The Hidden Danger of Recurring Problems in Your Life
As I talk about in my book, one of the core foundations of long-term, consistent happiness is the number of problems you regularly have in your life. If you have lots of problems that happen over and over again, you will be less happy, even if you live a life that externally looks good to others. I know (and you know) many people who, from the outside in, look like their life is pretty good. Maybe they make more money than you, maybe theyâre in a relationship or marriage that looks wonderful, maybe they look physically fit and healthy, etc.
However, under closer examination, many of these folks regularly deal with all kinds of problems in their lives, both major and minor. That âmajor and minorâ part is important, because if you have a life full of recurring minor problems, you still wonât be very happy, even if you live in a mansion and your girlfriend looks like Margot Robbie.
As usual, everything that happens to you is your fault. Iâm about to prove that objectively.
At least 80% the problems you have in any given 30 day period of your life are recurring problems. At least 80% of the problems you have are not problems that have never happened to you before and take you completely by surprise. Not even close. Rather, these are problems that have happened to you many times before, often hundreds or even thousands of times throughout your life.
Don’t believe me? Put it to the test. Make a mental or written list of all the problems you’ve had in the last seven days. I’m betting at least 80% of them are problems you’ve had many, many times before. Very few, of any, are completely new and unexpected.
The reason they happen to you is not because youâre an innocent victim doing nothing wrong. They also donât happen to you because the world is an evil dark place thatâs out to get you or people like you.
No, these problems happen to you because you have not taken the time to eliminate them. “Eliminate” in this context means you take action to ensure they NEVER happen again. Instead, whenever these problems come at you, you get irritated, deal with them and get past them as fast as you can, and get back to your stressful life. A week or month later, the same problem happens again, and you get irritated again, and move on again. Rinse and repeat forever.
Multiply this by 30 or 50 or 100 different problems in your life, serious ones and little ones, and that adds up to a life of mild mediocrity at best, chronic stress and/or unhappiness at worst.
Most of this blog is about fixing and preventing major problems in your life, particularly in your woman / dating / relationship life. But little problems make you extremely unhappy as well. Over the past ten years or so, I have become very adept at not only fixing problems, but preventing them so they never happen again. Iâve gotten so good at this that today itâs become a weird habit. As a result, itâs no wonder that today I am more consistently happy than any other adult I personally know. Not only have I structured a life conducive to long-term, consistent masculine happiness (which is what my books and blogs are all about), but also because I have virtually no problems anymore. In all seriousness, my weight is literally the only problem I have left in my life (and Iâll get that nailed at some point soon).
Iâll give you a perfect example of what this habit looks like, and apply it to a very minor problem just to make the illustration more clear.
A few days ago I had a certain special someone at my house, and I was helping her with her laptop. Her battery was dead, so I plugged it into the wall in my dining room. There was no power. I immediately remembered that, since moving into my new house a few weeks ago, some of the wall sockets werenât working correctly. (Yes nitpickers, I checked the breakers.)
I unplugged it, grabbed an extension cord, and plugged it into a different socket further away. Normally, that would have been it, but I’m a problem elminator. Once the laptop had power, I got up and started walking out of the room.
âWhere are you going?â she asked, confused.
âHang on,â I said.
I walked into and through the garage, and into my newly remodeled and wonderful home office. I pulled a sticky note from my desk, wrote âDOES NOT WORKâ on it in big letters, and walked all the way back into the dining room with it.
She watched, still confused, as I bent under the table and slapped the sticky note on the dead socket. Then, and only then, did I sit back down and continue to help her. She gave me a âwhat was all that about?â look. I said, âThis way, that socket will never be a problem again.â
From now on, Iâm never going to be irritated by plugging something into that socket and having no power, because I wonât even try it. More importantly, people wonât say to me, âHey, Caleb! Iâm not getting any power here! WTF?â They’ll never bug me about it because they wonât even try it, due to my stupid little note. Eventually, Iâll have an electrician come out and fix it. There’s no rush. Maybe when I get back from Europe.
What would most people do? Most people would just swear a few times and use a different socket. Then later, theyâd forget, try the socket again, and get pissed off again. Or other people in their household or visiting would try the socket and create more minor problems or complaints.
You may be wondering why Iâm making such a big deal about this silly little example of such a minor problem. This isn’t about a little plug in your house. The greater issue is that you need to multiply this by 30, 50, or 100 times, including all problems in your life, from tiny and trivial to huge and painful.
Instead of a single plug in your house that doesnât work (tiny problem), you may have a problem where you stress about paying your bills every month (big problem), and/or you havenât had sex in two years (big problem), and/or youâre always scrambling every year to get your taxes done on time (moderate problem), and/or your neighbors are loud (moderate problem), and/or that guy a few cubicles over at work is an asshole (minor problem), and/or your mom verbally abuses you frequently (major problem) and/or whatever. Add all this stuff up, and that equals an unhappy life (or at best, a mediocre life).
You might also think that kind of behavior is a little anal. Perhaps, but the overall attitude is what Iâm talking about here. My attitude is that whenever I encounter a problem, big or little, I never want to encounter that problem ever again for the rest of my life, as much as is logistically possible of course. This belief not only applies to my day-to-day life, but my woman life, my business life, my financial life, my health and fitness, and everything else.
If I ever encounter a problem that I have already had before, I consider that a failure on my part (with one rare exception Iâll get to in a minute). As the old saying goes, âFool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.â For problems, I just change that to, âHave a problem once, Iâm learning and it’s okay. Have that same exact problem again, and Iâm a dumbass, I’ve fucked up, and it’s all my fault.”
If I canât pay my electric bill one time, and for the first time, then likely thatâs me learning how the world works. I need to have enough money every month to pay my electric bill, or Iâm screwed. Not a big deal. I learn and adjust. Hopefully.
If later in life I canât pay my electric bill again, now weâre in stupid zone, and thatâs on me. Now Iâm being lazy or idiotic, at least most likely. Maybe I lost my job and took too long to find a new one because I was playing video games. Lazy. You could argue that maybe I lost my job though no fault of my own, but then I should have had an emergency fund of $1000 or so socked away somewhere to pay my bills just in case of these kinds of common emergencies. If I didnât, I was stupid, at least to some degree.
It’s true there are some problems in life that are truly unsolvable. These problems cannot be eliminated, but they can be mitigated. Since happiness is so important to me, I always mitigate unsolvable problems as much as humanly possible.
For example, if you have a long-term relationship with a woman, youâre going to get at least some drama from time to time. Regardless of if its open or monogamous, regardless of how wonderful she is, regardless of your relationship skill or Alpha frame, youâre going to get drama from her at least sometimes. She’s a girl. It’s unavoidable.
So you can’t eliminate drama completely (unless you never date any women), but if you structure the relationship correctly, you can minimize drama, using many of the techniques and relationship models I’ve discussed. So girl drama doesn’t necessarily count towards the ânever have a recurring problemâ aspect Iâm talking about today. (Of course thereâs the issue of frequency. If you have girl drama all the god damn time from the woman or women in your life, you’re either a pussy beta or one of those Alpha 1.0s that kinda like it.)
