I continue to have interesting conversations with friends and family around wealth. When friends come to visit our homes, I often get to hear about their careers and they typically ask me to tell the story of how my wife and I became wealthy.
If time permits, I usually tell the story of my career arc from beginning to end and run them through Lori’s story as well. However, this is not helpful if what they really want to know is, “how can I get wealthy too.”
I’ve had so many different careers, that I would need an hour to tell you about all of them. And if you were trying to glean any tips on how to become wealthy, you would undoubtedly arrive at a place where you say to yourself, “that’s an incredible story but not one I could see myself starring in.”
So, these days, if I sense that they are actually interested in wealth tips, I go this route instead.
The question that moves the needle is this one. I ask, where is most of your wealth tied up in? 99% of the time the answer I hear is “my home”. I then typically hear things like, “My spouse and I bought it for $400,000 ten years ago and now it’s worth $900,000.” I say, wow- that’s wonderful, and then innocently ask, was that hard?
This is where I have to lead them a bit as the question perplexes most. I ask, did you hire a realtor? 100% of the time they say “yes”. We then discuss how much time and energy they spent trying to find a house to buy and whether they did most of that work or the realtor did. Most stories do not indicate any real hardship.
I then ask about what they did to come up with the down payment. Answers vary but are usually straight forward, not overly dramatic, or even creative. I then ask how long the escrow was. They typically reply, “It was the standard thirty days”. I then become even more direct, asking “was signing all the paperwork at escrow hard? I mean, did your arm get tired?” Typical response is “no”, with a chuckle.
I then ask them to contrast this effort and time commitment with their actual job. I ask a bunch of questions around how hard they work, how many hours a week, how many years they have been with the same company, and whether it’s hard work?
After getting a varying range of answers from “my job is tough and I work my ass off” to “my job isn’t very difficult but I work really long hours”, I go in for the kill.
So, if you have evidence that your home purchase was relatively easy in comparison to your job AND it brought you the majority of your wealth.........(wait for it).........why haven’t you done it again?
They typically say, “done what again? I reply, buy more real estate! This is typically where I put a bow on the lesson.
That’s how my wife and I became wealthy. We act on the overwhelming evidence the Universe provides us.
