Chapter 7: Misuse Money and Money Will Misuse You - The Millionaire Fastlane

CHAPTER 7: MISUSE MONEY AND MONEY WILL MISUSE YOU

Money can't buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you're being miserable.
~ Clare Boothe Luce

IF Money Doesn't Buy Happiness … Does Poverty?

People who declare, “Money doesn't buy happiness” have already concluded they will never have money. This old equivocation becomes the torchbearer to their poorness. And since money doesn't buy happiness, why save it? And then logic begs, if money doesn't buy happiness, does poverty? Does the guy who owns a Ferrari automatically have a small penis while the guy behind the wheel of a Honda must be well hung?

Go to Google and search the phrase “Money doesn't buy happiness.” Page after page concludes that money has no bearing on happiness. Should you be shocked that a Connecticut businessman earning a six-figure salary might be unhappier than a cattle-herder in Kenya? Absolutely not.

That fact is, these analyses fall short because they don't isolate the real thief of happiness: servitude, the antithesis of freedom. The irony is that when most people earn “more money,” it doesn't add freedom, it detracts. By creating Lifestyle Servitude, more money becomes destructive to the wealth trinity: family, fitness, and freedom.

According to Creighton University's Center for Marriage and Family, debt is the leading cause of strife for the newly married. Debt and Lifestyle Servitude keeps people bound to work and unbound to relationships.

A 2003 World Value Survey (worldvaluessurvey.com) found that the happiest people in the world have a tight sense of community and strong family bonds. After basic needs are met (security, shelter, health, food), our happiness quotient is most significantly impacted by the quality of our relationships with our partners, our family, our friends, our spirituality, and ourselves.

If we are too busy chasing the next greatest gadget to strike down the competitive opulence of the Joneses, we finance our misery. The World Value Survey concluded that “consumerism” is the leading obstacle to happiness.

The fact is, there are many millionaires and well paid career folks who are absolutely miserable, and it has nothing to do with the money. It has to do with their freedom. Money owns them, instead of them owning their money. The well salaried workaholic who is never home to strengthen the relationship with his wife and kids is likely to be less happier than the poor farmer in Thailand who spends half his day tending to his fields and the other half with his family.

In 2009, the popular American talk show host David Letterman went public with an extortion plot by a producer from another CBS show. The men who perpetrated the alleged $2 million blackmail scam reportedly earned $214,000 a year. Yet the man claimed to be in severe financial ruin, partly due to spousal alimony payments of nearly $6,000 per month. Was this extortionist trying to blackmail a celebrity because he wanted to “buy happiness?” What was his real motive? I contend that he was trying to buy freedom because his debts kept him contained in servitude. Would $2 million have made a difference? Perhaps in the short term, but not in the long term because his relationship with money was already corrupted. A source close to the investigation said, “He just didn't want to work anymore.” In other words, he craved freedom.

Normalcy Is the Rat Race, a Modern-Day Slavery

Why am I wealthy, versus the guy stuck in morning traffic driving to work? I have freedom. I wake up and do what I want. I pursue dreams. I write this book without worrying about how many will sell. I hop a plane to Las Vegas for two weeks without worrying about jobs, bosses, or unpaid electric bills. Freedom is fantastic.

Yet my lifestyle is not “normal.” Like wealth, society, through its “Get Rich Slow” mandates, has defined “normal” for you. Normal is waking at 6 a.m., fighting traffic, and working eight hours. Normal is to slave at a job Monday through Friday, save 10%, and repeat for 50 years. Normal is to buy everything on credit. Normal is to believe the illusion that the stock market will make you rich. Normal is to believe that a faster car and a bigger house will make you happy. You're conditioned to accept normal based on society's already corrupted definition of wealth, and because of it, normal itself is corrupted. Normal is modern-day slavery.

I'm amazed that most people perilously operate one crisis away from financial ruin. We have become a nation of undisciplined spenders and consumers. We have become a nation where unfettered spending and material extravagance write our obituaries in the ink of stress. If you're held hostage to your lifestyle, you aren't wealthy, because you lack freedom.

The Proper Use of Money

Money doesn't buy happiness when it's misused. Instead of money buying freedom, it buys bondage. “Wealth” and “happiness” are interchangeable, but only if your definition of wealth hasn't been corrupted by society's definition. Society says wealth is “stuff,” and because of this faulty definition, the bridge between wealth and happiness collapses.

When you don't feel wealthy, you're likely to try to conjure that feeling. You buy icons of wealth to feel wealthy. You crave feelings, respect, pride, and joy. You want admiration, love, and acceptance. And what are these feelings supposed to do for you? You expect deliverance into happiness. You want to be happy!

And that's the bait. We equate the corrupted definition of wealth with happiness, and when it doesn't deliver, expectations are violated and unhappiness is the consequence.

Used properly, money buys freedom, and freedom is one parcel in the wealth trinity. Freedom buys choices. The fact is, there are plenty of poor people who live richer than their overworked upper-middle-class counterparts because the latter lack freedom, they lack solid relationships, and they lack health-all deleterious effects of working a hated job five days a week for 50 years.

Money secures one agent of the wealth formula, freedom, which is a powerful guardian to wealth's sibling ingredients: health and relationships.

• Money buys the freedom to watch your kids grow up.
• Money buys the freedom to pursue your craziest dreams.
• Money buys the freedom to make a difference in the world.
• Money buys the freedom to build and strengthen relationships.
• Money buys the freedom to do what you love, with financial validation removed from the equation.

Are any of the above likely to make you happy? I bet they will. They certainly won't make you unhappy.