Here’s a business example. I utterly hate bookkeeping, accounting, and legal work. It’s seriously chaps my ass. I’d rather be writing, consulting, or doing a seminar or workshop. Accounting and legal makes no money, costs me money, and is just me complying at gunpoint with big government bullshit. Can I eliminate this problem? No. As the owner of my companies there’s a certain percentage of this crap I have to do personally, regardless of how much I outsource. Can I mitigate this problem? Oh yes. I’ve got virtual assistants, accountants, and attorneys up the wazoo to take as much of this bullshit SW (Standard Work, one of the types of work I define in my book and my business blog) as humanly possible so I can spend more of my time on the work that I actually enjoy and makes money.
The last thing you might be thinking is that eliminating problems takes more time than just dealing with them quickly and moving on. It looks that way, but it’s not really the case. The extra time I took to label that socket like some kind of anal retentive nerd prevents all future time spent dealing with that problem due to my forgetfulness or other people’s confusion. Even if it didn’t, my long-term happiness would increase regardless. Taking the little extra time up front to eliminate problems forever (or at least hardcore mitigate them forever) is a fantastic return on time invested.
As a comparison I’ve used before, take a monogamous relationship vs. an open or poly one. How long does it take to start a monogamous relationship with a woman who already likes you and is dating you? About ten seconds. You say, “Let’s stop seeing other people and be boyfriend and girlfriend” and the woman smiles and says “Okay!” Boom, done. That’s all you need to do to start the relationship. Yes, there’s more work involved later, but to start it, that’s all you need to do. Getting a monogamous girlfriend is the easiest thing in the world. Clueless needy beta males do it all the time.
While a mono relationship takes about 10 seconds to start, starting an open or poly relationship is a process that takes about three months. During this time you have to carefully manage your EFA, maintain your frame, avoid discussing certain topics, not see or communicate with her too often, make sure she orgasms every time you have sex, and all kinds of other things the monogamous boyfriend-guy never needs to worry about. Sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it?
But it isn’t when you factor the entire relationship! Once you’re done, if you do it correctly, you’ve got an FB or MLTR relationship that will produce zero or near zero drama, will last for years and years, while you can do whatever you want, including have sex with other women. You can even get several more women and do the same thing. The mono boyfriend-guy lives in a sort of prison, while you’re getting all the sex and possibly love that he’s getting while being a free man. When the girlfriend dumps that mono guy, which she will, while he’s crying in his beer, you’re still having a great time with your women. He’ll probably never fuck his ex-girlfriend again, while your FBs and MLTRs constantly come back to you over and over again for years, if not decades.
In terms of happiness, that extra time spent establishing such a wonderful thing is well worth it. It eliminates all kinds of problems that normal men encounter so often, they just assume that’s the way it is and there’s nothing they can do about it.
Do the exercise above if you haven’t already. Look back over the last seven days or so, list all the problems you’ve had no matter how small, and ask yourself if they’re recurring problems or brand new ones you’ve never seen before. Once you realize it’s 80% or more, go into the bathroom, look in the mirror, and ask that guy if he’s going to continue to put up with that crap for the rest of his life.
Hopefully he won’t.
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Good read BD. Just what I needed to start my vacation haha. Relax, jot down issues, then get back, and tackle those issues. Thanks again
Problems are only problems if you let them be. As someone born with a non-working hippocampus, there are days when dropping an egg on the floor can cause me to grind to a halt and days when dropping ÂŁ600+ on unplanned vet bills or car repairs is easy. Although thanks to handling external influences the up days are more frequent than ever, I’ve still got to harness thems as much as possible, and let everything go whenever I realistically can. It’s not even about taking direct action, so much as about brushing off discomfort. In the long run, an egg on the floor, a dog having a seizure, or even a domino chain of setbacks three months long can be completely overcome, either through patience or hard work. Getting stressed when my brain isn’t forcing me to be stressed is ultimately a waste of valuable time.
A friend asked me once why I was “generally happy” about small things and relaxed about problems. The answer is simple “when you HAVE to be anxious at least a quarter of the time, the rest of the day is easy”.
It’s a great point. If it’s actually a real problem and not just you being a pussy, you should take action immediately. I think we all know this from our beta friends.
I don’t have many problems in life – all my freedoms are handled (financial, sexual, emotional, social), and this blog and ‘The Unchained Man’ certainly helped me through most of it.
Thank you, BD, for providing me with this advice while I was still young. I can’t even imagine how life would be like without it (probably married, sexless and beta).
Have you ever heard about 5S, Toyota Production System, Rapid Problem Solving or lean? That is what you describe, just applied on your private life.
Yeah, I’ve read a little of David Straker’s stuff. Most of this stuff is common sense to me (but I acknowledge that I’m a weirdo and don’t see the world as most people do).
Dealing with recurring problems in life: Mindset of every inventor
Great post BD! How odd that this simple concept isn’t common sense…
Btw, this post seems to be more appropriate on your business blog. Did you put it here for having a larger following?
This is a bit strange to me…
Problems in the past week: Some chick kept me up later than I wanted to be up + woke me up early in the morning (for sex). Solution: stop seeing her. This was the second time she did that after having been warned about it before.
Do people really walk around with a million things bothering them? Is my bar for “this is a problem” higher than most people? I can’t even think of more things that would possibly be problems…Maybe if I really stretched “have to get up early for the gym” and “have to go to the grocery store to get food” could be considered problems by someone, but they don’t rise to the level to be even potentially worth solving for me.
(also, unrelated, but I wouldn’t fix your outlet by putting a label on it; I’d either rewire the outlet so it worked or put a blank in so there wasn’t a label someone had to read…;)
Very astute. Yes, I originally planned this for SYT, but when I started writing it I realized it would make more sense here. Sometimes that happens; I’ll plan an article for one blog and it will end up on on one of the others. Some articles over at the business blog started as Blackdragon articles. Ah, the writing process…
Yes, but not all at the same time. Instead it’s a constant succession of one after the next.
Those are not really “problems.” Those are planned events to achieve a certain result. They could be sources of unhappiness though.
Takes too long. My solution accomplishes the same thing in far less time. Time management.
The more I think about this, the more I believe that the answer to problems is taking responsibility. I imagine that most problems revolve around money. There is a simple answer to this. Spend less than you earn. Pay your bills first and do other things second.
If it isn’t money, then if you have another sort of problem (real or perceived) then DO something. Problems won’t go away by ignoring them.
You may have to be inventive. Necessity is the mother of invention.
Your circumstances are built by you, good or bad. There are no external forces out there queuing up just to get you. Nothing outside of you can hurt you. All our problems are caused by pressing down hard on the self-destruct pedal.
I suppose getting hit by lightning isn’t covered but…………………… đ
It took me a while to figure out what I actually disliked about your approach. It’s mainly that it’s a temporary solution (sticky note on the wall) to a permanent problem (outlet that doesn’t work). The solution and the problem aren’t linked at all — a cleaning person could come through and throw away the sticky note and then you’d have the problem again. Of course, that’s pretty unlikely. But think about how good it’ll feel to figure out how to wire the outlet correctly yourself? (yeah, if you’re not into that it makes sense, but I’d still go for the “blank” over the sticky note for something I don’t intend to fix because of the permanent vs temporary solution/problem thing)
Then I guess I haven’t had any problems recently. Aside from the one problem with the chick that I’ve solved. Weird.
