Truth Bomb Tuesday: You’ve got to get free of the old paradigm
One of the girls got up from lunch the other day,
“Gotta go. Time is money.”
And I sat there. I thought, maybe I’ll have another coffee. It’s a nice day, maybe I’ll have a champers. The sun is out (finally!) I can’t think of anywhere else I’d like to be.
And as I sat there, drinking that coffee (responsible choice), I made some money. Good money.
That’s what happens when you have a performance portfolio – a number of cashflow positive assets that are putting money in your pocket. Assets that are giving you a passive income stream – that are putting money in your pocket – no matter what you’re doing.
Maybe you’re asleep. Maybe you’re just passing some time in your favourite café. Maybe you’re on holidays with your family. And the money just keeps coming in.
(Honey, you gotta love that.)
But the point is, for me, time stopped being money some years ago.
I’m one of the lucky ones.
For many people, time is still literally money. Maybe they’re working a steady job on an hourly wage, literally selling time for money.
Or maybe they’re a sole-trader. They might not be working an hourly wage as such, but when they’re working they’re making money. When they’re not working, they’re not making money.
Their time is still money.
Or maybe they run a small business – a business that is still reliant on them to keep the whole show afloat. They haven’t figured out a way to work themselves out of the equation.
Time is money for them too.
But for me, time is not money. Time is time. My time.
I can still spend my time making money. I often do. (It’d be criminal to waste talent like this.)
But for me, money comes whether I’m dedicating time to making money or not.
(Did I say how awesome this is already? So awesome.)
And this is what you should be aiming for. You should be aiming to disentangle your time from your money.
And the key to that is assets. Assets are the key to cashflow, and the key to freedom.
The name of the game is building up an asset base that pays you the income that you want.
This isn’t about wealth, necessarily, though they go hand in hand. This isn’t about what your net worth is.
It’s not about what assets you ‘own’. It’s about what assets you control.
I mean, for most of your investing career the banks are going to own more of your properties than you do. You own them on paper only.
However, you control the rent, and you control the income stream.
And if you build up enough income-producing assets, even if you’ve haven’t turned those assets into wealth just yet, then you’re free.
Then your time becomes your time again. You get to decide what you’re going to spend it on. It’s yours.
I realise I’m explaining a journey that may be a little hard to get your head around if you’re fresh to the game.
But that’s really because no one ever explains what the game actually is. They don’t teach this stuff in schools.
Many of us take the idea that ‘time is money’ as gospel truth. It’s what we all were told.
But it’s not the truth.
There are roads to freedom, and they’re closer than you think.
DB.