Lifestyle Servitude: The Trap of the Sidewalk

Sidewalkers are embroiled in Lifestyle Servitude, where life is forced into a rat race, a constant tug-of-war between lifestyle extravagances and work, a self perpetuating merry-go-round of work for income, income for lifestyle, and lifestyle for work. Wherever there's Lifestyle Servitude, there's a systematic erosion of freedom.

1. Work creates income.
2. Income creates lifestyle/debt (cars, boats, designer clothes).
3. Lifestyle/debt forces work.
4. Repeat …

I learned about Lifestyle Servitude in my early 20s. After college graduation, I took a hellacious job as a construction laborer in Chicago and fought city traffic daily. The pay was more than I had ever earned at my young age, and with my increase in income, I felt wealthy. So what did I do? I elevated my lifestyle and financed the illusion of wealth. I bought my first sports car, a Mitsubishi 3000GT.

It didn't take long for me to realize that my dream car wasn't an icon of wealth, but a parasite that fed on my freedom. I hated my job, it was stressful, and it drained my energy, leaving my entrepreneurial dreams tethered. I couldn't quit. I had responsibilities: car payments, gas, and insurance. Because of my obligations to “stuff,” I had sentenced myself to imprisonment in a job I loathed.

Yet, this type of servitude is normal. We're taught to strive for the latest and greatest regardless of consequence. It leaves us indentured for years, condemning us to lifestyle imprisonment… and the more stuff you buy that you can't afford, the longer your jail sentence becomes.

If You Think You Can Afford It -You Can't

Think about the last time you bought a pack of gum. Did you fret over the price? Did you ask, “Hmmm, can I afford this?” Probably not. You bought the gum and it's done. The purchase had no impact on your lifestyle or your future choices. To a rich man who walks into a dealership and buys a six-figure Bentley without thought, the acts are the same. Affordability is when you don't have to think about it. If you have to think about “affordability,” you can't afford it because affordability carries conditions and consequences.

If you buy a boat and resort to mental gymnastics over affordability, YOU CAN'T AFFORD IT. Sure you can assuage affordability and make outlandish arguments, often starting with…

“I can afford this as long as …
… I get that promotion.”
… my mortgage doesn't adjust.”
… my stock portfolio makes another 10% this month!”
… my sales forecasts are double.”
… my wife finds a job.”
… I cancel my health insurance.”

This self-talk is a warning that you can't afford it. Affordability doesn't come with strings attached. You can bluff yourself but you can't bluff the consequences.

So how do you know if you can afford it? If you pay cash and your lifestyle doesn't change regardless of future circumstances, you can afford it. In other words, if you buy a boat, pay cash, and are NOT be affected by unexpected “bumps in the road,” you can afford it. Would you regret a gum purchase if you lost your job a week later? Or if your sales forecast was slashed by 50%? Nope, it wouldn't make a difference. This is how affordability is measured against your level of wealth.

To overcome wealth impersonation, know what you can and can't afford. There is nothing wrong with buying boats and Lamborghinis if you can truly afford them. There is a time and a place to indulge. The Millionaire Fastlane is designed to bring you to that place.

The Bait of Lifestyle Servitude

The siren call of Lifestyle Servitude is the false prophet of feel-good-instant gratification and immediate pleasure. Wouldn't it be nice if everything that felt good were good? Chocolate? That super-sized fast-food combo meal? Sunbathing? Smoking? Unfortunately, short-term feel-good is often long-term bad. Instant gratification is a populous plague and its predominant side effects are easily spotted: debt and obesity.

Many Americans are fat because the easiest (and cheapest) instant gratification comes from food. When you plop your butt on the recliner and maul through a can of Pringles, you choose pleasure now in lieu of pain later. If you live with your parents and you finance $45,000 over 72 months for a new Mustang based on a$31,000-a-year bartender's wage, you let instant gratification win, and Lifestyle Servitude ensues.

Wealth, like health, isn't easy and is cut from the same fabric. Their processes are identical. They require discipline, sacrifice, persistence, commitment, and yes, delayed gratification. If you can't immunize yourself from the temptations of instant gratification, you'll be hard pressed to find success in either health or wealth. Both demand a lifestyle shift from short-term thinking (instant gratification) to long-term thinking (delayed gratification). This is the only defense to Lifestyle Servitude.

Look for the Hook!

Instant gratification is the bait and Lifestyle Servitude is the hook. The advertising industry is on a great fishing expedition, and their goal is to hook you. Their juicy bait? That shiny new car, the bigger house, the designer clothes, the “got-to-have-it now” product. Every day you are bombarded with instant gratification's bait …

“You can't survive life without this product!”
“Buy now and life will be so much easier!”
“You are not a success until you own one of these!”
“Imagine how envious the neighbors will be when you buy this!”

These messages share one commonality: You're their prey and the peddlers don't care if you can afford it or not. Defend yourself by exposing the hook beneath the bait: the bucket of bondage which is Lifestyle Servitude.

When instant gratification entices you to bite the bait, you become a casualty of the hook: Lifestyle Servitude. Instead of you owning your stuff, your stuff owns you. Know wealth's enemies and what actions invite those enemies into your life. Wait until you can truly afford your lifestyle luxuries … and in the Fastlane, that day can come sooner rather than later.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions

• Money doesn't buy happiness because money is used for consumer pursuits destructive to freedom. Anything destructive to freedom is destructive to the wealth trinity.
• Money, properly used, can buy freedom, which can lead to happiness.
• Happiness stems from good health, freedom, and strong interpersonal relationships, not necessarily money.
• Lifestyle Servitude steals freedom, and what steals freedom, steals wealth.
• If you think you can afford it, you can't.
• The consequence of instant gratification is the destruction of freedom, health, and choice.