I’ve had one problem this week. Girl I’ve already slept with texted me saying she wants to “take a few steps back” and not have sex for awhile. I told her we’re not discussing it and soft nexted her. Hopefully next weekend she’ll be back to her sweet, sex loving self. EDIT: As per your advice, I banged another girl the night of the soft next. This 2.0 stuff is pretty fun
May have another problem though, I think the two Brazilian girls I’m seeing might know each other. That’s more of a fun one though. I hope they fight. In lingerie.
On a serious note, this post made me realise I have a huge problem with time management. I spend so much time fart arsing around and I’m always late. Or running out of free time to work on my hobbies. I’ll have to fix it.
Funny epiphany I had about this, the 2.0 stuff that BD is talking about is stuff that most chicks do on the regular. They soft next dudes and bang other dudes during the soft next all the time. Chicks even admit this stuff to me now lol.
I wonder what advice BD would have for someone like me who knows that it would behoove him to make more money etc. but is already in a situation where he has a steady job that is stress free 90% of the time. I have a mediocre life according to his standards and have had this mediocre life for about 5 or so years, but I enjoy it. I haven’t been seriously stressed about anything (that wasn’t of my own creation) since like 2012.
Just out of curiosity Joelsuf, how much do you make (just a rough idea) and are you self-employed ? I’m about ten years younger than you and due to some psychological similarities, I may very well end up like you (but I pay more attention to fitness), lol.
@joel
There are multiple paths to independence and happiness. You absolutely do not need what BD calls an Alpha 2.0 job. As long as you can save half of what you earn you’ll be ok to retire after roughly 15 years. Free of having to work any job. Ever. Personally I’d rather go down that path than spend my time trying to figure out a business to start and run. I hate doing the promotion and advertising work the business requires. If you’re not making enough money to save half of what you earn, you’ll need to either get a raise or follow BD’s path.
‘I’m sticking with this shit job that doesn’t pay me enough because it’s safe and easy’ is not an alpha thing to say.
Does it make you really happy? (Probably not.)
Can you set your own hours whenever you want? (Probably not.)
Can you make money at that job from anywhere in the world? (Probably not.)
Are you guaranteed never to get fired or laid off, even in a bad economy? (Probably not.)
Does it provide you a lifestyle where you can pretty much buy whatever you want badly? (Probably not.)
There are many more factors to consider other than “Does this job stress me out?”
tl;dr:
1. Take responsibility for your own happiness
2. Make decisions and act on them
3. Learn from your mistakes
4. Fuck bitches
Just under 30k a year. I’m not self employed but I don’t have a boss breathing down my neck either. And I also made the very wise decision to not incur any debt (besides student loans, I got suckered into the college thing GOOD lol). So I can save up a decent amount of cash every paycheck. My bills aren’t that overwhelming.
Yeah I’m realizing this now. I have a lot of fun at my job, its pretty much the same as going out, but I’m capable (and deserving) of so much better. I’m just afraid of getting a new job and having to adjust to their rules.
Not proud or anything like that, but happy, yeah. I have a lot of fun at my job. If I was able to get overtime, I’d be there more often. I’ve been there for nearly a decade for a reason.
As far as weekly schedule, no. But everything I do when I go into my job is on me. I’m self supervised when I’m on the clock for the most part. I can even smoke joints at my job. I once came in there plastered drunk on St. Patrick’s day. Everyone at my job parties whether they are shopping there or working there.
Nope. I know there exist things I can do for money that can allow me to do this. I really need to set aside some time and figure out how I can do that.
Nope, but really, is any traditional job like that? haha. Again, I know there are better opportunities out there and I gotta make the time to find it and make things happen.
Haha no. I don’t mind saving up and being patient about buying stuff if I want it badly. But yes I do realize I’m probably not making as much money as I’d like, and I feel like I am too comfortable. But after pretty much a lifetime of discomfort I feel like I welcomed it too much. Maybe THAT is what is wrong lol.
I’m gonna try to use up the rest of my vacation time sometime in December so I can get a good week or so off and check out better ways to make money. You guys have pushed me. No one else in my life really gets at me for it and they are actually envious of me because I’m NEVER stressed out about much even though I own less “things” than them and make less money than they. I’ve always valued freedom over material wealth. I don’t care about owning cool stuff, I just want to be as free as I can.
They are equally perplexed and jealous of my somewhat pacifist lifestyle. Most of my buddies are teachers and they are every bit an emotional rollercoaster as the kids they are teaching: Sure they make more money than me but they also work 60-70 hours a week and are supervised CONSTANTLY. I don’t want to end up doing stuff like that for a living. I can’t believe I ever wanted to be a teacher.
Coding as well. Been hardcore teaching myself programming past several months. Writing a fairly complicated script, it could even turn out to be another product, and perhaps the advent of a new business (since coding is actually fun). But gotta take out the bugs, the inefficiencies in structure, inconsistencies in writing out similar functions, as I go along, otherwise it becomes annoying to continue adding further complexity.
Yeah, like me.
I’m assuming you’re going to an actual gym. I fucking hate going to a gym. I made sure when I moved, to have enough square footage for a nice spacious room that I can outfit for the kind of gym/meditative/yoga shit that I like.
As for food, I ALSO “hate” going to the grocer all the time. I also made sure last time I moved, to choose a spot that was serviced by Amazon Fresh. AND to be not too far from healthy restaurants that provide large family portions that I can just order once or twice a week, OR ones that do delivery.
Most of the things that I like to do is done at home, apart from going to the shooting range and shit like that. If I had to go to the store 3x a week, because I eat a shit ton of fruit and I hate them getting too ripe, I’d pull my hair out. I DID pull my hair out. When you’re in the flow working on projects that can require long periods of no interruptions, that’s an inconvenience.
I agree, but lmao, so is this:
This, as in things similar to this, I never understood:
If you no longer have a sufficient source of income, and are just relying on savings… you’re stuck. I would never put myself in that situation. What if with the house you invested everything in, you get a new neighbor who is a retarded dog owner and lets his dog bark all night long every night and doesn’t care what you or the neighborhood thinks and the cops don’t really give a shit. (True story)
Are you gonna pay legal fees to sue? Can you afford giant outdoor audio equipment to enact revenge? Can you move out easily? Can you comfortably take a loss selling your house and moving?
What if you end up wanting to take on new projects that require money. If it’s outside of your budget, you won’t be able to do whatever they are, or not as much.
What if you wanted to take on rally racing. Lessons can be quite pricey. If you wanted to buy a used car, that’s still money to front. Not to mention replacing parts you fuck up.
I’m not here to convince you to start a business. I don’t care.
I’m just speaking out of my own excitement.
Once you [general use of you] have a business, it can last you a looooooong time. And it has far more potential to exceed, significantly, the earning potential of the majority of jobs out there. And once you know how to build one business, you’ve acquired the skill. And my second business spawned from my original. Ideas come easy. Although running a business IS TOUGH, especially starting one, I’d say, working at jobs, having to lick the assholes of managers, supervisors and coworkers is even tougher.
I remember asking myself when I was younger “how can I never have to go through an interview process ever again?” because that shit sucks! And that goes back to this article.
It’s asking those questions, questions like “how can I decrease the probabilities of ever having to worry about not having enough money ever again?” along with “how can I never have to go through another interview ever again?” lmao “how can I never have to deal with licking my boss’s asshole?” “how can I never have to deal with not being able to turn down customers I know are going to be trouble?”
