How well-off you are in the future is more within your control than you may think. You see, many people have limiting belief systems that hold themselves back.
They believe all sorts of reasons as to why they can't get ahead. These messages ring aloud in their minds. They sound something like this:
I don't have a degree or the right degree.
I didn't come from wealth like some people did.
I could do better if my boss would hurry up and give me a raise.
I can't get ahead because the economy is bad.
It's not fair that they got promoted and I didn't. I deserve it more than they do.
These are all limiting beliefs that we can be guilty of playing in our head. However, they're just excuses. And if we buy into them, then we'll never reach our potential.
You'll find that no matter where someone started in life, the people who stay where they are financially are the people who buy into these excuses above. And the people who end up being well-off (even if they started off poor) decided to shun these unproductive (and false) belief systems. Instead, they looked for things that they could control rather than leaving their success up to someone else, like their boss.
Here's the first truth to buy into: It's not your income level that determines how well-off you'll end up becoming, but rather where you decide to set your lifestyle.
In other words, you can get the college degree and make $100,000 a year, but if your lifestyle costs you close to $100,000 per year, then you're not likely going to end up being "well-off."
However, let's say your household makes $60,000 per year but you've set your lifestyle at $40,000. Then you're stacking up $20,000 per year that the $100,000-per-year earner is not.
Now, don't get me wrong . . . the more you can increase your income, the better. But the quicker and easier thing to determine is your standard (or cost) of living.
But here's the problem. People will rarely "give up to go up" in life. In other words, they're rarely willing to take a step back in their lifestyle in order to have a greater tomorrow.
For instance, I know a guy who had a dream that he believed God put in his heart. But he knew that dream would require some temporary sacrifice. So he sold his 5,000 square foot home that sat on 5 acres of land and moved his family of five into a two bedroom apartment for a few years.
You see, right there, some people would say that's impossible to do or that they could never do that. But what they really mean is that they'd never "want" to do that.
But this guy explained the dream he had in his heart to his family and they all bought into the idea and so no one complained about their change in lifestyle because they had a goal, a dream, a new mission now.
So the parents stayed in one room and the other room had bunk beds set up in it for the three kids.
Today, that man has fulfilled his dream and his entire family has more than they've ever had in their entire lives. But had he not been willing to "give up to go up" — in other words, be willing to give up something in order to have something better down the road — then he'd not have his dream fulfilled today.
So don't defeat yourself by talking yourself out of something by thinking of it like it's an impossibility.
I remember one time when I had credit card debt I had a dream of getting out of the clutches of the credit card companies. So I cut off my cable and bought rabbit ear antennas. No, this wasn't in 1970 or 1980. This was probably around 2005 or a little before.
Who in their right mind uses a "rabbit ear" antenna these days? It looked even funnier sitting on top of my 65 inch TV!
I recall my daughter saying, but I want TV too! I said, "No problem. I'll get you a set of rabbit ears for your room." And that's exactly what I did.
In this day and age we live in, that seemed like an extreme move . . . like we just went back into the Stone Age. It was the first time my kids had seen a slightly "snowy" TV screen in their lives.
But it didn't scar them for life, nor did it scar me either. In fact, it empowered me because I could take all the money I put toward that ridiculous TV bill and put it toward my credit card bills.
Before long, I had fulfilled the dream of getting out of credit card debt. It was liberating. But yes, I had to be willing to "give up to go up."
My costs were something I controlled. My paycheck was something my boss controlled. So I wasn't going to sit around and wait for my next raise to come in order to tackle my credit cards.
Instead, I was going to do something proactive and empowering by cutting back my lifestyle (standard of living) for a season.
So if you're willing to "give up to go up," you'll find that you're able to save more and invest more and reach a point of financial freedom much quicker than the person who's strictly chasing a higher paycheck, only to increase their lifestyle accordingly.
The second thing that is in your control is how you go about earning money. Those who trade their time for money, generally speaking, tend not to get rich. Being an employee was never really meant to be a path to riches. Why? If you were paid too well, you'd have "more than enough" and you'd quit working.
I was reminded of that recently when I read an article about a company that had a "blow out" quarter and decided to reward their employees with a bonus. Within the article there was a comment that went something like this: "We want to reward them. But we don't want to pay them so much that they won't want to show up for work next week."
Now, they're fine with you eventually having enough to not work for them, but that's typically after 30 or more years of working for them.
Yet what do most people teach their kids? Get good grades. Then go to college and get more good grades. Why? So you can graduate and get a good job. In other words, parents routinely train their kids up to be employees. Yet being an employee is the slowest and most unlikely path to wealth that there is.
For more on this, I'd encourage you to read Robert Kiyosaki's book Cashflow Quadrant. It talks about the four ways to earn your money (employee, self-employed, business owner or investor) and the benefit to getting to where you earn your money from the latter two rather than the former two.
Note: Being an employee is where most all of the injustices are. They categorize people wrongly. Instead of your pay being determined by your work ethic and abilities it might be determined that you get paid less because you're a woman, a minority or a foreigner. But you can practically illuminate these prejudices by moving over into one of the other three quadrants.
By the way, I teach you about the last quadrant (investments) in my newsletter, The Ultimate Wealth Report at
www.ultimatewealthreport.com. Even if you're an employee, you should start getting some of your money into the "investing" quadrant because it's that quadrant that's more likely to make you well-off than is your paycheck from being an employee.
And just to wrap all of this up and say it another way, you've got to quit thinking like a consumer and think like an investor.
In other words, don't just think about the things you want to buy (boat, car, clothes, etc.) but also train yourself to set aside money so that you can purchase shares in companies that can grow over time and pay you dividends.
Notice the first key is to change your way of thinking. You see, your way of thinking now has gotten you where you are. If you want to go to a new level, you won't do it with your present level of thinking.
So you'll have to take on the thinking of someone who has gone where you want to go. So if you want to learn how to think like an investor and be an investor, come join me in the
Ultimate Wealth Report and you'll gain the correct thinking to be a successful long-term investor.
God bless!
About the Author: Sean Hyman
Sean Hyman is a member of the Newsmax Financial Brain Trust. Click Here to read more of his articles. He is also the editor of Ultimate Wealth Report. Discover more by Clicking Here Now.