Friday was a decent night of deliveries. We were busy. It was an uneventful kind of night. Get in, do the work, get out. I made about $48.
I want to be crystal clear about something. The reason I delivered pizzas Friday was to become a millionaire. It's possible to be a millionaire. You should try to become a millionaire. Dave Ramsey spent an hour on his 4/30/14 show to prove that it's still possible.
“But RI,” some might say, “the love of money is the root of all evil.”
I didn’t say I want to become a millionaire because I love money.
“But there’s more to life than money.”
I didn’t say becoming a millionaire was my life.
I want to become a millionaire for a lot of different reasons. One of them is a glaring fact: to age, retire and die with dignity, you have to have over a million in the bank.
Let me clarify what I mean by dignity. Living off of $3,000/month (assuming $1.3M in the bank), self-insuring against major medical and death, then leaving bucketloads of money to family and charity is dignified.
Dying in a state-funded nursing home with no inheritance left and a grieving spouse and/or children trying to pay your bills is not dignified.
What is your retirement vision? The non-dignity option or the dignified? Are you so young that you haven’t been thinking about it? Or are you retiring soon and either breathing easy or panicking?
Take this Retirement IQ test. If you’re anything like my wife and I, be prepared to realize how little you’ve been taking the future into consideration.
Social Security is not solvent. That means it is bleeding money. Fast. Congress has destroyed Social Security through years of mismanagement and misappropriation of funds, and there’s no cure on the horizon. You would have more money waiting for you after retirement if you put your SS tax percentage in a jar – or many jars – and buried them around your yard.
That’s right. Social Security has a negative earnings percentage rate. We LOSE MONEY on what we contribute to the Social Security.
Wake up! You’re not going to retire and live a good life on social security alone and a couple hundred thousand in a 401k! You might not be capable of working until you die!
The hands-on, 100% available, tried and true solution to this problem is what Einstein is attributed to calling the “eighth wonder of the world”: compound interest. Here are the results of compound interest I laid out in my Long Why.
We aren’t going to be a burden on our children when we get old. We are going to be a blessing.
ASK YOURSELF THIS QUESTION RIGHT NOW: How much good could you do as a millionaire?
Bring it in closer. How much good could you do for yourself? For your family?
How much could you help the world with one. million. dollars? Or MORE?
A 47 year old man called in to Dave Ramsey on Thursday. He had invested 10-12% into retirement for about 25 years. He had about $1.2M in the bank.
He gave away $50k last year. That is incredible.
A man by the name of Thomas Stanley wrote a book entitled – you guessed it - The Millionaire Next Door(1996). It was about how normal, hard-working, ‘average’ people retire millionaires, and what they do to make it to that point.
Thomas Stanley died this year in a car crash on February 28. Ten days after Mr. Stanley’s death, Michael Hiltzik of the LA Times released an article entitled, “The death of the 'Millionaire Next Door’ dream”.
That title was in poor taste, I think. Dave thought so, too. Let’s move on.
Dave dedicated the second hour of his 4/30/2015 show to real-life Millionaires Next Door. He did so because of several callers that week who, through hard work and wise saving, were worth more than $1+ million. He shared some figures:
- There are 11 million millionaires in the U.S.
- 88% of those 11 million are first-generation, meaning they started with nothing and now are worth more than $1M.
This is real-life. Despite Mr. Hiltzik’s comments, these people have worked blue or off-white collar jobs. They spent less than they made. They invested during some of the most turbulent economic times of our generation, and have become millionaires.
Dave gave another figure. Check this out:
If a 25 year old invests $100 per month in mutual funds that average 12% over time, they will have $1.176M in the bank at age 65.
Dave communicated that some may disagree with his assumptions, speaking of return percentages.
“I don’t care if you disagree with my assumptions,” he said. “Get up off your assumptions and SAVE MONEY.”
That’s what I’m doing. That’s what I want you to do.
You’re probably like I was: crippled by popular media, marketing and horror stories. Crippled by the assumptions on what might happen.
One of those assumptions may be that the system is broken or skewed in the favor of the super rich.
I’m not saying it isn’t, just that we assume that it excludes us 99%ers. This doesn’t help. The system doesn’t just make the rich even more rich. It makes anyone rich. Compounding interest just works faster with more money invested.
The truth is our system comes with wonderful, free DLC: the ability for anyone to benefit from it in the exact same way as the very wealthy.
We’ve let the financial industry convince us that the only way to get ahead is to go into debt. We let it sap our motivation to do what every American man, woman and child can:
- Work hard
- Get/stay out of debt
- Spend less than you make
- Invest wisely
The millionaire next door is not dead.
I don’t want to become a millionaire because I love money. No, I live in the United States of America. Land of the free. A place where anyone has a God given and legally protected right to work hard and make wise financial decisions.
You also have a God given and legally protected right to flush the tangible evidence of your contribution to the world down the toilet on new cars, vehicle leases, whole life insurance, credit cards, variable-rate mortgages and, eventually, bankruptcy, divorce, both or worse.
I want to be a millionaire so Amazewife and I can CHANGE. THE. WORLD. You can and should. You work too hard not to.
See you ‘round, Neighbor.
ROE INTENSE
Comments
Post a Comment