Business. Starting a business.
I also asked myself the question, “how can I increase the chances of women fucking falling in love with me?” And I answered that question in ways I never thought of before by starting a business.
Think about it, if you were to put two guys next to each other, both with equal levels of game, but one was a successful business owner (who could have a lot of free time if he wanted, because there are business owners whose businesses are just jobs in disguise) and the other guy works for someone else and has to wake up to an alarm clock 5+ days a week… who do you think would have a greater chance attracting hotter, higher quality women? who do you think has a greater chance of having greater ACCESS to hotter, higher quality women? who do you think won’t have to “try” as hard?
just things to think about.
it goes back to the essence of this article.
Oh and by “living off savings”
I also clumped small investments into that. Basically, anything that doesn’t give you plenty of room to stretch and grow, having a very large buffer.
My goal is to not have to answer to anyone. People who start businesses have to answer to customers. See BD’s recent post on Brad / Angelina for an example of this. He wrote that post because it gets him more visitors and thus more money. He doesn’t answer questions on one of his other blogs because that advice is worth selling. Not because he doesn’t feel like it, but because he can make money if he sells it. Me? I don’t want to be in that position. The quickest way for me to exit the rat race is to work for someone else — it’d take probably 10-15 years to build a business up enough to replace the salary I earn by working for someone else. And not only that, but it’d require me to actually do shit I don’t want to do, like, say, advertising, thinking of business ideas, or dealing with customer complaints.
Parade I’m perplexed by your thinking. Working for someone doesn’t seem “not answering to anyone”.
If you mean AFTER you exit the rat race, then how are you going to sustain your Mission(if you have one) with just “savings” and sitting on your butt drinking cocktails and banging hot chicks? Do you really think you will not spend the money in a blink of an eye?
Again a goal not to have to answer to anyone must have something to back it up. Something that makes sense and is doable.
I’m assuming you’re in a position where you have plenty enough autonomy, it’s very focused, and you’re guaranteed that for years and years until you feel like retiring. If so, good for you.
Like I said, I’m not here to convince you. I don’t care. But I will clarify a few things:
You can choose who you work with. That’s part of the whole point.
Once you can establish that you’re actually good, as in, you can consistently produce great results. Word of mouth does a lot of the work.
The way I see it, if you actually have to sit down and think about business ideas, yeah you definitely shouldn’t start a business lmao.
Because he likes making money more. Lmao duh. Not to mention, and correct me if I’m wrong, but his primary business has been business consulting. Don’t forget to consider that background.
I’m not sure you understand. BD LIKES writing. That topic is HIS DOMAIN. He’s been writing about that shit for YEARS. He probably came up with that article in less than an hour without realizing the passage of time.
When you do shit for a long time, you get good and shit like that happens.
He also literally wrote in the second paragraph of that post:
Not to mention that all his books, these blogs… are geared to help out people who are willing to listen. He even wrote an ebook called “Samson and the Wizard” not sure if you’ve read it.
The guy obviously enjoys helping people out. No one says you can’t do that, AND earn money at the same time.
When you say things like this:
Your view, to me, is very myopic. Not an insult, but consider the bigger picture.
You can’t write shit like this if you were working for editorials or magazines and shit like GQ or whatever. (Not just about Brad and Angelina)
LMAO if that were the case.
He’s able to write about all these topics, because it’s HIS.
So when you say
That’s very interesting.
Oh wait, shit, I left this part hanging.
If you’re producing work that you’re proud of, you SHOULD be concerned with their feedback.
If you’re offering a service that you’re proud of, and they’re unhappy, I’d think it’d be weird to not be concerned.
BUT**** This is on top of doing things like, setting the price high enough so you don’t get cheapskates. Things like dumping people who give you a bad vibe onto other people, before ever even working with them.
I’m talking about, receiving complaints from clients you’ve already taken the time to filter.
You can, you still have to answer the people you chose to work with. I don’t care who you are or what you enjoy, there are things you have to do that you don’t want to do when running a business. You might not care about customer complaints, but I don’t like dealing with them even when it’s a person that I generally like. BD doesn’t like accounting. The specific examples are irrelevant — you still need to do something not because you want to but because there’s something forcing you to. You’re making a sacrifice that I’m choosing not to make by not running a business.
Of course you can, but my point is that he’s making decisions because of the money. I don’t want to be in that position, and there are two ways to not be in that position: Have enough money where you don’t care, or build a business with an income strong enough that you don’t care. I’m picking the first option, you, and BD, are picking the second. Both are valid approaches, and both will eventually get you there. For my situation I’ll get there faster by working for someone else, for you maybe not.
That’s exactly my point. I don’t want to have to care; of course I would, which means I’m now fixing crap on a weekend when I’d rather be doing something else.
Of course I mean after I exit. Working for someone obviously means I’m answering to someone else. And yes, actually I am 100% certain that I won’t spend the money in the blink of an eye. Why? Because I was living off of my salary when I was employed, there’s no way I’m going to change that because I’m now not employed (actually my expenses will likely go down). And make no mistake:Â investment returns are replacing salary after I retire. I’m not living off savings, but off a percent of the returns on my savings. The savings themselves don’t get spent, they’re what makes me money. For example, if I have $1 million in savings after I retire it gives me a completely(100%) safe 30k / year return, and if I was ok with BD’s normal risk profile, a safe 40k/year return. For doing nothing. I don’t want to have a business I need to even spend two hours a week on. After I retire it’s not like I’m going to just stop and hang out at a bar drinking cocktails and fucking chicks, but I could if that’s what I wanted to do.
Again though, you can get to the same place via starting a business the way BD recommends. I’m absolutely not arguing against that. I’m saying there’s another path to the independent lifestyle. Is my approach free-er? well, sort of, but it’s not a point that’s worth arguing; both get you autonomy. My approach means I’m working for 10-15 years to save up the money, BD’s means you’re spending 5-10 years building a business. They play to different strengths.
Whoops, meant to say “dealing with recurring problems in life ONCE AND FOR ALL…”
Big difference!
@Parade
As long as you don’t grow bored of retirement, I see no problems in your plan. Being Idle sounds really hectic to me. That’s why I’d search for work that I love doing. I like the idea of writing blogs post for pastime, maybe stories, maybe advice blogs like BD’s since I love writing. But I’d wager even that wouldn’t satisfy me.
Point is, your end goal should be consistent happiness. Not raining money on yourself and staying out from under people’s asses. As long as you can get that nothing else matters.
@Gluteus_Maximus
Just realized what that name means. Very clever. Lol
Never said being idle was my plan đ I’ll be free to pursue things that won’t make me money, like, say, skiing all day for a year. (yes, I’m aware that I could turn that into a business, but I won’t because that’d take the fun out of it)
Yeah, that’s what I meant by idle. lol Retirement activities that are all fun and no work sound boring to me. At the risk of sounding like a TH player, let’s just say I want the grind and challenge too. But hey, that’s my poison.
This is exactly what I was talking about. 40K a year is little. Working 10 to 15 years just for that, personally, I’m not that minimalistic. And like I said, even if you retire at the age of 50, you still have like 40 years left. How does anyone know what they’re going to do in a 40 year timeframe.
I understand you don’t want to build a business. Like I said, I’m not here to convince you. But I enjoy this topic. This is more for others who might want to catch a larger glimpse about both sides before making their decision.
