Dayjobs Don't Make You Rich... i.e., Your Employer's Probably Not a Scrooge

9/3/15

Your Dayjob Is Keeping You Poor

I watch with amazement, almost bewilderment, at the debates, discussions, demands, and protests going on across America about the subject of wages--minimum wage in particular. Recent issues with Wal-Mart and McDonald's immediately come to mind.

What disturbs me about all that's going on is that so many people, especially those on the low end of the earning spectrum who've had no real exposure to any degree of wealth in their lifetimes, seem to think that it's actually possible for them to grow wealthy and to achieve true prosperity by relying on their employer.

It’s like people don’t realize that the age of pensions is over… yet, people across the country are trying misguidedly and fruitlessly to create a pseudo-pension of unwarranted higher wages and costly government- or employer-sponsored programs, with the end goal being to gain a higher standard of living without having to make any personal effort or sacrifice along the way.

In my mind, no other philosophy goes so far counter to the way true wealth and prosperity is built in the real world.

Amid these perverse observations, I’ve arrived at a series of mostly self-evident truths, which have underlied the process of growing truly wealthy or financially independent for everyone whom I know has gained either of these things.

What follows is this series of bold, hard truths, elaborated for all those who feel that it is somehow possible for your employer to gift prosperity into your life--and for your dayjob to make you rich.

1.  Companies don't exist to make employees wealthy.

When it comes down to it, business exists for itself. If you are lucky enough to work for a great company, a by-product of working there might be that you earn a decent, growing wage over time, as you continue to provide value to the organization. But providing jobs or incomes has never been the end-all, be-all for any company I’m aware of.

The purpose of a business is, after all, to deliver a product or service to clients or customers, earn revenue which exceeds its costs, pay productive employees along the way, then plow anything that's left at the end back into growth and expansion.

That's how capitalism works. It's a fantastic system, especially if you're the one who created the business! So, get to work on that one!

2.  If you see yourself as an employee working for someone else, you'll never be a millionaire or billionaire like Mark Zuckerberg.

This one seems self-evident. The truth is, the value creators and decision makers are always going to be the high earners. And no matter what the world is shouting about "the 1%," there's nothing evil about company managers making an obscene amount of money. I don't care if the ratio of CEO-to-employee pay is 200-to-1 or two-million-to-one.

If you do want to be the top earner at your place of business, you have to be the creator, the deliverer, or the innovator.

Without standing out and being the person at your company who creates value, it's unlikely you'll ever be able to able to experience true financial freedom. There will always be the requirement to be at work for a certain number of hours, on certain days of the week, and for you to complete a set number of tasks.

Then, there's always the fear that someday, something adverse might happen in the economy which causes you to lose that job--a debilitating situation, especially if you've invested years or decades of your life in your company.

Working for someone else at your dayjob is not job security, nor is it the definition of prosperity or independence.

3.  No amount of wages can make you wealthy if you haven't learned to thrive on what you have now, or how to elevate yourself from your current station.

Those in our society publicly screaming for higher wages think that making more money will somehow automatically elevate them. They're looking for someone to come along and save them from their "predicament."

If you haven't learned how to manage the finances you have, how will having more of it automatically make things better for you? Won't unearned wage increases just result in more lax financial performance, as opposed to discipline, planning, and executing a tried-and-proven financial strategy?

It's a well-known fact that high wage-earners like doctors, lawyers, and professional athletes, not to mention cash-windfall recipients like lottery winners, often find themselves in the worst possible financial situations, with many ending up broke despite high earning potential and above-average salaries.

Learning the skills of maximizing your income and managing what you get is what will lead you to financial stability and independence. Not handouts or automatic periodic wage increases.

4.  Growing wealthy involves gaining a skillset, getting paid to use it, and maximizing the income that comes from it in whatever ways you can.

Today's society, especially public school systems, seems fixated on this idea that a traditional college experience is the only way to truly make a living or to gain financial freedom and stability.

As it happens, people with even basic skills like a trade (welding, contracting, etc), or technical skills, like computer programming and web design, tend to experience tremendous earning potential out of the gates of their training, with little initial investment of time or money (i.e., without spending thousands of dollars and years of their life in traditional college).

Our society needs to come to the realization that small business owners are the majority of millionaires out there... what's commonly referred to as "the millionaires next door".... simply because these individuals gained a basic technical skillset, then some business or financial savvy, synergized their skills into a business, and hired someone else to run it for them, paving the way for a path of true freedom.

Society rewards valuable skills and people. Too many pieces of paper are often high-cost, low-return on investment debt traps and time-stealers.

5.  If you aren't learning to maximize your income by living below your means, avoiding "stupid" debt like the plague, and learning to save and invest wisely, you've not understood how 99% of people grow wealthy.

Basic financial skills like managing a budget, saving, and investing are a lost art today.

This is especially true in this country and economy, where savers are punished with low interest on their cash, debtors are rewarded with “nice” and shiny possessions which make them appear rich, and gamblers in the stock market are rewarded for taking uncalculated risks with the money they have managed to scrape together.

Unabashed debtors eventually go broke—whether the debtor be a sovereign nation, or an individual. Risky gamblers eventually realize that the “house” always wins.

But those who learn to live within their means, and to regularly save and wisely invest substantial portions of their income (20+%), can achieve a great degree of financial security and stability in a much shorter period of time than most of society will have you believe.

Retirement is not forty years away for a twenty-five year old who is disciplined in learning to maximize savings and wages, minimize costs and outflows, and is dedicated to pursuing the things in life which truly matter.

And I’m not talking about money. Money is only the means to an end.

Conclusion

It’s a startlingly fast-growing, obscene, and perverse philosophy which dictates that individual prosperity is built without sacrifice, personal development, and value creation.

The sooner we can get people to realize that personal prosperity is gained through personal development, making wise personal and professional decisions, providing value to society, innovating in the workplace, maximizing resources (no matter how meager), gaining new skills, and mastering the art of finance and investing, the better.

These truths, understood, will change behavior. And improved behavior and philosophy is the only thing which will improve the world of business, politics, and the personal economy of individuals.

Wage increases do little.

Your dayjob won't make you rich, it will more than likely keep you poor.

Forcing your mega-conglomerate employer to throw more money at a problem which is rooted fundamentally within your own lack of personal initiative and motivation, will not save you from the coming economic bloodbath which will ensue when the world’s financial problems come home to roost.

Live long and invest,

Jeremiah