“What if there is no tomorrow? There wasn’t one today!”
– Phil Connors, Groundhog Day
Most people go through life as paupers, never realizing they were created to live like kings. They never tap their infinite, invisible reservoir of time and money.
Where is this vast storehouse of wealth?
In your tomorrows.
Your tomorrows can be used as collateral to access and experience your dreams today.
You already do this with lesser desires.
• You buy a concert ticket for a date in the future and instantly gain the wealth of anticipation today.
• You plan a vacation eight months out and instantly gain the pleasure of exploring new places and experiences in your mind today.
• You ask a captivating person out for a date next week and get the thrill of goose bumps and tingles today.
You are mentally borrowing from your tomorrows to spend some of that pleasure today. When those tomorrows finally arrive, you are no less wealthy for drawing upon them early. In fact, you are even wealthier today because those anticipated experiences became actual memories.
Money is just a raw material. When you combine several raw materials into a bigger package, you create value that exceeds the cost of the materials. This value can then be harvested to fund any life you desire.
For example, when you buy wood and nails and shingles, you can build a house that is worth far more than the materials themselves. You then sell the house, pay for the materials and keep the profit to use as you wish. If you have no building skills, you can even hire a carpenter to construct it for you. If you had a credit line to buy the materials and pay the carpenter, and finished the house quickly enough, you could gain your profit without needing any of your own money at all.
You used your tomorrows as collateral to harvest value today.
But the world tells you that you must first earn and save that money before you can even start. This forces you to spend your today’s working and earning and saving, hoping you can cash-in tomorrow.
This is backwards.
There is no such thing as tomorrow. Sometimes, tomorrow doesn’t ever arrive. When it does actually arrive, it’s called Today. All you have is today. Today is the only day you can spend and enjoy anything.
So let’s figure out how to flip this around to our benefit. Let’s use tomorrow as our collateral to buy and enjoy things today.
In our house example, good debt allowed us to finance the materials and labor to build the house. We sold the house, paid off the debt and still earned a profit. That debt put money IN our pocket. That’s good debt. It was used to purchase income and an appreciating asset.
A car loan is bad debt because the car does not earn a profit that exceeds its expense. You have to go out into the world to earn the money to make that loan payment. That debt takes money OUT of your pocket. That’s bad debt. It was used to purchase debt and a depreciating liability.
Wealthy people learn how to use their collateral of tomorrows to access good debt that buys passive income streams that can be spent today, without working any schedule. They then use their free time to find and buy more passive income streams. The rich get richer.
Poor and middle class people use their collateral of tomorrows to access bad debt to buy personal homes, cars and toys that force them to spend today working a schedule to pay that bad debt. These people spend decades trading time for money and buying things using bad debt. The poor get poorer.
A business or income property is like that house you built. Its totality is worth far more than the sum of its parts. Better yet, it produces a steady, dependable income stream. If the business or income property has a manager, the owner doesn’t have to work a schedule. They just manage the manager, which takes just a few hours a week.
Another benefit of buying businesses and income properties is that good debt is far easier to attain than bad debt. The business or income property comes with a proven income stream that is safer than any job’s income stream. Bankers know this and focus 90% of their qualification process on the property’s income stream, not yours.
You are actually buying something that will cost you nothing because it pays for itself! Better yet, it not only pays for itself, it pays all your personal bills too!
Rich people teach their kids to first buy passive income streams, then use these income streams to fund their lives without having to work a schedule.
Everyone else is taught to first go to college and get a good job so they can finance bad debt liabilities that keep them trapped working that job until age 65.
See the difference?
One asks you to trade your today’s (the only time you really have) working a job, hoping you eventually cash-in tomorrow.
The other asks you to use the illusion of your tomorrows to cash-in Today.
Today is the only time you ever have. You can live it like a pauper or live it like a king. It all depends on how you leverage your tomorrows.
“You make choices and you live by them."
- Phil Connors, Groundhog Day
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Mike Johnson made the journey from jobs to freelance writer to entrepreneur to passive income and early retirement. Today he teaches people how to skip right to passive income and early retirement at WorldsBestWriter.com .
Once I learned how to BUY passive income, I stopped chasing the bucks and the bucks started chasing me!