Pay you? No. Pay me!

Some people are stuck in neutral - they just don't get it and probably will never get it when it comes to their own personal finance or creating wealth for the next generation.  The average American has student loans, maxed credit cards, car notes, and other miscellaneous debts that we tend to carry for decades hoping to rid ourselves free of it by the time we retire.  But why do we have these debts so long?  I suppose we can blame the individuals with MBA's and JD's (I'm talking about politicians here) that have shaped our economy into a consumer driven one, where we are punished to save (taxed) and rewarded for debt (tax deduction).

We Americans typically work 40 to 80 hr hard work weeks and take limited vacation and use barely any sick time so that we can be at the top of the list to receive any promotion, bonus, or salary increase so that we may use the extra money to pay off some debt.  Once we get ourselves a little out of debt by paying off the credit cards or the car note, then what do we do?  Instead of investing or saving our money - we simply look for another car to buy because our current one is too old or "doesn't look good anymore", or some form of jewelry, rims, etc.  But if we can't buy it totally outright, we simply finance the rest.  And again we're back in the same situation and working extra hard to get back out of debt again....  This is what we call the rat race.  Because we never move ahead, we just move in circles going nowhere.

Broke people don't have any money because they give it away to rich people.  Most of us work for rich people already, but unforutnately we take our hard earned money and give it right back to them when we buy our clothes, shoes, cars, jewelry, tv's, etc.  So as of 2008, I began changing the way I make and spend my money. 

Most broke Americans might agree that we only have one stream of income - our job and a meager 401k.  But to really get ahead in life, we need multiple streams similar to our corporate colleagues.  Corporations have multiple streams of income through the sale of bonds, issuance of stocks, and sales of products and services. 

Therefore, my quest to build multiple streams of income is beginning, instead of paying Nike for a pair of shoes, I invest in Nike and they pay me a dividend so I can get a pair of shoes every quarter.  Instead of paying a car company like Ford or Toyota for a new car, I invest in them so that they pay me a dividend and I can pay cash for a car (eventually after I save up my dividends).  I actually want gas prices to rise - because that  means my oil & gas companies will do better and pay me more in dividends so that I can fill my tank up whenever I want. 

Now I am far from where I want to be and definitely don't have buckets of money running over, but I hope I'm on my way as I get older and wiser.  I know the financial education we received in school has been incorrect and not sufficient in today's economy, so I'm working to improve on my situation day by day. 

Why would I continuously work hard just to pay companies for their products?  When they are so happy to pay me in dividends to use their products?  Pay you?  No. Pay me!

PS - folks, my blogs will be scarce at best in the upcoming months (unless something too tempting comes up).  I am focusing on finishing my new book BE FREE that will be a simple guide to getting out of debt and making money for everyone.  This book and a few new projects for 2010 will be my main focus for the remainder of the year!
However, I hope to at least put one post up every month to keep  you informed of my thoughts and actions.

BE FREE