You build the right business, or you build your business right, you have the option to sell it at the end, and add that to your large lump sum. If not, it can continue generating you income.
At the same time, your business can scale to earn you a larger lump sum in a faster timeframe, allowing you the option to retire even earlier. But yes, it does involve more work early on, and also, as Parade says, dealing with customer complaints.
Just like with the blog post to use as an example, you only write it once and it exists forever. You create a product, you can sell it over and over and over again, even if you made it 10 years ago. You slap ads to that page or have it point to products you’re selling, boom, that’s two sources of revenue. You don’t have to offer services alongside certain things like a blog post that people can complain about that you have to fix. Steve Pavlina makes a wonderful living and for years he’s disabled the ability for visitors to leave comments.
What I’m saying is, employment has a limited upside. You can’t just keep asking for a raise, and you can’t work more than 24 hours a day. Those are the two factors that go into how much you earn. Obviously, you’re gonna sleep at least 6 hours a day on average, so that leaves you with only 18.
With a business, using computers and the internet… your systems CAN work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, without asking for breaks or vacations. Having a business allows for unlimited growth.
The way I see it, again, because of computers and the internet… and because you’re gonna be working either way, either for yourself or for someone else… the winner is clear to me, but the choice is up to you.
These are just things to think about
:]
Lmao, thanks, ikr.
Clearly someone who doesn’t ski ;). I’m not going to lie and say spending 30Â minutes hiking up a trail at altitude because the lifts are on wind hold isn’t work, but it’s work I want to be doing for its own sake.
@Parade
Stop refuting me with facts. You know what I mean. You like the hike, I like the customer complaints (Or criticism for my writings)…Shut up…Xp
40k is for $1 million of savings if you want to never spend the principle. Double that to $2million and you’re at 80k. I’m purposely not suggesting a number here, because everyone is going to need a different amount based on what they’re comfortable with and what they need to spend. I plan to retire well before 50 as well đ I might not know what I’m going to do in a 40 year timeframe, but I do know how much I’ll spend.
But even if you don’t, this blog and the associated blogs are all work and require continued maintenance. How much do you think BD would earn if he just stopped posting and stopped driving business to it? If you enjoy that maintenance, great. If you don’t, well, there are other options out there.
You can’t raise the hours in a day, but you can raise your pay per hour. And yes, you can get any amount from 30k/year to 10million / year assuming you can sell your skills to the business. Of course, getting beyond 150k or so requires actually putting in work and being good at what you do. Personally, I’d rather take the 1million/year(or 250k) job for a few years and invest the money I’m not spending in something that doesn’t require constant maintenance, than spend years building a business and then spend more years maintaining it. But the second is definitely a valid way to achieve autonomy.
I just want to be clear. You’ve already placed yourself in that position. You had to care for 10-15 years before you saved up a large enough lump sum. This is really where you don’t make sense.
But for 10-15 years, you can’t do that. You’re on someone else’s payroll.
But until you retire, you can’t do that. That’s 10-15+ years.
You can start to do that if you want to like at year 5 when having your own business.
LMAO I’ve realized why you don’t make sense.
You’re thinking about ONLY AFTER YOU’VE retired.
LMAO
Why would you recommend someone wait 10-15 years when they can start to do the two hour thing in 5????
LOL
Yup, you could write a book. Authors don’t always make revisions. I wonder how many revisions there are of each novel of Harry Potter. There are many types of businesses you can go into. Different types of business models you can implement.
Yes, and just to add to my previous points. You can do this either under someone else’s payroll, or your own payroll. If you can do that under someone else’s payroll… more importantly if you’re willing to do that under someone else’s payroll, you can develop the same kind of clientele on your own.
You guys are discussing two different things. Parade isn’t talking about Alpha 2.0 lifestyle, he’s talking about financial independence. These are two completely different things, both good.
Alpha Male 2.0 Lifestyle: Working low hours per week for high income anywhere you want, whenever you want.
Financial Independence: Never having to work again because you can live off your investments.
If your goal is financial independence, go for it! It’s awesome. If your goal is an Alpha 2.0 life for a while and then financial independence later, go for that. Both are fine; one is not better than the other.
For people with my personality (who like to work), get financially independent, and then work whenever the hell you feel like it, turning your work into a hobby rather than something you do to pay bills or hit goals.
For people who want to truly retire someday (and never work again), get financially independent, then take the rest of your life off.
Both are good. Depends on your personality.
You’ll never find me saying it’s impossible to do on your own. For certain personalities having your own business is great. Plus, at my current salary, it’d take more like 15 years to replace with a business, and I’m not even interested in running a business. But, as I said above, it’s not like I’m going to retire and sit around doing nothing all day — it frees me to focus on doing things without considering how to turn them into money.
I thought we were talking about the ways in which to acquire financial independence.
To me, it’s like taking the side streets versus the freeway. Both will definitely take you from point A to point B.
For someone whose goal is, as he states:
which, to me, sounds like someone who really desires to be free (mostly, since we all pay taxes of course), I just found it interesting why this person would take the slower route and sacrifice more of his freedoms for a longer period of time.
The annual return is what’s being mentioned. Not the time.
I’m gonna keep the math simple:
Saving half of 150K a year, 75K
In order to acquire the first lump sum of $1M, that’s 13.33 Years.
Let’s say you’re investing the first $1M once it’s acquired, and we assume the .4% annual return and you’re still working, so 75K + 40K = 115K, so another $1M / 115K = 8.695 Years.
So 8.695 + 13.33 = 22.025 YEARS
That’s a LONG ASS FUCKING TIME for just 2 Million.
And then this was added:
To get that 3rd million, following this expression would take another 6.451 Years. And that’s assuming you’re still working.
Maybe I’m just weird because 3 Million doesn’t sound like a lot. Assuming the same 0.4% return, that’s still 120K a year, only 10K a month. And assuming you’ve stopped working then, so a chunk of that is going towards living expenses.
If I wanted to buy a new car, in full, I’d have to wait fucking months. On top of already waiting 28.476 YEARS. God if I wanted to buy my own airplane, even a super old ass one.
This route can limit the kind of experiences you can have. Most importantly, after already having waited so long.
28.476 years for 10K a month.
Dude, I was earning 10K a month, PASSIVELY, my second year.
Sure, you guys can say it’s personality, but that’s time.
To me, that’s like saying “I’d stick with 6’s and 7’s.” “I’m not gonna do what it takes to make the 8’s to 9.5’s chase the fuck out of me.”
If that’s what YOU want, cool, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that to people. Especially anyone new. Because what you can accomplish in 28.476 years can eclipse whatever this is. Even 15.
Yes, a chunk of that is going towards living expenses. That’s the point, that you can replace salary with something that’s truly passive. Not “passive” like “I own a rental house that pays its mortgage” is passive, where you still need to go fix a toilet if it breaks, or write a blog post, or a new book, but passive like “money goes in, time passes, money comes out”.
If you have a 150k/year salary and you’re saving half of it, it means you need 75k/year to live on in retirement, which works out to 15ish years. Saying you want 3 million to replace 75k/year in salary is being needlessly cautious or deciding that you want to up your spending in retirement. I’m not. My spending will actually probably be lower since I won’t have to commute or maintain a car anymore.
