Winding Path in the Forest

Focus on Long Term Wealth

Are you determined to get out of debt and grow your wealth? When I made the decision to get out of debt, all I could focus on was the current day, or at most, the next day. I had to deny myself various pleasures each and every day so that I could have that extra hundred bucks at the end of the month to put toward my student loans. It was certainly a step by step process, which required me to keep my head down and plod through each day.

The Short Term Gains

It was such a relief when I finally got out of debt. After I made that final student loan payment, a weight was just lifted off of my shoulders and I felt like I could do anything! From that point on, I started thinking about using my money to make additional money (and to never go into debt again in order to do it).

When I was a kid, I remember visiting my Dad at the car dealership. He worked a full-time job during the day, and then worked a few more hours selling cars in the evening. While I wasn’t overly involved in the dealership, a little bit of that buying and selling operation must have stuck with me, because I recently started flipping cars to make some extra dollars!

So, I technically was earning money with my money with these car sales, but it was extremely short term thinking. In order to make any money, I had to do the following:

  1. Constantly watch the online classifieds for potential deals
  2. Drive to the seller to test out the car, and if it was in good shape I spent extra time haggling for the best price.
  3. Recruit help to drive the car home
  4. Clean the exterior, interior, and make small repairs
  5. Register the car in my name and pay the taxes on the purchase
  6. Post the car to the online classifies with hopes of selling it for more than I currently had into it (expense-wise)
  7. Field all phone calls, text messages, and emails of interested individuals
  8. Show the car and allow various people to test drive the vehicle
  9. Haggle with the potential buyer to get the most money out of the vehicle

As you may have guessed, this takes quite a bit of time! And, after all of this, I would typically earn about $700 per vehicle.

Focusing on Long Term Wealth

My car sales did earn me an income on my investment, but each one of them required quite a lot of effort and did not net a very large amount of dollars.

When you hear the word, “wealth”, what definition comes to mind? Obviously, you would probably say that a wealthy person has quite a lot of money! But, there is actually more to wealth than typically meets the eye. True wealth means that someone has both money and time. In other words, they are able to earn a healthy income, but also have the free time to enjoy it. My car sales were not getting me any closer to true wealth.

Long term wealth will not be accomplished by risky investments and too-good-to-be-true deals. Instead, you must begin to seek out passive income – income that is earned consistently with little or no work. The best form of passive income is real estate. By purchasing properties and renting them out, there is very little work that needs to be done, but yet you continually get paid each month. Other forms of passive income are stock market investments (which is also referred to as portfolio income), book writing, and business ownership (where your employees perform the work for you). Obviously, none of these investments will be easy – real estate is expensive, book writing is saturated, and business ownership can be quite demanding if you have never done it before. If you are serious about earning wealth for the long-term however, I am certain that you will be able to make your investments a success.

Are you interested in long term wealth? Have you ever thought about investing in real estate?

2 thoughts on “Focus on Long Term Wealth”

  1. We like both types of money – the make it now and the passive income streams. We have one paid off rental property so far and are looking into acquiring a second one. We also full fund Roth IRA’s that grow in target date mutual funds and I have a tiny amount of passive income that comes in each month from eBooks. But we also have side hustles like pet sitting and sports officiating to make $1000 a month here and there simply since we enjoy it…it’s either that or more time for tv since we only travel every few months…

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