Becoming Rich
Becoming Rich

It is always about trading time for money

Photo by Qasim Sadiq on Unsplash

One day when I was about 11 years old, my father said to me, “sometimes you have to do things that you don’t want to do.”

This was very disappointing to me when I was 11. Crushing, in fact. I’ve always remembered that moment not because I blame him for pointing out the facts of life but to thank him for pointing them out. His message was one of empathy and sympathy and kindness. A part of me knew at the time that he was trying to be my father in the best way he could.

I have carried that message with me to every job and career I have ever had.

If your path is leading you to become richer financially, or you wish it were, you have probably reached the conclusion that you will have to trade your time for money in some way or another. Except for those in this world who are already rich, each of us will trade our time for compensation, and we call this a job.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

Some of my jobs did not earn very much for the same amount of hours and minutes I offered. I have worked as a carpenter, a dishwasher, and as a soldier. In each of these choices, I was exchanging my time for income, yet in each of these specific cases, I got something more than just money for my time even though none of them paid me very much money.

Some jobs are as equally lopsided in the opposite manner. I’ve worked as a car salesman, a photocopier salesman, and as a financial advisor for a Fortune 100 company. I had agreed to the exchange rate for the money, and I accepted the difficulty or dissatisfaction with both eyes on my income and both ears listening to my father.

Any job or occupation can be seen this way. Taking the job means we accept the terms of the exchange of money for our time. The trick, of course, is to find terms of an exchange that are satisfactory to our sense of what our time is really worth.

I loved the years I spent working as a carpenter. Equally, I was quite content to work as a dishwasher in a restaurant because of what it allowed me to do outside the restaurant. The exchange, at the time, was worth it to me.

I put up with the 80-hour workweeks as a financial advisor and the emotionally depleting position as a car salesman simply because I was making really good money. The exchange was also worth it to me.

The rates of the exchange can evolve over time

Had I stayed as a financial advisor, the long hours and impatience with the corporate environment would have fallen away completely. I would now be making an incredible amount of money each month and have very little corporate contact. And I wouldn’t be working more than 30 hours a week.
['G M Potter']
['Rich', 'Wealth', 'Income Inequality', 'Money', 'Income']