Additionally, the 4% number I’m using is how much you can take out. You can assume the actual rate of return is closer to 7%; the missing 3% goes back to the investment to cover down years and to increase the principle to match inflation. And that’s for a truly passive investment. I’m making some active ones as well, which should give me a much better than 10% rate of return, which I can do while I’m employed but wouldn’t do after I retire, since they involve more risk than I’d take with money I depended on.
My recurring problems that I admit are my fault/ responsibility:
Number 1. Living situation. Apartment is great, except two things: Roommate never cleans, and when he does, he sucks at it. Also, floorboards are paper thin, and upstairs neighbors will do Irish jigs like elephants 24 hours a day. They especially love moving furniture at 1 am. Retards.
Solution: Move to an apartment with concrete floors, and no roommate. I can easily afford this, but for some reason decided to save money. My lease lasts another 9 months, so, sadly, I will have to deal with this for 9 more months (I will clean myself and communicate to inconsiderate people, but, they mostly will never change).
I can’t even think of a second problem. Spend too much time watching TV/ internet, not enough on business, should be more productive at work, time management … these don’t really cause direct unhappiness though.
Or…you could sublet. Or break your lease. Typically there’s a penalty for breaking the lease, but paying a couple thousand(or less) to not have to deal with noise while you’re trying to sleep can be worth it.
I know I just did the math for everyone. I just showed it was around 13.
Dude, you can get a CD for as high as .15%
Regardless, all that is negligible because using savings for such low amounts is POINTLESS because there is a BETTER use for that money. BETTER use of your time.
Now keep in mind, I’m not just thinking about you. I knew from the very beginning of this that you’re set in your ways. You’ve already invested your entire life into this route. I don’t expect you to deviate from that at all.
What you’re prescribing is the route that every average middle class mother wishes their child gets into.
“Go to school, get a nice jobbbb. Climb the corporate laddeerrrr. Become CTOooooo. CFO…. C-fucking-anything. President of the westcoast divisionnnn. Get those nice stock optionsss… retire a millionaire by the time you’re fiftyyyyy.”
You come here, saying this is an alternative… LMAO
And here’s another issue that comes up with this route, which I’ve demonstrated already a couple or so times…
It doesn’t take into account the many kinds of activities hobbies and experiences someone wants to have throughout their life.
Not everyone wants to spend the 50-40 years between 40-90 just skiing. (You’re probably gonna say “i didn’t say I wanted to ski the entire time.” and I know, I’m using it as a metaphor. I feel like you’re not reading many of the points I’m saying anyways, because I’m starting to repeat myself.)
With your route, you don’t really have much a choice anyways lmao. You see a car as an expense. Not something that is fun. You having to wake up every morning and drive through traffic on the way back probably ruined it for you. lmao
You’re thinking selfishly. I’m thinking about how can other people, expand their lives to experience the kinds of things they would like to experience, and not have to worry about money and not have to work as long as what you’re prescribing which may not even be enough for the kinds of things they want to do.
No, no no no no. You still don’t get it. Your thinking is so unimaginative.
You use the business to GENERATE the lump sum because it’s easily scalable.
As oppose to relying on a job the ENTIRE WAY, which is what you’re doing, to generate the lump sum.
Keep in mind, and stop jumping ahead to the retirement stage, which is why you haven’t been making sense. You’re still working either way. You’re working either for someone else, or you’re working when you’re working for yourself.
If you’re earning 10K a month passively your second year in business, that’s 120K A YEAR, shit you can do anything with.
What is $1M divided by 120K?
8.33 YEARS
+ 2 for setting up the infrastructure, 10.33 Years
That by ITSELF, beats your 13.33 years using a job to generate the first million.
But if you’re smart like me, you’re gonna reinvest into scaling your businesses up so that you’re not just generating $10K a month, but $20, $30, $40, $50K
What’s $20K x 12 months? $240K
What’s $1M divided by $240K?
4.166 years.
Boom. Done.
Lmao just kidding.
What’s $50K x 12 months? $600K
What’s $1M divided by $600K?
1.66 Years.
Effectively generating a larger lump sum in the same amount of time if not less.
You see… if it takes 28.476 years like I showed in my previous post, to earn 3 Million through yours/society’s prescribed path… how much longer would it take for me to earn 10 Million?
You know what’s funny. Earlier this year, some dude released his FIRST game and made like $4 million dollars, which he made by himself, which took him 4 years coding on the side of having a part time job as a movie theater usher.
The game hasn’t even been out for a year.
4 Years setting up the infrastructure / coding the shit. That will be earning him even more money as time goes on.
If he wants to, he can keep living expenses under $5K a month and use that time he earned himself to build another product. He already doesn’t have to worry about selling. And he’s only 4 years in.
That is all.
I don’t expect you to get what I’m saying. As I already said, you’re set in your ways. But I hope maybe for others, I hammered in the point.
(The game is called Stardew Valley. It’s a Harvest Moon spiritual-successor. LOL I know, lame right? But hey, who cares if it’s lame if it earns you money. Besides, the guy obviously likes that type of game otherwise he wouldn’t have made it. And I actually have always liked harvest moon also x].)
If you meant .15% then sure, but that’s a horrendously low return. If you meant 15%, bullshit.
I am not. You’re misunderstanding it entirely. Yes, you could go down that path, but you don’t have to; you need to spend less than you earn, and at 50% savings you’re looking at about 15 years ignoring future raises. If you start with a 100k salary at 24Â Â and maintain that salary and savings rate for the next 15 years and never get a raise you’ll have no need of money by 39 at the absolute latest (yes, the real number is around 13;Â I’m a bit cautious). If you get a raise and put it towards that number, you’ll be able to get there sooner, 8-9 years most likely.
You forgot living expenses. You may be earning 10k/month with your business, but you can not put 120k of that into savings. Just like with a 120k/year salary.
I think this is the source of the problem. I don’t give a shit about earning 3 million. I care about earning enough where I can fuck off and live in a cave for the rest of my life if that’s what I wanted to do (it’s not). I have a number that I need, and I know how long it will take me to get there. I couldn’t care less if that number was 3 million or 10 million or 500k.
I’d believe it. Notch, the guy who made minecraft was in a similar position. But how many indy games are released that go nowhere? That don’t even earn back a single developer’s salary? Games are a hit-driven business. I’d never argue that someone should devote their life to building a game because it’s a passive income stream that will eventually get them to financially independent. In about 99.9% of the cases it won’t. For example, here’s a guy who has been making games for about 15 years, in 2009. He’s still at it:
http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/03/so-heres-how-many-games-i-sell.html
The game, which he says is an average return for him, grossed about 120k, and took 3 people about a year to make. Or he could get a job at a company and bring in 150k+ (for someone with his experience probably more like 250k+).
Or this guy:Â http://www.kalzumeus.com/ /Â http://www.kalzumeus.com/2016/09/09/im-joining-stripe-to-work-on-atlas/
He ran a variety of (software) businesses on his own for 10 years before joining a company. Do they just suck at it? Maybe, but they’re the typical result. The stardew valley, flappy bird, and minecraft people are the outliers; it’s highly unlikely that you(the general you) will hit that.
I’m sure that you (the specific you) are different, and you’ll end up with a business doing far better than the examples I posted above. It requires a certain mindset and desire for running a business, which not everyone has. For the people that don’t, the approach is to get a job, save at least 50% of your salary, and retire significantly before society says you should.
