I would like to think I've worked hard my during the 24 years I've been working to make myself self reliant. My parents and grandparents instilled in me this idea that if I work hard, if I prepare for my future, and if I spend and allocate my money frugally and wisely I should be able to control my own destiny.
There are many people I work with, a majority perhaps, who contend that they won't be allowed to retire until they reach the so called retirement age. You know, the age the government sets as to which you can receive social security payments.
Many of these same people laugh when I tell them I have worked hard to control my own destiny. I have set aside money in a retirement account for a long time now, and when I'm 58 I'm going to retire.
"Well, you can't do that," they say. "You can't retire until you're 70."
Now I don't know where they get the idea I "can't" retire. There's no law that says a person "has" to work until the government says so.
The truth is, if you are 18 and you put aside $1,000 a year for five years and put it into a retirement account, you will never have to put any more money in the rest of your working years and by the time you are 62 you will have a million dollars in your retirement account.
If that's true, of which many financial experts contend it is (it may not be exactly as I write here, yet something like that), imagine how much money you'd have if you continue to put aside money the rest of your working years.
The point here is that if you take responsibility for your own life, you can have more control of it. YOU can decide when you retire. You can decide how long you have to work, or even how hard you have to work.
Yet there are obviously many people in our society who don't want you to know this, because it's obviously not taught in schools. It's not taught in schools, I think, because politicians want you to spend your money unwisely. The more of the money you spend, they think, the better off the economy is.
Yet it's this same thinking that leads to forclosures and bankruptcies. THEY -- the powers that be -- want you to spend your money when you make it, and save little. THEY want you to work as long as you can, because --they think -- this will keep the economy going.
Yet when the economy collapses, those who continue to live the way THEY want are the ones most affected by the economic downturn. Those of us who prepare and plan ahead and are smart with our money, we don't feel the recession as much.
Yet I also belieive it's ignorance that's responsible for economic upturns and downturns. If people would continue to spend their money wisely when after they got raises, or when the economy was good instead of buying a bunch of stuff, then there wouldn't be ups and downs in the market.
Plus if we spend our money wisely, the government will get less of it. So the more you spend, the more the government makes. The more money you waste on stuff you don't need, the more the government makes.
And the more of your money the government has, the more control over you they have. Thus, instead of you deciding how to spend your money, the government decides. Instead of you choosing the charity of your choice, the government decides.
That's just my frivolous theory. Of course I'm not the first to come up with such a theory. Ben Franklin wrote about it. Other wise people thousands of years ago wrote about it. Yet many teachers STILL don't teach about it. Many do, yet still many don't.
The funny thing is, many of those same teachers are among the same people who spend all their money and hope HOPE and Hope and Hope they don't get fired or laid off. Yet when they do get fired or laid off, they are screwed. They go bankrupt. They go into foreclosure. Or they get darn lucky.
Believe it or not, there are those among us who don't want us to take responsibility for our own lives. Then there are those who don't want that responsibility. Then there are those who don't know how to manage their own lives. They rely on others and just assume something will be there when they need it. These are your fools.
So it's been my career objective to take care of myself. I don't show other people much how I plan to do it, because I get tired of explaining it. One person had me explain it twenty times, and he still asks me how I do it. It's as though I'm talking to a wall. So it's easier to keep my mouth shut and just not tell anyone about my secret. Yet it's not a secret. It's awareness of wisdom. It's awareness of a fact.
If you are responsible, frugal and if you prepare, you can have control of your life. The alternative is THEY control you. What about you? Who do you want to control your life: the government or YOU?
You know what it comes down to is this: the more stuff you want, the more money you are going to spend. Yet when you want something bad enough and you don't have the money right now, you borrow it. And what is the borrower to the lender? That's right: A slave.
So by not educating you, you are a slave to the system.
Yet if we do our homework, we can escape the system. And anyone who becomes self sufficient and self reliant is a huge threat to the system.
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