Hollywood boulevard is full of dumb money.
I drove down there when I took a holiday to LA. Loud people on the sidewalk. Even louder car exhausts compensate for below-the-belt inadequacies. In the Hollywood hills up above, even more massive displays of ego.
The residents may as well park chariots out the front of their homes. That’s how loud the flashing of money is when you visit for a sneak peek.
It costs a lot of money to be loud, financially.
You’ve gotta buy a lot chunks of metal on four wheels to look cool, and stay in the dumb money game. It wastes a lot of your free time to chase holy grails from one side of tinsel town to the other.
The real power is when you can avoid the poverty trap of luxury.
Here’s how to achieve wealth in silence and upgrade to freedom sooner.
Don’t become a postcode povvo
In Australia we have a financial god. His name is the Barefoot Investor. The global housing bubble has pissed Barefoot off, where homes have become a financial asset that’s wildly speculated on.
In this new era, those who seek status have to go into loads of debt to get a home in a nice postcode to show off. They look rich but they’re actually povvos (poor).
Your shelter is your greatest expense. The road to quiet wealth is to live below your means. Choose shelter that has less rooms you’ll probably never use, or that’s further from the suburbs where the wannabe rich live.
True wealth is time, not a truckload of debt.
Unlock the 9th wonder of the world
Einstein said the power of compounding — that comes from earning interest on an investment — is the 8th wonder of the world. Young Einstein forgot to mention the 9th wonder of the world. Let me fill you in: passive income.
Passive income is wifi money you earn while you sleep.
You plug in your laptop into the big, scary internet and find a way to earn money.
Options include:
- eCommerce
- Affiliate marketing
- Online courses
- eBooks
- Paid newsletters
- Selling NFTs
- Membership communities
The options are endless. A blind monkey can figure it out thanks to google.
Take your existing skill stack from work and monetize it a second time. If it’s ethical to monetize your skills once at a regular job, why can’t you monetize them a second, third, or fourth time? You can.
Spend a stupid amount of money on this
It’s impossible to build quiet wealth if you ignore your family. Your partner, parents, or kids will scream all day if you ignore them.
Trust me, ask my ex-girlfriend (don’t tell my wife though).
Spend money on experiences. Don’t be a tightarse on buying lattes or making the kids walk 100 miles instead of catching an Uber. Be smart. Spend time doing things you love with the people you love.
Why?
The joy you get will feed back into your quiet wealth machine. More money will come out the other side as a result. You need a reason to make money, or the money-printing factory will grind to a halt.
At the end of your life you won’t remember how much money you banked. All that will come to mind is all the kickass experiences you had.
Hopefully you’ve stacked a lot and don’t feel poor in experiences, cause there’s no going back to take photos at the Grand Canyon when you’re 95 years old with a bad back and a walker.
Invest in rest
Low-energy states lead to frustration.
Once frustration kicks in you’ll say and do dumb stuff when it comes to money. The best thing you can do for your wealth machine is to get a good night’s sleep.
Money hack: Oversleep
More money gets made when sleep refills your energy reserves — money is energy. The greeks taught us a valuable lesson: afternoon naps are good to invest in too.
Invest every time you get paid
I don’t make a once year stock or crypto purchase. Nope. I invest every time I get paid.
A middle-aged taxi driver in Las Vegas reminded me of this. He says to a popular finance Youtuber that at the end of every day he invests $2 in Bitcoin. He knows it’s not a lot of money, but he values the habit more than short-term results.
Quiet wealth is built on good investment habits.
If you don’t invest money you’ll have nothing for the future and get forced to operate on luck, the same drug a gambler ruins their life on.
Change jobs like you change underwear
Quiet wealth comes from growth. If you stand still for too long in your career then your employer will get the advantage of your stagnation.
It’s rare you will get paid more money over time for doing the same job.
But when you change jobs a lot there’s an opportunity each time to ask for more money. That’s why I’ve changed jobs so much in my career. It’s a simple way to perform salary arbitrage and close the gap on out-of-control inflation.
There’s one problem: Promotions are a time trap.
Every upgrade to your job title comes with more work. True wealth isn’t being stuck in a job forever.
Find a job where they leave you the heck alone. Build after hours. Unlock passive income. Let passive income replace active income. Get the F out of there and work on whatever you want with whoever you want.
True wealth reveals your true self
You don’t change after you get rich, you just stop faking who you are — OrangeBook
After I made enough money to quit my job I had an honesty transformation.
For years I didn’t promote certain categories of my writing (like crypto) on LinkedIn out of fear it might cause problems. Or I’d catch up with former work colleagues and have to be careful of what I said in case it affected my chance to get a referral from them for a new job one day.
I had to constantly pretend to be someone I wasn’t to earn the drug of a corporate salary. I was a loyal dog, happy to get on all fours and beg for money treats.
Now I don’t care about any of it.
That’s the power of quiet wealth. It’s not about having a large amount of money. No. It’s about using money as a gateway to owning your time, to create whatever you want and then to call it work.
This article is for informational purposes only, it should not be considered financial, tax or legal advice. Consult a financial professional before making any major financial decisions.
Join my email list with 50K+ people for more helpful insights.