I stand corrected.
Still, doesn’t change the fact that any of those numbers are measly when dealing with low savings.
Nope, I didn’t forget living expenses. My first business, where I do clientwork far exceeds them. That passive income is there for anything that I want. But as I said, I mainly reinvest it back into my business.Â
There are outliers in every field. But you won’t know if you are one if you play it safe all the way through your entire life because…
People follow the option they feel is best from what has been spoonfed to them. It’s conditioning.
The guy in the second article you provided spoke about this perfectly:
Bam.
But wait, let’s do it again:
And thus, people take the safe route. The older you are when this clicks, the less likely you are to take action simply because it’s like “shit, i spent all this time doing things this way”
Then you say
That is no different from what schools and most parents spend the majority of their lives conditioning each other to do from a young age.
Look,
That is dope. I’m doing the same thing. Like I’ve been saying. We want, essentially, the same thing.
There is nothing wrong with having a job. And there is nothing wrong with saving.
But as I showed, the flaw of this route to get there becomes apparent when someone is looking to not be so minimalistic as you; for someone who wants to earn a larger lump sum, who wants more out of life, within a reasonable timeframe and for the rest of their life — this route does not make any sense.
It is silly to think that people want the same as you.
Not everyone is like YOU where you apparently do not want a lot.
Saving 50K a year for 15 years adds up to only 750K.
Living off of 4% of 750K translates to $2,500 a month… LOL
I don’t mean to be mean, but THAT IS SO FUNNY
If that were the case, I could’ve retired well before I turned fucking 30 LOL
Living off of $2,500 a month from 30 to 80!?!?!?
Prescribing to people the sidestreet route from, as you say:
which 24 being essentially the beginning period of someone’s life — is wasting peoples’ time.
That is utterly ridiculous.
You’re prescribing a ceiling.
I’m prescribing NOT-a-ceiling. lmao
Lmao. LMAO. I hope that people, if they read this exchange — even if it’s just one new person who gets it — one new fucking person — even if, BD decides to keep his blog up and that person reads this 10 years from now —  like oh my god LMAO
Again, I don’t mean to be mean, but 15 years for 750K….
That’s a fucking joke man. Let’s stop there.
I have to disagree with this sentiment. There’s nothing magical about how the highest-grossing games stay in the top 10 charts for months/years. It’s all the same stuff you read about in The Lean Startup or Four Steps to the Epiphany; those companies all have hundreds of tiny little web games that they’re iterating and running metrics on, and when any one title starts to gain traction they put more money into it to scale.
Games only feel like a hit-driven business because 99% of the people making them don’t know what they’re doing. They’re either Making What They Like to Play, or Making What’s Popular Right Now, with little thought given to first time user experience or how to generate and capture value. So you end up with millions of games, a lot of them good, but most of them never attracting an audience.
Then you’re not making 120k/year, you’re making more than that. Don’t forget you’re comparing it to a 120k/year salary. If you’re making more, well, up the salary as well. It’s not a choice between 120k salary or 175k working for yourself, but 175k salary or 175k working for yourself.
Yes, actually, it is. For the most part people condition each other to spend not save. You get the high paying C-whatever job because it gives you more money to spend. On a new car, vacation, or giant house in the suburbs. You’re a doctor making 300k/year but you’re poor because you’re spending it all. The middle class dream is to live slightly beyond your means, not live well below them.
You’re making that mistake, not me. I’m saying that you can either work for yourself, or get a job. Both will get you to financial independence. And I’m explaining how “get a job” will lead there. I’m not arguing that “get a job” is the right option for everyone, but that it’s the right option for some people. You’re trying to convince people that “work for yourself” is the best and only option. It’s not. And both of us are leaving the “how do you get good at it” part out đ
That’s if you only make 100k for all 15 years. It’s exactly the same as “work for yourself” if you never try to raise the returns. At 100k you can probably double that to 200k within about 5-7 years, which, if you maintain the 50k/year spending, gives you 150k/year before tax to save. Yes, you have to continue working to save it up, But you need to continue working on your business as well. You only have enough to actually stop working when your income is entirely replaced by something truly passive. Not “Oops, I need to go send out a marketing email to get people to re-engage” or “I need to write up a blog post to drive traffic”, but “I haven’t even thought about that for years. ”
Again, I’m never going to say “starting a business is wrong”. It’s not, it’s a completely valid path. We’re both going to the same place, but I prefer to take the route where I’m certain of the timeline and outcome. Perhaps the timeline for me will be longer than you, perhaps not. It’s not really important. If I have to put in 5 years, or 10 years, or 15 years that’s still tiny compared to the amount of time I’ll have later. If I have to put in 30-40 years, now we’re talking about something worth optimizing away.
Plus, I have absolutely zero interest in running a business. Well, more to the point, I’ve done that path and it’s entirely wrong for me. I despise advertising, talking to clients, trying to come up with something to build, basically everything that I’d have to do to actually run a business.
First thing’s first.
Do you know what kind of website you’re on?
It addresses the “getting more out of life” part in regards to the women aspect.
It talks specifically about nonmonogamy.
This place is already a place for the few people.
My excited-rambling-invitation is meant to accommodate these kinds of people.
Someone who wants more in regards to women, more likely than not wants more in other areas, especially finance.
You’re the one saying
In response to my:
By saying that wanting more is a mistake. You’re in the wrong place bro.
If you’re telling me, it’s a mistake to be able to buy fully-loaded Teslas in excitement for it being able to possibly (if the law allows) pick “bitches” up without me leaving my house… you’re fucked up.
If you’re telling me, it’s a mistake to want to experiment with a Tesla on the track and offroads and be able to replace it on a whim if ever I fuck it up… you’re fucked up.
If you’re telling me, it’s a mistake to be able to comfortably invest hundreds of thousands of dollars if not a couple or so million into making robots as a hobby and one day have my own robot butler if not two because that excites me, you’re fucked up.
If you’re telling me, when new technologies come out, I have to tell myself “shit but I can’t afford that”, fuck you.
Lmao, just kidding, dramatization for the win.
Nothing is gonna stop me lmao. Just to get that out of the way. LOL
but hopefully I’ve made my point well and clear.
x]
You can’t earn more than your salary — because…
you only have a job.
LOL
what, you don’t think someone can have a job and a business? (rhetorical question)
Yeah, totally. even with what is now AAA games. look at Blizzard. They started small. They WERE an indie studio. They had warcraft and starcraft going on at the same time. warcraft didn’t start to gain traction until the 3rd one. It’s no mistake they went with World of Warcraft and not World of Starcraft. (Not to mention they had Diablo as well)
Not to mention why there’s a warcraft movie ( which I thought was dope by the way).
Doubling down, doubling down, doubling down.
Look at Autodesk, They have HOW MANY PRODUCTS?? AutoCad, Maya, 3dsMax, they’ve stayed industry standards for years.
Did I ever say that your path was wrong or a mistake? No.
You accused me of implying or stating that the approach I’m taking is right for everyone, which I have not done. You, however, seem to be saying that starting a business and going with the ‘passive’ product income path is the best for everyone. Not just you, not just people here, but everyone. It’s not, and you can get the same results with another path. The trade offs are different, but there are trade offs.
Re. Earning more than your salary:
I have always said that you should invest what you earn. I happen to be investing in things that return approximately 10% per year with some risk.
