Looking to escape rat race hysteria? If you’re serious about escaping the rat race, you’ll need to pull out all the stops. Short of a windfall, you’ll need money not to have a job! Unless you’re looking for some dream job, which for most people isn’t happening, you’ll have to build an income somehow which gives you complete autonomy.
Even in a “dream” job, things change and if you’re pinning your hopes on finding a better boss or job, you’re likely to find yourself back where you were – trading your time for money; trapped again in the rat race.
To escape the rat race you’re going to need to take some action and take charge of your finances. Stop spending on needless items. Stop acting rich! Save that cash and invest into money producing assets!
Robert Kiyosaki talks about money producing assets in his book Rich Dad Poor Dad. Most people consider a car as an asset, but actually it’s a liability. Liabilities take your money and assets bring in money. To escape the rat race you’re going to need to build more assets into your life than liabilities.
Escape Rat Race
This may sound difficult depending on where you currently are. Some may have savings and investments but according to Bankrate data from January 2022, 56% of Americans would be unable to cover an unexpected $1,000 bill with savings. So if you don’t have savings it’s probably time to start putting something aside. Wealthy people have learned how to pay themselves first. This means they pay into savings before they even touch their income. See this as an investment into escaping the rat race over the longer term.
Whatever your situation, set up an automated payment into a savings account, however little. Establish this as a habit and don’t touch your savings. You’ll learn to live on less and this will become a habit which will give you a buffer for emergencies and investment income for opportunities to escape the rat race.
One of the best opportunities today is to build an online business. Anyone can learn the strategies of online selling and use other people’s products and services to build an online income. This is a business model known as affiliate marketing. Affiliates are third party referrer of products and services online. Anyone can become an affiliate and earn through referring customers to products online. See the escape 9 to 5 homepage for more details.
Escape Rat Race – Control Spending
Most people pay all their bills and spend what’s left on themselves. They then become trapped by their jobs rather than using a job to free themselves financially. To free yourself from a job you need multiple income streams. You might not be able to escape the rat race overnight, depending on your situation. For most it will take some planning. One of the first things you can do is to start an inventory of your spending. Take a notepad and jot down everything you spend on a weekly basis. Then notice how your habits are costing you over the long run. You can justify small spendings to yourself because you don’t see the bigger picture. But a $4 cup of coffee and a $2 biscuit at Starbucks or Costa will cost you $2190 over a year if you make the spending a daily habit.
David Back talks about this in his book The Automatic Millionaire. He calls it the “latte factor”, referring to the cost of a latte coffee. When you see the small habits are costing you over longer periods, you’ll learn to stop wasteful spending and set up automated savings instead. If you save this small amount each week and place it in a savings account, over 5 years you’ll have paid in $10,950. Interest on this will compound over time too.
Escape Rat Race – Big Hat No Cattle
In Texas there’s a saying called big hat no cattle. In the UK there’s a similar one call all mouth no trousers! It means that someone is trying to appear like they are more than they are with expensive clothes/hats/cars/watches etc. Maybe you know someone who is like that!?
In the book Stop Acting Rich, Thomas Stanley explains the the really rich know to avoid spending and build their net worth so they can live more freely. It all starts with where you live. Live in a prestige neighbourhood and you will spend more on everything from your car to your watch. Real millionaires understand that living where their neighbours have less net worth than them naturally leads to spending less. ItÂ’s easier to be rich when keeping up with the Joneses hardly costs anything. Life satisfaction comes not from cruising down the highway in an expensive car, but from having the financial resources to choose to spend time how you please.
Trading Time For Money
Have you borrowed money to get things: house, partner, children, car and so on? Borrowing money creates more debt, which needs to be paid off by training more time in a job. Once you’re trapped in the debt cycle, it’s harder to escape from it and you must keep trading your time for money.
The way out is to eliminate debt, start saving and live below your means.
A good method of escaping the time for money trap is with an online business. In the affiliate marketing business model, anyone can earn money by selling other people’s products and services online. Because this process ultimately can be automated, even your first online sale is a huge step towards escaping the 9 to 5. When you use systems and software to sell online, you can take yourself out of the loop. Instead of training time for money, as in a job, you can use systems and automation to sell products instead to a global audience.