“Do you know how much of monthly instalment I need to pay for all my debts? $10,000 a month! Just my past business loans and personal loans alone… not counting my monthly instalments for my car and house,” my friend Andrew* told me today. He’s in his 30’s with a wife around his age; a father to a 7-year-old boy. Andrew cried, “If something happens to me, how are my wife and son going to go through their lives?!”

“Do you know if there’s anything on earth that keeps paying my family long after I’m gone?” Andrew asked me. I replied without hesitation, “Yes, absolutely!”

Andrew owns a car accessories shop that can only be operated smoothly with his presence in the shop (much like almost all traditional businesses). His income can merely pay for his family’s basic living expenses. Since his wife is helping him in his shop, they have only one source of income—and that is from his shop that needs his attention to run daily.

I came across an interesting book later today, that read:

The rich create businesses;

The middle class create their own job; and

The poor work at a job.

This book then explained that:

1. Rich people get richer because they created businesses that in the long-run are not attached to them. They can leave their businesses for as long as they wanted it and yet enjoy an income stream that keeps flowing in to their bank account even if they are not physically involved in running the business. This is the real meaning of “passive income“.
2. People in the middle class get more in debt because they have not learned the real meaning of a business. Most of them came out of employment and started to venture into a business and tell the world, “I’m my own boss”. Yet what most of them didn’t realize is that they have merely created a job for themselves to work on. A job is never accomplished without you putting in your physical effort, and personal time to attend to it. And what’s more real is that, you don’t get paid if the job is not done. Eventually, the middle class end up having a “job” that they have created for themselves, believing that they are running a business (a business that is far from within the context of the rich’s definition) and get into deeper debt in the long-run due to the increasing bank/personal loans taken to maintain the business and the ever increasing interests that stack on year after year.
3. The poor are at least a little better than the middle class because they don’t incur large debts as they didn’t even start their own business that needs large funding from banks and other financial institutions. They merely work for money, no matter how much they are paid—how high a position they are “labelled” by their employer—they are always trading time for money. If something happens to them that takes away their ability to work, e.g. major accident, technological advancement that replaces their job, company take-overs, mergers, retrenchments etc. they will suffer a permanent loss of income from their existing job. Of course, if they are still capable of working, they can keep looking for other jobs to start over again with, but the point here is that, they are still trading time for money. They can’t stop doing what they are doing or their income stream will stop flowing.

In short, the rich focus on the long-term. They have a vision for their future. They think of positive “what if’s” and act on the idea that provides them with a better future. They know it’s hard to work at something—anything—at the beginning. Their mindset is so different that they understand this: if it’s hard to work at anything at the beginning, why not work hard on something that is worth their hard work?

Why don’t you work on something that pays you and your family continuously even long after you’ve stopped putting effort and time into it? The rich understand the real meaning of “time-compression”.

That is why you can see the really wealthy ones are really hard-working in building a business. They understand the concept of “time-compression”. They are willing to put in extra time, extra effort and extra dedication to build their business at the beginning because once they’ve built it and it’s up and running, they can stop working so hard and still enjoy an everlasting income stream that keeps flowing in to their bank account. This is the “time-compression” concept. Otherwise, how do you think they get to maintain their wealthy lifestyle yet having the free time to enjoy their wealth as if they don’t have to work at all?

But the poor are hard-working in working at a job and the middle class are hard-working in maintaining the “job” they have created for themselves. If all the rich, the middle class and the poor stop working, only the rich gets paid over and over again, while the poor don’t get anything. Worse still, not only do the middle class don’t get anything if they have stopped working, they still need to pay up their ever increasing debts. Plus, they have much higher commitments than the poor due to a higher (and more costly) lifestyle. That’s why the middle class are in a more dangerous financial situation than the poor.

My friend, Andrew is a classic example of a typical family from the middle class. Those of you whose situation is similar to Andrew’s should take a serious look at the options you have in front of you and start doing something that the rich people do—build a real business.

As Andrew was desperate to find an answer, I said to him, “Why don’t you take a look at a business venture that pays you over and over again even after you’re long gone? At least you can be rest assured that your family will be taken care of because you know very well that you can inherit your income source to your love ones. What is a better gift to pass on to your love ones than a solid, consistent cash flow that keeps paying them even if they don’t have to work on it after you’re gone?”

“Take a look at www.myunlimitedincome.com today.

Because your future starts today.”

Be blessed.

* Note: Although this is a real story, however the name has been changed to protect the privacy of individual involved.