I am not a rich man, but I have enough cash to last me for another 50 years, and that’s pretty good, since I probably won’t be around for more than 20.
When you do the math, this pretty much gives me about a 30 year cushion.
I will say this, that the fortunate position that I find myself in today, did not ‘just happen’.
I can’t say that I have ever really experienced hard financial times in my life.
I mean, I was never homeless, I never had a car repossessed, we always had food, I did bounce a check once, but, only because the car dealership made me mad.
Thinking about that bounced check now, it was not the right thing to do, but, I had just turned 20, and I thought that I did not know any better.
I have been in the finance, lending, and the debt collection business since 1982, and I have seen some good people do some amazing things with money, and I have seen other good people get destroyed because of not doing the right things with money.
I have learned a lot of good lessons in my time, the same lessons that many others have learned.
A long time ago, a good friend of mine once said to me, ‘The only difference between a rich man and a poor man, is that the rich man listened, and applied, what he learned.’
A lot of us know exactly what it takes to get rich, and a lot of us know exactly what it takes to build wealth, but there are only a few of us, who will ever apply what we know.
Another time, another friend, said to me, that money does not care.
Money will do whatever you tell it to do, and because money does not care, money is not loyal, money will always find a home.
If you don’t treat money with the respect that money deserves, money will leave you, every single time, and land in another person’s pocket, without question, you can bet on that.
When I was in my 40s I got to know this cool couple.
As far as I was concerned, they were the best sales people on the planet, we called them Ken and Barbie.
They hated that with a passion.
They were making a lot of money, and they were arrogant.
They were in their 20’s, and between the two of them, they were earning six thousand dollars a week, and finding a way, to spend eight thousand dollars a week, now that is an amazing thing to do.
Of course, the money they spent over and above the six thousand dollars went straight on the credit card.
Ken and Barbie, they were good people, but they falsely believed that their income would never end.
I tried to warn them.
But they would not listen.
When the company went out of business, and they lost their job and went broke, for almost a year, they rang my phone and knocked on my door, asking me to loan them money.
It never happened.
I am not a college educated man, I never graduated high school, but I like to believe that I am quite astute.
My life lessons came from watching others live their lives, and I applied the good stuff that I saw others do, into my life, and I tossed out the bad, but I can tell you this, that I never forgot about the bad.
I will say that my life in my 20s was a waste of lot of money and a waste of a lot of time, but I did learn a lot, and what I learned was priceless, and I am so glad that I learned what I learned when I was still a young man.
We all have choices and decisions to make every day of our lives.
What works for me may not work for you and vice versa, but hear me when I say, if you have not accumulated any amount of financial savings or financial wealth, and you have not hit your late thirties, there is still time for you to easily build great financial wealth.
Now, if you are in your forties, it gets rough, and if you are in your fifties, don’t give up, but good luck, and if you are in your sixties, hey, you only gotta make it to your SSI.
It’s not the best outcome, but it’s something.
When I was in my 20s and 30s, there was all sorts of opportunities to make money, but today, in 2025, most young people are competing with technology and artificial intelligence, and it has really gotten tough out there.
If you have a job right now, my advice for you, is to hang on to that job, and make yourself as irreplaceable as you possibly can, and spend as much of your off time on developing your technical skills to get a better paying job.
In my view, I don’t think that people can afford to find their ‘passion job’ any longer, people just need to find a job or a career that pays enough to cover the bills.
Is the economy going to crash?
I sure as heck hope not, but the signs don’t look good.