-By Caleb Jones

I am now going official with one of my most controversial opinions of them all. But don’t worry, I will be able to defend it with facts and data, just like I always do. I’ve mentioned this opinion a few times before in passing, but never explained it fully.

Before I get to making many of you upset, I have to be very clear in stating that this is simply my opinion. That’s it. Just my personal opinion. It’s not an official recommendation or endorsement. It’s just an opinion.

I am not saying that this is some kind of requirement for Alpha Male 2.0 status. It’s not.

I am not saying if you don’t achieve this you’re some kind of loser. You’re not. (Though it could raise several questions that I will discuss in a minute.)
I am not saying the business techniques I teach will make you a million dollars. Oh, they certainly can and likely will if you stick with them, but how much money you save/invest/amass is completely up to you. I don’t teach “how to get rich” stuff or “get rich fast” stuff. I teach the Alpha Male 2.0 lifestyle, the freest and happiest lifestyle a Western man can live in the modern era, and one of the requirements of this lifestyle is that you make at least $75,000 US or the equivalent via location independent self-employed income while having zero to little debt. The lifestyle I endorse and teach does not require millions of dollars; far from it (though obviously millions of dollars would certainly help).
This is just my individual option separate from any lifestyle or financial advice I teach.

Got that? So from now on, if you ever see anyone saying anything like “Blackdragon says Alpha Male 2.0s need to be millionaires! What a bunch of crap!!!”, then that person is lying or retarded.

Now that we’re past all that, here’s my opinion:

Any man who has lived in the Western world his entire life should have a net worth of at least one million dollars by the time he reaches age 50.

Before I explain that, let me note a few things for the record:

1. I am 46 years old, so this doesn’t apply to me (yet). I’m also not saying I’m not worth over a million dollars. I’m not going to tell you what my net worth is and I’m not saying anything about that for legal reasons. I’m just making it clear that I don’t have this opinion just because I’m 50 because I’m clearly not.

2. I’ve have had this opinion since I was about 26 years old when my net worth was not only zero, but negative. So this opinion is nothing new. As always, I don’t form opinions based on my own subjective, temporary emotions nor my current conditions which are always subject to change. (Like guys who defend monogamous marriage just because they just got monogamously married, or guys who defend college just because they’re currently going to college, etc.)

Now I shall explain this opinion using points that are going to be very difficult to argue with. I shall explain my statement point by point.

“Any man who has lived in the Western world…”

I’m only talking about men who live in the Western world, not Africa or Bangladesh or Paraguay. By “Western world” in this context I mean the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Western Europe, Scandinavia, and Israel. I also include a few of the more prosperous Asian nations such as South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, and more or less Japan. I partially include Eastern Europe but I’m willing to give those men a slight pass because of the economic state those countries have been in over the last 30 years.

So if you’re outside those nations/regions, I’m not referring to you. But if you are inside one of them, I’m talking to you.

“…his entire life…”

If you are living in the Western world now but haven’t spent your whole life here, I’ll give you a pass. I’m not talking about you. We could have a complicated conversation about exactly how long you’ve been here and base my criteria on a certain number of years, but that’s not a conversation I’m willing to have. If you haven’t lived here your entire life, I’ll give you a pass.

“…should have a net worth…”

Some of you don’t know what “net worth” is, so let me define that. That means you add up all the stuff you own (your business, house, car, investments, whatever) then deduct all the debt you have (your mortgage, credit cards, student loans, whatever) and get a total figure. That figure is your net worth.

So when I say you need a net worth of one million dollars by the time you’re 50, I’m not saying you need a literal pile of cash on your bed equal to one million dollars. No, no. I’m saying that by the time you’re 50, if we deduct all your debts from all of your assets, the resulting number should be at least one million US dollars. Most of the time, a strong percentage of that number will simply be equity in your house, and/or perhaps the value of a small business, not actual cash.

That being said, having one million or more of high liquidity (i.e. quick and easy convertibility to cash) is a fantastic thing and I highly recommend it if you can pull it off by age 50 (or sooner!), but that’s a very different topic we can discuss at another time.

“… of at least one million dollars…”

I’m about to explain something that many of you poorer guys won’t understand. That is this: one million dollars is not a lot of money.

The reason you think a million dollars is a lot of money is because it used to be. You’re a victim of outdated Societal Programming that says “a million dollars is a lot” or “a millionaire is rich.”

Back in my day, the 1980s, yes, if you had a million dollar net worth, that meant mansions and limousines and private jets and all kinds of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous™ type crap. If you were a millionaire back in 1988, yeah man, you were fucking rich.

Today, after 30 years of inflation, taxflation, increased taxes, quantitative easing, money printing, currency devaluation, manipulation of commodity markets, skyrocketing government spending, fractional reserve banking, and all the other slow-collapse-of-the-Western-world aspects I’ve talked about in great detail over at my other blog for many years, the value of the US Dollar (and most other Western currencies) has diminished by wide margins. One million dollars is now a small fraction of what it used to be.

A guy worth one million back in 1988 was fucking rich. A guy worth one million today is barely upper-middle-class. All it means is that he owns a small business and has some equity in his house. That’s it. He’s your next-door neighbor who lives in a house just like yours and drives a car just like yours. He’s not rich at all. Not even close, particularly if he has kids and stuff. Read the book The Millionaire Next Door for more details on that. And that book was written back in the 90s; currency values are far worse now than when that book was written.

