I blew up my blog with one click of a mouse this date. Thanks to the designer of my often read blog, I am now back in business. Sometimes financial plans blowup like that.
We talked about controlling the flow of money out of your cask last time (managing expenses). I promised to talk about filling the cask.
Filling the cask takes HARD WORK. Kiplingers magazine wrote an article profiling people that had become rich, in essence they had filled their cask. I looked for ways to transform their experiences into something that might be meaningful for you. It was not useful unless:
1. One guy had written the song "Grandma Got Runover by a Reindeer" and made millions. He borrowed $40,000 to get promo copies made.
2. One guy beat out 9000 contestants to get on the Amazing Race TV show and won a million dollars. What are the odds?
3. One gal liked to cook and was always upset she couldn't buy unique cooking instruments so she designed her own. She sold her company called the Pampered Chef for $700 million dollars. Yeah, right.
I guess the message is THERE ARE A LOT OF WAYS TO FILL THE CASK. Each of you needs to find your own way. I know hard work, continuing education, and pursuing goals are part of it. You can marry it like I did (ha-ha). You can win the lottery. You can inherit it (Kelly says big deal, one fifth of nothing is nothing). Or you can get it the old fashion way, YOU CAN EARN IT.
Filling up the cask should not be all consuming. It needs to be balanced with all the other things in life like family, friends, and hobbies.
Another key to getting rich is to HAVE MORE COMING IN THAN IS GOING OUT. Dah!
I was fortunate to have jobs that paid pretty well but I maintianed restraint. Our first cottage was a "fixer upper". Our first boat had a broken transome. Our houses were always older with character! Instead of BMW's, we had camaro's and station wagons. But somehow everybody seemed to grow up okay, each with their own pschological hang-ups (which is normal).
Paul keeps wanting to know what my financial goals were. I did have an exact dollar number (which I exceeded) but my ultimate goals was to be able to live in retirement without changing my lifestyle. So far that has come true but if medical costs keep rising, all bets are off.
Key concepts to filling the cask are:
Hard Work,
Continuing education,
Believing in yourself,
Doing something you enjoy,
Having financial goals,
Perseverence.
GO FORTH AND DO YOUR THING!
Love
Dad (Just Chas.)
What's that remark you made, "you can marry into money like I did??" Huh? Huh?
You know, as well as I, that there is no money to be inherited from my side of the family; and that's how it should be. You and I saved and saved on a regular basis from 1 year after we married to the present day! Yea for us!
Shelby (your love, your "little chum", your sweetheart, your honey - oops, everybody's honey!)
ok, I do have a question.
What is the difinition of rich though? I know this is going to be different for each. So I guess the question is based off where we are currently life (income and outflow) how do we calculate what we are going to need in retirement to sustain our way of life?
*Ah hem*
pLarge, hey look, bright shiny things! I do believe the point of this post is to understand the key concepts to filling up the cask (very, very, very, very, very important in case one needs to buy an iPod Mini).
If I'm not mistaken, I do believe you have #2 nearly crossed off (continuing ed), #3 is IP, and #6 is like an eff'ing give-away. I mean, if you're breathing you're pretty much doing #6, am I right here?
In an attempt to cross bridges, I do believe his first homework assignment, the budget thing, was an excercise to show us that budgets are key to understanding what our "way of life" is. If we look at it on paper, we can actually QUANTIFY what makes us comfortable. And then using complex calculations involving the eye of a newt, we can guess at what we need to do now to prepare for life then.
Owwwww, my head hurts from all this thinking now!