Life is not just about knowledge but requires action as well. Please complete this life changing exercise before you read any further. Add up all the payments you have ever made in your life to a bank or finance company on every debt you have ever had during your life. This is on cars, real estate, business loans, business equipment, student loans, boats; anything motorized, etc.
Now whatever that figure is for you (it will be largely a figure of age and income) double that number. So if your figure is $1,000,000 in total payments your number would be $2,000,000. Why do we double that figure? By giving up control of all your money in the form of monthly payments for all those years you turned over the growing power of that money to the bank.
Depending on your age, even if you had kept that money and received even a modest interest rate of 4% to 6% your money would have easily doubled once and for many of you doubled a couple of times. Now that we have your “money lost†figure you need to add up your “money kept and investedâ€. To get that figure simply add up all the money you have saved up in your IRA’s, 401k and other retirement accounts. Grab your most recent statements and add them up quickly.
This entire exercise can be done in 10 minutes and I challenge you to do it before you read one more word or at least immediately after you’re done. How much have you saved and invested for retirement? Now which of those two totals is bigger, the money paid to the bank figure or the money for your retirement figure? Â
Now ask yourself who is getting rich with that personal finance model. The answer is very apparent and that is the banks and Wall Street who love this business model. You borrow money your whole life and don’t care as long as the interest is low. This keeps you in financial bondage to the banks. Then whatever money you are able to put away is put inside of qualified plans and then given to Wall Street. Wall Street is flat out drunk with money and has been for many decades.