So start a small business, pay down some of your house, and get a few investments. Wham. You’ve got a million dollar net worth, which isn’t very much money today. You’re a millionaire, but you’re not rich. As I’ve said many times before, today “rich” is $10 million or more. One million is not rich. It’s not bad, but it’s not rich.

“…by the time he reaches age 50.”

Now this is when I get hard on you. Get ready.

Time to do some very uncomfortable math.

By the time you’re 50 years old, you’ve had 30 fucking years in the workforce. If you’re 50, you’ve been working longer than thousands of people reading this article have actually been alive. A 50-year-old man has been working a long, long time.

If you’re 25 years old and you have no money and no net worth, I get it. You’ve only been working a few years. No one expects you to have a lot of money. Even if you’re making a high income at age 25 (I certainly was) I still don’t expect you to have a high net worth (I didn’t have shit for net worth when I was 25) because you haven’t yet had the time to pay off your debts, save a lot of money, and so on. Fine.

But by the time you’re 50? Different story, buddy. No excuses for you. You’ve been working for 30 years. You’ve had 30 years to get your financial shit together.

I semi-regularly meet guys who are 50+ who have no money or little money in terms of net worth. The question in my mind is always the same: What the fuck have you been doing for the past 30 years? 30 years! You’ve been working for 30 years and have nothing?

Insane.

Now here come the excuses…

1. Well, I went through a divorce and lost my ass with alimony and child support and blah blah blah…

So did I. So what? I lost a decent hunk of money in my divorce too. But you know what? That divorce was 12 years ago. I have more than made back all the money I lost 12 years ago several times over, and my net worth is now far beyond what it was when I was a stupid, monogamous, imprisoned, traditionally married beta male.

This is because it is so expensive to be traditionally married that once you get divorced, it’s easier to make and save money, since you don’t have that traditional wife to support anymore. This is to say nothing about raising kids, which is also expensive as hell.

Once you’re divorced and you’re done having kids, it should be no problem at all for you to hit it hard and make whatever the hell you want to make. You’re a free man.

Saying you have no money at age 53 because you got divorced back when you were 37 or 44 is a cop-out and you know it. You’ve had plenty of time to recover that money as a free man.

2. But I have five kids and college is expensive blah blah blah…

Five kids? Are you fucking kidding me? In the modern era of an anti-man culture and a collapsing society you had five kids? Who’s fault is that, you idiot? This isn’t the 1800s or the 1950s. What a stupid decision. And no, I don’t give a shit what your religion is.

I had two kids, and that was probably too many, and I probably make way more money than you.

Doing things like having five or six or more kids in the modern era is only for men who have already amassed millions of dollars, as I already explained here. It’s not for normal, middle-class or even upper-middle-class dudes.

You have only yourself to blame, and my opinion still stands. You need a one million dollar net worth by the time you’re 50 regardless of how many kids you have.

3. Well I had that money but then I went bankrupt…

So what? Again, whose fault was that? Everything in your life is your fault. If you had millions of dollars in net worth and you literally lost it all, then the odds are overwhelming that you were seriously over-leveraged in your debts and/or your business, and/or you were not diversified in your investments, and/or you didn’t have any asset protection in place (offshore trusts, etc).

I have an Alpha 2.0 financial structure, meaning I have zero debt, multiple unregulated businesses in different industries and markets, own 100% of all my own companies with no partners, have all kinds of asset protection up the wazoo, ridiculously diversified investments, and tons of liquid cash for emergencies. I can’t go bankrupt. Yes, I can have financial problems and upsets just like everyone else, but I can’t go bankrupt, because I’ve structured my life to ensure that I won’t. And I’m not even 50 years old yet.

If you went bankrupt and lost it all, I’m pretty sure you didn’t do any of that. (You could be a bizarre exception to the rule, but I doubt it.) You did the typical Societal Programming thing of putting all or most of your assets into one business or one big real estate deal or you had assloads of debt. In other words, you were stupid. Your fault.

4. You don’t need a million dollars to be happy.

When you’re 25 or 36, I agree, you don’t need it. But when you’re 72, trust me, you’re going to want that money. Correction, you’re going to need that money. And when you go begging your kids for money, who will be annoyed at the prospect of taking care of you, or assuming a Western government that is going through bankruptcy and keeps changing its social security laws is going to support you forever in your old age, good fucking luck. Trust me, you’ll want that million in ways you don’t understand right now when you’re not yet really old.

5. What’s the point of a million dollars when, by the time you’ll need it, it will only be worth a faction of a million dollars because of inflation?

This is the stupidest excuse of them all.

Let’s say that your million dollars, when you get really old, is only worth $200,000 due to inflation. Now answer this very difficult question: When you’re 78 years old, would you rather have zero dollars or $200,000?

I realize math is difficult, but think about it.

Stupid.

6. Well, yeah, I agree with your points about a million not being a lot of money and 30 years being a long time, but you need to understand that not everyone can make a million dollars, even given that amount time.

Correct. Mentally retarded people can’t make a million dollars. People with no arms and no legs probably can’t either. Are you mentally retarded? Are you missing both your arms and your legs? No? Then shut the fuck up, stop making these stupid excuses, and get to work.

Again I will repeat that having a $1 million net worth by age 50 is not some kind of Alpha Male 2.0 or Blackdragon “requirement.” It isn’t. It’s just my personal opinion. But man, I have a lot of data to back up that opinion. Good luck disagreeing with with me using facts.

(And on Monday I will talk about something to help you increase your income and your net worth.)

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