went to college, I took the route of money. I majored in something that I thought would bring me money hand over fist. Yes, I majored in…
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I nearly broke my ankle tripping over a stone frog statue lying in a room in my buddy’s apartment that he bought for the house he doesn’t own yet. But the statue isn’t the only thing occupying this room. Oh no. This room is filled wall-to-wall with “stuff” he’s bought on weekends ever since he was in college. And the thing about that room is he only goes in there to put more stuff in there.
Things go in…but they never come out.
Have you ever bought something and soon after wished you’d never bought it? And now it’s occupying space in your house?
I often wondered why I or anyone else buys things we don’t need and truthfully don’t even want. In my life research, I have come up with 3 main reasons why we buy things we don’t need (and really don’t even want).
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A friend of mine used to brag all the time about how little he spent on everything. In fact, it was a point of honor that he spent so little money on things. Mind you, he was talking to me who rarely buys things at all. But I was always happy to hear where he got things, the prices he got them for, and why he got them.
There was only one problem. He was constantly buying new things because his old things broke so often. He’d buy cheap toasters that would break in less than a year. He’s buy cheap frying pans that started flaking in a few months. And he bought clothes that were constantly getting ruined.
The heart of the problem was that my friend was not frugal. He was cheap. And being cheap cost him A LOT of money over the years.
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OK. I’ve gotten two kinds of reactions from the words “Possess Less”. Some people think I’m trying to get them to join some kind of cult (not true…by the way), while others see it as simply a way of frugal living. The truth is it’s more than that. In this podcast, I tell you exactly what “possessing less” means to me, and how my concept of possessing less just might be the way to happiness you are looking for.
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How Possessing Less Leads to Happiness [5:16m]:
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One of the questions I am asked the most is how to put together a simple budget that someone can actually stick to. Let me tell you: I have tried different kinds of budgets, and most of them flat out don’t work or are nearly impossible to stick to.
But the budget that works for me is the one I discovered…
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“We’ve having another baby!” a friend of mine told me. What joy for them. She was happy. Her husband was also happy. Everything looked like it would be wonderful.
The only problem with another child, however, was the financial burden another child brings. But we didn’t talk about that. I mean who talks about that at times like this.
But my friends did have a problem. They had over $30,000 in credit card debt, 2 car payments, a mortgage payment, and a wealth of other financial problems. So, when I went to their house the next week, imagine my surprise when…
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A while back, I read a book called Generation Debt. Basically, the book goes on about how this is a bad time to be young because so many young people are in debt.
In debt?
Well, I’ll go ahead and “solve” the whole debt problem for the nation’s youth. It will probably be the simplest way to get out of credit card debt that you’ll ever read. Ready?
Don’t charge things on a credit card if you can’t afford to pay cash for it.
Simple, huh? Well, it doesn’t seem so simple for a lot of people. As a marketer, I know first-hand how people delude themselves into believing they “need” things when really they just want it.
But what if you are already in debt?
Have a massive student loan? I sympathize. I really do. I worked full-time when I was in college so that I could minimize my debt. And when I graduated I had $150 to my name, a sizeable student loan, and had a one-way ticket to South Korea in search of a job.
A year later, the debt was gone—and that was in the midst of the Asian Financial Crisis that saw a loss of 60% in the Korean currency against the dollar.
How’d I pay it off?
I did it by doing without. Don’t get me wrong. I went out with friends and had a good time. I even took a trip or two in that year. But the key was I didn’t buy anything. At the end of one year, I owned about as much as I did at the beginning of the year.
It sounds almost too easy, but I see too many people who want everything and want it now. They don’t think before they buy. And they wonder why they’re in debt.
The key is simple. Do not buy what you cannot afford. As I found out that first year I lived in South Korea, there wasn’t much that I really needed. There was no “thing” that could give my life meaning.
There was only me. There was only time. And what I lost in possessions, I gained in time, experience, and even money. And the money I saved by not buying things I didn’t need took me out of debt.
It can do the same for you.
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