To spell it out for you, and the numbers here are an example only: My chosen vehicle happens to be real estate, and I leverage my salary to control assets that are worth many times what my savings are. For example, I can spend 50k to buy a house worth 1 million and, factoring in appreciation, will be worth 2 million in 10 years. 10% / year appreciation, but a significantly bigger ROI. In the mean time, or if I decide to not sell it after 10 years, or if there’s a crash, the mortgage is more than covered by the rent it brings in. (Yes I know that’s not the typical 20% down, but if you’re optimizing for a 5-10 year timeframe the lower down but higher interest makes sense, and yes such things do exist). Oops, guess I’m earning more than just my salary.
I said this:
And you literally quoted that exact passage.
And then immediately followed it with:
Then you just said this:
Lol. I can’t take you seriously
Lmao, that’s why BD interjected earlier and was basically like “guys, don’t waste your time” lmao x]
Again, I’m not and have never said that working for yourself is a mistake.
The specific flaw/mistake I’m talking about is that you assume your way is best for everyone and that there’s some kind of critical flaw with the ‘get a job and save’ approach. There isn’t. The returns can be just as good provided you make good investments with the savings. The timelines can be the same. We’re in agreement on the idea that getting a job and waiting until you’re 60 to retire is a terrible idea.
We’re also in agreement that you need to figure out what number is good for you, achieve that number, and then stop worrying about it.
Where we differ is I work for someone else and invest the savings in things other than my primary line of business. You invest the returns back into the business, and are working for yourself. Both approaches will lead to the same place and both approaches have (different) benefits and drawbacks.
Some people are better off working for themselves and investing in their business and some people are better off working for someone else and investing their savings.
I’m saying you can do both. But hey.
Apparently it’s either/or.
For anyone who wants to work for someone else 15 years straight for only $750K in savings. By all means. Don’t consider starting a business on the side that can provide you the option to phase out the job if you want. Don’t consider starting a business on the side which can passively earn you more money to put into your savings.
For someone who quotes this:
But only means this
And wonders why I bring it up and keeps on saying
And can’t even be like “whoops, my bad for miscommunicating and misusing the quote feature”
when I clearly owned up to my mistake about the CD interest rates.
By all means.
True. You can do both. My assumption is that if you want to work for yourself, you’re not going to be happy with a normal job, so you won’t hold both for long. But if you’re getting started and in need of the money/contacts/training in the short term it can be a good idea to hold a job and work on your own stuff in your free time.
I don’t think that everyone wants the same thing as me. Let me state it again: Not everyone thinks the same as me on this.
If you’re the type of person who DOES NOT WANT to run a business…don’t. You can still get to the same end goal by working for someone else and investing your money somewhere else.
If you’re the type of person that DOES want to run their own business, do it. It’s definitely the right call for a certain kind of person.
I’m not sure how much more clear I can make my position on this.
Very brilliant post!! I guess it’s very hard to admit everything is my fault. But it is my fault. I’m fat because I don’t cook healthy meals. I’m single because I didn’t constantly monitor my old gf. I’m median income since I don’t do work only very stressful weeks to months to years. So I need to spend more time to watch what I eat. I need to work longer hrs to rise to the next income level over months and years. I need to set aside time 10-20 hours guaranteed time a eek for a gf or she’ll leave me.
It made me think about certain female’s recurring behaviours. ChickA lies constantly to strangers ‘I see my friend there. Have a wonderful day.’ then she walks towards the fake friend and makes a sharp turn left disappearing. ChickB who I collide with during my walking to work ‘I’m going to the dentist to get my teeth cleaned.’ I see ChickB again the next day she tells me ‘I’m going to the dentist to get my teeth cleaned.’ I say to her ‘again?’ She realizes she talked to me yesterday, she says to me ‘None of ur business what I do.’ walking off. Chicks who constantly lie to strangers makes me wonder do they recurring lies once they are in bf/gf relationships or with their friends in general? I wish I knew more girls so I could deduce whether it’s truth or not.
@Mark: that’s an extremely bad frame of mind to have in your relationships. There is no quota of 10 or 20 hours that you “must” give your girlfriend: it’s your decision, and you should never base your decision on the fear of losing her, it makes you look spineless and unattractive, which is more likely to lose you chicks. Don’t “monitor” her, don’t follow her agenda: you care about her and you’re willing to be as happy as possible with her, but you’re also 100% willing to walk away if she starts demanding stuff you don’t want to give.
Totally, Blizzard is the perfect example; they iterate through tons and tons of prototypes before ever releasing anything. Many of their projects are canceled before they are even announced. That’s pretty much the secret behind Blizzard’s “magic”, it’s just iteration time (not to take anything away from their staff, though; they’re all world-class professionals).
This is a trap and the wrong way to think about it. You don’t need to work harder (well, you might, but I’m assuming you already work hard) you need to work smarter. Figure out what it is that’s valued with the work you do and concentrate on improving that. Also, advocate for yourself. Generally this does not involve working more hours.
For example, if you have a job digging a ditch, you could spend 12 hours in a day digging your ditch. That scales linearly, so you’ll never see much success there. If you get a tractor to dig the ditch in an hour instead of 12, well you just made it so you can dig 12 in a day instead of one. Excellent. But not good enough. You’re still limited by the hours in a day.
If you took your tractor and rented it out…well, now you can scale it as much as you like, as long as people keep renting tractors. And your hours are probably shorter, not longer.
Took you long enough to admit I’m right.
After all that time we spent arguing with you denying that there’s a flaw with your plan
You finally admit it:
Just replace “you could spend 12 hours in a day digging your ditch” with
You took the words right out of my mouth:
But thanks for recommending it earlier anyways.
@Gluteus
I figured you’d be by to complain about that.
I don’t do work that scales linearly – I used to, and I used that as a building block to the next step for me, which is managing people. Next I’ll go to managing people who manage people. Why? Because I can scale that out indefinitely, and each time I do I get more valuable to the company I’m working for. But that’s just how I’m growing my salary. I’m growing my actual wealth by utilizing that salary to invest.
It is more about pointing someone out who is giving advice who he himself knows is bullshit.
Recommending to 24 year olds, basically starting out, to set out for the next 15 years following bullshit advice.
That’s fucked up and why I said near the very beginning:
And to preempt a few other things: No, I’m not saying “work harder”. That’s the trap. Putting in more hours won’t grow your salary. I outlined one way to grow your income with working for yourself above. If you didn’t want to, then it’s harder when digging ditches, but you move up the org structure until you get to a level you’re familiar with, trading up as you switch companies. (Ditch digger here, manager of diggers there, manager of the fleet next and so on) But also be aware that each time you do this there’s a risk that you’ll end up with more work / more required hours, instead of less. And you’ll have to go out and interview at a bunch of places, negotiate a salary bump, and so on. Things that have nothing to do with with the job you signed up for.
And if you’re happy with your timeline for retiring and your savings rate, then ignore it all and don’t even bother. You only need to care about any of this if you want to reach your money goals faster, or are after a certain lifestyle.
We wrote our last posts the same time.
I apologize if I’ve been too irreverent. I did start out describing being an employee as someone who licks their boss’s asshole.
Caleb, why does it take 3 months to start an open (or what I call unfenced) relationship.
It never takes me longer than about 25 mins.