Making Money Today: The Need For a Paradigm Shift

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A paradigm shift is what happens when a person migrates from thinking one way about something to thinking about the topic in a completely different way, and for a lot of people today, it’s necessary to shift their thinking when it comes to making money and building a career.

See, school doesn’t teach us to be wealthy or happy it teaches us to be a cog in the wheel and “get by” in life… to be good employees that study hard and are rewarded with job security, yet the notion of job security particularly in the context of having a job for life seems to have gone out the window with the introduction of zero hour contracts and the freelancer economy.

That said it is of course positive to do well in school, and even if you’ve struggled academically, it’s still good to undertake further training such as a vocational course that leads to you getting a forklift licence, as we are all ultimately compensated in alignment with the amount of value we bring to the marketplace, and someone that can drive a forklift truck, for instance, may be more in demand than someone with a first class history degree.

Yet, no matter how much value we bring to the marketplace, “getting by” in the financial rat race of life does not tend to lead to a life of wealth, happiness and abundance.

Now, nobody is suggesting you need to be a millionaire in order to be wealthy, as many people consider wealth to be more about time than money… after all, we’ve all heard of the busy executive that works 80 hours a week and has absolutely no life.

The recipe, therefore, seems to be having both the time and money to enjoy life on your own terms — and for many people wealth merely relates to not having to worry about money so much and to have the free time to enjoy their lives… this boils down to two core ingredients; time and money.

In this article we’re going to look at why creating assets might be a better way forward in terms of our careers, than earning a salary via the standard practice of trading time for money… in the conventional sense.

The book “Rich Dad Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki highlights some key differences between how the wealthy use their time and resources, in that the rich tend to invest their time by building assets rather than trade their time for money in the linear way most employees do.

There is ultimately a limit on how much money (and quality of life) a person can have when they are stuck on the financial treadmill known as the rat race, as there’s a limit to how much money a person can charge for each unit of time and an intrinsic limit to how many hours there are in the day, that a person can work for.

When you look to the financial treadmill of employment you can see that both the factory worker, the lawyer, and even the brain surgeon are all swapping their time for money – just for different amounts.  

Now, most people will endeavour to charge more for each unit of their time by learning new skills, and this is a viable path to earning more money, but is not necessarily the path to wealth in the context of having a life with both time and money.

The same can be said for small business owners, as a consultant might be able to charge a huge amount of money for each hour they work, yet they are still “stuck on the treadmill” as they are only getting paid when they are trading their time.  

If they aren’t actively trading their time for money, perhaps due to being sick or going on holiday, then their income stops.

Moreover, there’s an intrinsic limit to how much people can earn this way as there are only so many hours in a week, and there’s usually a ceiling to how much a person can charge for each hour of their time.

The wealthy, however, understand the need to look at things differently and focus more on planting trees that will provide fruit time and time again; in the form of developing assets such as investment properties that lead to a reliable stream of passive income.

In summary, whilst there are many side hustles and ways to boost your earning ability that can boost your monthly income, the path to true wealth seems to be found more in developing assets rather than trading your time for money.