You could have one stream of income or ten but if your spending exceeds your income you will never get rich. Having multiple streams of income might work for some people but that probably means that you are working very long hours or maybe are even on the clock 24/7.
The key to building riches is to make more money than you spend and to leverage you excess income to create more income. If you have money you can borrow more money and the more money you have the lower interest rate you have to pay.
Job security is different, you want to be sure that you will always be able to find work then you might want to have more than one skill. Those skills don’t really have to be all that different. Me, I can work on boosters, spacecraft or ground systems, cryogenic systems, electrical systems or high pressure gas systems. Sometimes, really many times I have had to move to find good work. I have worked in California, Colorado, Florida, Virginia, Louisiana and Ohio. My work in Colorado, Virginia and Ohio, I did not relocate, they were temporary jobs and involved a lot of travel. I have become a millionaire by staying employed, keeping my expenses well below my income and avoiding losses on my investments.
I have had a few side hustles and I currently have two jobs (one is sporadic consulting) but still rarely have to work more than 2000 hours a year. I have not taken a real vacation in a few years but that is not because I can’t take the time off, I would rather go to work than go to a tourist venue and while once upon a time I would have enjoyed going to some secluded place to relax, now that would bore me. I am not a workaholic, I don’t work long days or weekends. My main job works a 9/80 work week, 9 hour days, 5 days one week and 4 days then next week. combine that with the holidays and we get about 30 three day or longer weekends a year.
When I was laid off, I had over 400 hours of unused vacation which they paid me as a lump sum along with my severance. I don’t know how much unused vacation I have right now but I would guess it is close to 400 hours, I get three weeks a year and like I said I have not take vacation in years and have not had a year were I used all my vacation in decades. Yes, decades, I have been working for almost 40 years. I was retired/unemployed for almost a year when I was in my mid 50’s but after months of traveling I got bored. When I got a call from a my current employer asking me if I wanted to join his start up, I said sure.
If you are good at what you do and it is in demand, work will find you, you won’t have to look for it but people have to like to work with you. You are not really good at what you do if people don’t like working with you. The asshole genius is not good at what they do, not really. They do more damage than they do good.
You want to get rich, make more than you spend. Does not really matter if you do it with one job or ten jobs.
Oh, do you what to look rich or be rich. To look rich you have to spend and that makes it harder to be rich. I will admit that I have always lived modestly. My current house and two cars, cost less than $180,000 and they are debt free. It is hard to get rich paying interest unless you use the loan as leverage.
I bet that most of you if you were millionaires would not live in a $180,000 house or buy cars that cost less than $30,000. I was not a millionaire when I bought the house for $120,000 but even then it was more house than we needed. Family of three in a 4 bedroom house built in the late 70’s with a good size yard, two car garage and a 10 x 20 outbuilding, close to work, hospitals, schools and shopping. At the time I bought the house it was right about my annual salary. I did not pay it off until I was laid off, seemed like a good thing to do with my severance. Even then I am not sure I was a millionaire when I was laid off it sort of depends on how you value my 401K and my pension. I will owe taxes on my 401K and pension and the amount of taxes I will owe depends on what my income is while I collect my pension and how fast I draw down my 401K.
If I had not moved then the 30 year mortgage on my first house would have been paid off last year. That house only cost $98,000. I bought a house and got married in that order when I was 30. How did I do that? I saved $20,000 dollars in my first 8 years on the job. How did I do that? By spending less than I earned. Saved an average of $2,500 a year. That was less than 10% of my salary. I was putting very little in my 401K because I was saving for my down payment. Why only buy a $100,000 house and put 20% down? Because with 20% equity you don’t have to buy private mortgage insurance.
You become a millionaire making smart financial decisions.
How come my 401K did not get wiped out by the dot.com bust or the great recession? Before each recession I rebalanced my portfolio to more than 80% cash. I am at 80% cash now, not because I know there will be a recession but because their might be a recession and I don’t need to get richer and it would be painful to lose a lot of money now that I am over 60. Now is not a time for me to be greedy.
TEK
