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 I don’t like it anymore, so I’m planning to leave. You can come too, if you want.

Advertisers blanket us with the latest cool thing to own. If you just had this thing, everyone would look up to you and be amazed at your status. Don’t have the money? No problem! Buy now, pay later (with 25% interest).

Become a consumer of stuff you don’t need, become a debt slave to have it all now.

We need money to pay off all these debts. Got to go to work. You get Christmas and New Years off, and two weeks a year. Oh, you need to be available 24/7 otherwise – in case something comes up. That’s 96% of the year. Oh well, everyone has a job. Work is your life now. Become stressed, become depressed – don’t worry pop a Prozac like everyone else and use your credit card to buy that Chanel cashmere sweater, it’s GORGEOUS!

Keep running on that hamster wheel, you wage slave.

As for me, I am not doing it anymore!

It’s a pretty common story in the developed world. Work, work, work. Buy, buy, buy. There is always something else to buy to make you another day poorer and deeper in debt. Think of how much money you have earned over the course of your life, then think of how much you managed to keep. If you have had an average income of $50K for 20 years, you earned $1,000,000!

Of course, the government wants their piece, and the bankers theirs, and then bought what the advertisers told you to. How much did you keep for you?

For most people, it’s a darn small amount.

Of course, if you earn $50K+ a year you are living a comfortable slavery. But still, you are a prisoner of the system. You can’t decide to take the day off and go fishing, you don’t have that freedom. You need that income and you would need to check in with your master and see if they’ll LET you.

To channel my inner Forrest Gump:
I’ve been running on this hamster wheel for 18 years, 24 days, and 16 hours. I’m pretty tired of it… I think I’ll find a way off.

Some things, like taxes, I can’t change. So if it is out of my control, I just have to deal with it. I put that out of my mind so I stay sane.The ancient philosopher Epictetus, who was once a slave before earning his freedom once said: Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not. It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you can and can’t control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible

I can control being a debt and wage slave. So that is what I will change. Here’s how the plan of escape works.

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Change Your Mindset

 

 

Understand that we are exactly where we deserve to be in life. Our way of thinking has brought us to this exact situation at this exact point in time. It wasn’t anyone else’s fault, so you cannot blame anyone but yourself. Take responsibility for your actions, past, present, and future. You need to have an internal locus of control. YOU make things happen, things do NOT happen TO you.This is the difference between thinking that ”I can determine my future” and the slave thinking of ”There is nothing I can do about my future.”

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Minimize expenses, become frugal

In his book The Millionaire Mind, Thomas Stanley states that nearly every self-made millionaire doesn’t look, act, or live like they have that much money. They drive older cars and wear jeans and a t-shirt. Realize that it doesn’t matter if your phone is 2+ years old, it still does what you need it to. Stop buying things that do not improve your happiness in the long term.

You need to live WAY under what you make. If you can live on 50% of your take home pay, you just saved up enough money to live without working for a year. Then you invest that money and over time it grows and frees you from more days of being a wage slave.

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Build up a pile of F*ck You! Money

After you start cutting needless expenses out of your life set aside some of that money to provide a small hoard of emergency money. Save up a small amount at first, $1-2K to provide a buffer between you and the crap that life will throw at you. After you destroy your bad debts, you can build it up even more so that a few months of not working will not stress you out.

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Destroy Your Debt

Credit card debt is extremely common, and it is extremely bad debt. If you do not pay off your credit cards in full every month, you have a problem. Having debt for anything that loses value will keep you running on that hamster wheel of work. You remember that Tuesday dinner at the Cheesecake Factory? That has no value anymore.The same goes for anything with a motor, it is most likely losing value AND costing you even more in interest payments. So many people have huge loans for something worth FAR less than they still owe.

These debts are cancer, they are killing you! Cure yourself.

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Work A Side-Gig

To further distance yourself from dependence on being a wage slave, find a way to bring in some money on the side. Many people find a way to bring in money using the internet, but you could become a landlord or use your skills in the local market.

Many times this action becomes a sort of business. For example, I sell things on eBay or Amazon FBA. But it could be just that you mow lawns around your neighborhood, walk dogs, drive for Uber, or rent a room on Air BNB.

Find something you can do to bring in extra money. You will see that you are able to provide for yourself, and between that and a pile of F*ck You Money, you will sleep easier at night.

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Make It All A Game

Most of all you have to make it fun. Finding new ways to earn money or save by being frugal is a fun game to me. It also drives me to improve my skills.I never remodeled a kitchen before, but when I bought my house I got it at a great discount because it was pretty ugly. Some people more frugal than me would have just left it, but I decided to find cheap ways of making it look much nicer than it was. I searched and haggled to find the materials for the cheapest prices and I improved myself by learning new skills.

Keep ‘score’ by using a service like mint or personal capital. By tracking your spending and investments you can challenge yourself to spend less in a category like electricity or groceries. You can challenge yourself to put more money into your investments than you did the month previous. Always be striving to earn a new ‘personal best’!

The end goal is for your money to be busy making you enough money so you don’t have to work if you choose not to.

If you want to be free, become free. Then it’s party time.

 

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