Paycheck to paycheck?

Chapter 288

Financial wealth is the power to choose how to spend money. - James Clear

There some a point in your life, where you move from living with your parents and they supplying much of what you need in life, to living on your own more or less, and supplying yourself what you you need. You need money. So you get a job, or jobs. Invariably, you have more month than money because you wouldn’t have needed to get a job otherwise. And so starts the decades long process of making more money and reducing your expenses as you can, . . . and you can. These people will eventually find the power to choose how to spend their money. They will eventually make more than they spend. They will discover financial wealth as they save and invest more and more of the money that they are making from their jobs.

There are other paths that people take as well. Many end in bankruptcy, some from businesses gone belly up, many more from fiscal irresponsibility. I am surprised at how many people I know who have done this. Others wade through life paycheck to paycheck for their whole life and come to retirement with nothing, and live on the ragged edge of existence on whatever Social Security covers, which is not nearly enough. These people never achieve financial wealth. They will never have the choice of how to spend their money. The only choice this person can ever have, is how much they choose to be content with not choosing. 

These are not the only two paths to take, there are hundreds of other ones, in between these two. But most folks follow one or the other of these for the most part.

Today is the first day of the rest of your life, start choosing!