What no stockbroker will tell you
We are not a patient country. We Americans want everything right NOW and we’ll be the first to tell you all about it. Everything these days is instant, on demand, quick, fast, easy.
Hey, I like convenience as much as the next guy. No one likes to wait, and I’m certainly no fan of wasting time. But there is something to be said for patience - particularly when it comes to accumulating money.
When I was starting out, I didn’t have two sticks to rub together. I was a 19-year-old high school dropout with a baby on the way and a $6 an hour job working nights in a slaughterhouse. I’d never had any money, and didn’t know anyone who had it, either. But I knew that I wanted it – and I wanted it bad.
Then I started buying investment properties. And the cash started coming in. For the first time in our lives, my wife and I had extra money each month – money that we could use to buy new cars, fancy clothes, and nice vacations.
Except we didn’t. For the first several years, even after I stopped working at the slaughterhouse and started doing real estate investing full time, I used every extra dime to buy more real estate. We lived in the same place and drove the same old cars. We wore the same clothes and drank the same cheap beer and watched Dolphins games on the same old TV we always had.
Guess what? That’s why I was a millionaire by the time I was 27 – because I was patient. I had decided I was in this for the long term payoff, not a quick hit. I was interested in being financially independent, not in accumulating expensive toys.
Not that there’s anything wrong with expensive toys. Today, I have a lot of them – and I enjoy them. But I can tell you that I never would be in the position I’m in now if I had blown my money on flashy cars and showy jewelry when I was 20. It’s a matter of priorities – and to be successful at real estate investing over the long term, establishing and maintaining your financial independence has to be #1.
Let me show you what I mean with an example. Let’s say someone offers to pay you $1,000 a day for 30 days. Every day, you’ll get handed $1,000 cash. Pretty good deal, huh?
Then someone else offers to put away a penny a day for you for 30 days. You have to wait until the 30 days are to get paid – but you also get 100% daily compounding interest.
Without doing the math, most people think the choice is obvious. $1,000 dollars a day cash in hand, versus a penny a day you don’t even get to see until the end? The first impulse is to take the money and run.
But the smart choice is actually the penny a day. It has nothing to do with the dollar amount, or the time frame. It’s all about the compounding -- and the patience.
100% compounding means your doubling your money every day. That isn’t so impressive when you’re starting with a penny. But pennies add up – and they add up a lot faster than you might think. It goes like this: The first day you have 1, the second day you have 2, the third day you have 4, the fourth day you have 8. After 15 days you have $72. At this point, you’re getting bored, you’re getting fidgety. You’re tempted to cash out and go out for a nice steak dinner.
But if you leave it alone, in just one more day you’d have $144. The day after that you’d have $288. And if you leave it alone for the full 30 days, you’d have somewhere in the neighborhood of $333 million.
If you took out some of the money along the way, everything slows down. You mess up the compounding formula, and lose out on huge gains. Is the new car, or the sparkly earrings, worth it? Only you can decide, but as far as I’m concerned, I’ll take the compounding cash every time.
I know what you’re thinking – no investment pays 100% compounding interest. Most stockbrokers and investment gurus would agree with you. But I’ve got 30 years of experience to show that real estate investing can net you a 100% return on your money, or at least darn close. After your accountant is done with all his magic, you’ll find that most investment properties will net you a 70 to 80% return. Some will get even higher, and sometimes you can actually reach a 100% return. Just try that with a savings account or even on the stock market these days. There’s no other type of investment that even comes close.
I’m not saying you should hoard your money for ever and never enjoy any of it. There’s no sense having it if you’re not going to use it to make life more comfortable for you and your family. Just don’t do it too soon. The goal is to achieve financial independence – and maintain it, too. Keep working at building your business, keep moving the ball down the field – and before you know it, you’ll look up and realize you’ve accumulated some serious money. And believe me, you’ll be happy you waited.
Russ Whitney story is proof in becoming financially independent or build a nest egg so you can enjoy your retirement years.If you want to learn first hand from Russ Whitney. Visit us at: http://russwhitney.com/
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