My brother used to talk about his goal of two million dollars. He said once he had that, he could retire and not have to worry about money. That got me thinking. He was right. In fact, I wouldn’t even need two million dollars. At one million dollars, I could make as much money as I do now and not have to do anything to get it. That was a pretty cool realization. I guess my goal in the end is to retire and be able to do pretty much anything I want, but having an actual goal makes it different. It made me change the way I think of money. I needed to have seed money, money that would make me money. Once I had that, I could live off what the seed money earns and not have to work for anybody anymore.

You see, even a return of 5% a year on a million dollars is $50,000 each year. That is more than I make now, so I know I could easily live on that much money, no matter what happens, because I’m doing it now. The best thing about living off the $50,000 is that the million dollars that is making the money is never touched, so it could make that $50,000 forever. As long as I had the discipline to not touch the million in the bank, I would never have to work again. All of this is on the assumption that you would only make 5% each year. It’s very possible to get closer to 7 to 8% each year, which means you would have even more to live on and have fun with.

Of course, all of this is sort of a fantasy where I can somehow, magically come up with a million dollars, which is not very likely. The good thing about this sort of thinking is that I’m starting to realize that money is more than what it can buy. Money can make money, and that’s something I never really comprehended before. Before, I would want a million dollars so that I could spend it on extravagant stuff. Now, I want a million dollars, but I don’t want to spend it. I want it sitting in the bank. I think, for me, that is a drastic shift in thinking about money. Hopefully, I can leverage this new line of thinking in values of less than a million bucks, because, right now, I’m definitely dealing with smaller dollar figures. Of course, even though I’m dealing with smaller numbers, I can still get my money to work for me.

I know I can get to that one million dollar goal if I just…
Keep Steppin’

Filed under: finance, money