Hopefully you’ve heard of Thomas Stanley and his various “Millionaire” books. One of my favorites is The Millionaire Mind.
What’s most interesting about his work is that it’s based on thousands of surveys of affluent people. These surveys highlight how affluent people think about dollars, college, work, marriage, relationships, business, real estate and lifestyle.
I read this book every year because it details commonalities of affluent people. As you might imagine, affluent people (people with a millionaire’s mind) think differently than non-affluent people.
If you want what someone else has, you must learn to think how they think and do what they do.
Affluent people tend to focus on accumulating assets. Their focus is on their balance sheet, not their income statement.
Per The Millionaire Mind:
“Often they have little or not outstanding credit balances… Neither their lifestyle nor their affluence was generated from being highly leveraged. They are not credit junkies.”
Affluent people don’t borrow their way to affluence.
“Some were credit-dependent earlier in their careers, but they eventually saw the light. They went cold turkey, breaking the cycle of borrowing to consume, earning to consume, and borrowing more and more. Others never became addicted to credit or the need to display their success.”
It’s almost as if Stanley was writing about me! 🙂
Prior to the 2008 crash, a great deal of my revenue was fueled by debt:
– My rental properties were ALL financed
– My home was financed (1st mortgage + equity loan)
– My oceanfront condo was financed
– My cars were financed
The crazy part is that I thought I owned all of these things.
The reality was that my lenders owned these assets, and I was simply managing them for f-r-e-e! I handled all of the taxes, all of the repairs, all of the city inspections, and I even paid all of the utilities. I finally realized that I didn’t actually own many of these assets when my lenders ended up with the keys!
Here’s one of the most important takeaways from Stanley’s work:
If you’re operating with a lot of debt,
understand that your actions are NOT congruent
with the wealthiest people in the world.
This is extremely helpful to understand because it will force you to think about hitting your goals without borrowing a bunch of dollas.
Prior to the crash, I never really thought about generating cashflow without debt because I was a credit junkie. Most people are.
Truth be told, this is why I started my Cashflownaire Membership. I wanted to help people sidestep the costly mistakes I’ve made in my journey. If you’d like to take the road less traveled, by creating cashflow without debt, apply to become a Cashflownaire here: https://dividendrealestate.com/apply
