Inspiration

As humans we need inspiration, because inspiration creates motivation which gets things happening. And it comes more often than not for things that we care about.

Being a teenager (i am still technically one for the next 6 months) i never really cared about money. I experienced no financial pressure for m entire teen years. I worked enough to buy all the games i wanted in the early years, and after taking on more hours i never had a trouble running and maintaining a car.

But when i sat down and had a think about it, i wondered how i was going to keep up with the increasing cost of "needs" as i got older, things like a house, a wedding, looking after a family. These things cost more than i had ever bought or maintained before.

For the most part of my teen years i though, "oh it will be right, i'm doing well at school, i'll get a good job and then i'll beable to afford it all". But it has started to come to my attention that simply earning more doesn't fix the problem.

As i have grown older, my hourly wage has gone up at my casual job. The overall amount of hours that i work has also increased with time. And at the end of the financial year when i do my tax return, i'm shocked about how much more i earnt this year than the last. But instead of rejoicing, this made me think, where did all this money go. I always had the same amount in my bank account, even when i was earning more.

This was frustrating, but i didn't have much ideas on how to fix it.

That was until i was on a family holiday in New Zealand, and one of my uncles decided he wanted to teach all his nieces and newphews how of handle money as he had learnt. He owns 4 investment houses, has various luxuries of his own at home, and gets time to spend with his 3 young kids. When my parents first heard about his lifestyle, they couldn't phathom how he could have done this by his early 40s, thinking it was impossible, or that he was doing something illegal.

I however took a different view point. I was intrigued about how he did it, which in essense is similar to my parents, although i looked at it with an open mind, looking to how i could learn how he did this, rather than looking for the negatives or shortcuts that they assumed he'd taken.

But even wanting to learn this didn't overly increase my interest in financial matters, until one night my uncle pulled out a board game. It was called "Cashflow" and it had been developed by the author of many financial books, Robert T. Kiyosaki. It looked very different to any other board game i'd ever seen. Perhaps because it was based on real life and it's purpose was to educate, as well as entertain.

The aim of the game was to get out of the rat race (everyday working life) and into the fast track (into the lifes the rich live, he claimed). To do this you had to get your passive income (income from businesses, real estate, etc, basically anything other than your salary) higher than your expenses.

At the start i was bummed, because i had drawn the occupation of a nurse, and was the lowest paid in the game. I though i was at a disadvantage, having to work hard to catch up to the other players. However i soon noticed that my expenses were significantly less than the other players whose salary was significantly higher.

The one thing i learnt from that game was that it wasn't about how much you earnt, but it was about how you manage your money and how you spend it. I was the first to get out of the rat race, as being the eldest i had alittle more experience (but not much) with handling money. But it showed me that there was alot more to be learnt, and alot more to be gained.

This board game helped me care about money now, well not money as such, but the power of what money can do for you. And now that i cared about my financial future, i was inspired to learn more, about how to managed money, how to make it work for you, but mostly, how to retire before i turn 40.

This is my aim, and this blog will follow the steps that i take in my effort to fulfill this goal.