There's No Rush to Riches

​It’s a dream of us all to wake up one day and see our bank accounts flooded with a huge amount of money, to see our investment account overflowing with profit. Ah, wouldn’t it be nice to sit on a fat stack and not have to worry about paying the  bills?

Of course, last week, we talked about how “being rich” is all perspective. There are many riches you have in life that you may be taking for granted. You may be sitting on a “fat stack” of awesome friendships that someone with all the money in the world could never attain. Look around you and see how rich you already are.

Sure, the idea of driving a mercedes and owning a huge mansion may appear rich to you, but having something as simple as running water may appear rich to someone living out in a tent in the desert. One thing a man takes for granted is the exact thing another man desires. There are aspects in your life that are very much desirable, things in which you completely ignore or otherwise take for granted.

You have to appreciate what you do have, for all its worth. Getting more (money, fame, or whatever) is not the solution to obtaining  happiness, but being at peace with having “enough” is. You’ll never be satisfied with “enough” wealth in money if wealth in money is what you seek. You’ll always crave more and more no matter what the number is in your portfolio, as long as your happiness is reliant on seeing that number climb ever higher.

There’s always a larger number and thus, always a reason to not be satisfied with what you already own. Strive to be lazy. Strive to be good enough. 

Having enough, feeling as if what you have is indeed enough, will allow you to feel self fulfillment. It will allow you to live life and not just exist to splurge on materialism.

Plus, there are things that are not monetary in value that can “build your wealth”, things such as deep meaningful relationships with those you care about and inner peace. They are precious beyond the material world.

But today, I want to talk about “getting rich” in financial terms. Once you have accepted that what you have is indeed enough, it’s okay to want to level up your money situation. It’s okay to want more without obsessing over it.

There is a difference between making a living and actually living. Your priority should not so much be determined about a dollar sign, but of something deeper and far superior. Real values, not materialistic ones.

You must first come to terms with being poor. If you’re happy (financially) poor, you can be happy (financially) rich. Thing is, money won’t bring about happiness into your life. You can’t expect it to. It won’t happen.

Once you’ve accepted that you’re not rich in money and that becoming so won’t lead to happiness, you can then take (slow n’ steady) steps towards actually increasing your personal wealth, which we’ll get to.

Money becomes a part of life instead of the focus of it, and that’s the mentality you want to achieve. “It would be nice to have, but I don’t need it and it’s no big deal if I don’t get it.”

You must fully come to grips with the fact that money doesn’t solve your own lack of happiness. Never has, never will. Happiness, to achieve that, all comes from within. Achieve satisfaction first, then get money, not the other way around. Remember no matter what that number is in your bank, seeing it any higher can’t and won’t make you any happier.

Besides, it’s a hell of a lot lazier to be satisfied with just sitting there (with very little assets) than to work your ass off trying to achieve a large sum of wealth.

Now with all that said, let’s say you’re ready to “get rich”. You’re cool with being poor and agree that more money would “certainly be nice.”

You come here to this blog looking for a way to strike it rich real quick.
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Well, I want to hand it to you straight: you ain’t gonna get rich quick. Not here. Not anywhere.  I don’t have a way. No one does. And anyone that claims you can  is full of shit.

I swear if you come across another blog claiming they have a “super secret way” to get rich FAST, they’re probably trying to pull you into some sort of ponzi scheme or collect some sort of information for identity theft. Either way, seeing someone claim that “you can get quick” should be a red flag.

I mean, really, think about it. If it was so EASY to make millions really really QUICKLY, we’d all be doing it. And no, there is no “secret formula” or whatever. And if there was, it’s very doubtful these people would be willing to share it publicly, yet alone sell it.

Reall. C’mon now. If they have this “get rich quick formula” why not just use that formula instead of trying to sell it to people? Like, they already have the money, right?

Something smells like bullshit.

In reality, in order to get rich quick, it’s either gotta be something extremely lucky or extremely illegal.

So unless you manage to win the lottery or successfully pull off a big bank heist, you’re looking at a method in which J.D. Roth likes to dub “Get Rich Slowly.”


See, the fact of the matter is, it may be nearly impossible, it’s quite rare, to get rich quickly, but getting rich (again, in terms of finances) can happen over a long period of time, it can happen... slowly. Eventually. The way of a ProcrastiN8r.

You know what they say, rich people STAY rich. And it’s not because they’re working their asses off day in and day out, something which we’re led to believe is the key to their financial success, oh no!

Rich people stay rich because they let their money make money for them

Unless of course, they wind up blowing it on cocaine and hookers, most people who reach millionaire status, stay that way.

That’s because they understand the basic lazy principle of “don’t work for money; let money work for you.”

I mean do you think rich people slave away all day at doing tedious tasks?

Hell to the NO. I mean that’s why they hire butlers and maids (and not to mention minimum wage workers) to take care of that shit for them. They sit on their lazy asses and profit.

They make money passively. They make money easily. They make money by choosing to put it in the right places.

See, getting rich (and staying that way)  is not so much about hoarding dollar bills under your bed (or working hard for  that matter). That actually doesn’t gain you any wealth. If anything, it makes you poorer.

A thousand bucks under your bed will be a thousand bucks ten years from now. Aaaand if you account for inflation, the amount of money you hide under your bed will be worth significantly less. I mean it’ll still be a thousand bucks don’t get me wrong, but the amount of buying power a thousand dollars will have in the future is significantly less than it is today.

So when we talk about getting rich slowly, we’re talking about slowly accumulating wealth over time and having that wealth you do manage to save actually grow (beyond inflation).
Otherwise, it’s really not growing at all, and you’re just as poor as you were yesteryear.

Inflation is of course the increase of prices on shit. Inflation is the reason you hear grandpa say “Back in my day, you could get a loaf of bread and a liter of soda for a nickel!”

When getting rich slowly, you have to account for inflation. In other words, your wealth has to gain more value than shit will cost in the future.

So uhh...just save money? 

With that said, you may just jump to the conclusion “Oh, well if I just save money  in my savings account, I can get rich eventually!”

Well, yeah...and no

The goal is not to save money but to accumulate wealth. 

Saving money is an important part of “getting rich slowly”, as we’ll get to, but it’s sort of just the bread and butter.

The meat and potatoes of this whole slowly but surely wealth growing process we’re talking about is investing. Investing is putting your money in the right places so your money continues to make you even more money!

But before we take a deeper look into that, let’s first talk about why saving money is not your direct pathway to getting rich.

See, just like putting money under your bed, by putting it in a saving account, your buying power will be less in the future than it is today.

The interest rate of a savings account is usually less than 1%, whereas the inflation rate is usually closer to 2%. 

Damn. I know. Maths. I hated math class too. So I’ll try and keep it simple. In layman’s terms, your money ain’t worth shit in a savings account.

What that also means is that you’re going to have to aim to surpass the rate of inflation and then some if you want your wealth to actually GROW. You’re going to have to put that money (in the right places, the right assets) where the returns exceed the inflation rate and you can thus, actually freaking profit.

In a nut shell, you have to understand that “saving” money does not increase your wealth. That sounds kinda screwy and probably completely contrary to everything you ever been taught about money. I’m sure your parents and your parents’ parents always gave you some sort of advice to “save your money”.

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But the fact is, in real finances, ”saving money” is LOSING money to inflation.

That’s where investing comes in.

Benjamin Franklin once said “a penny saved is a penny earned” But he was WRONG!
A penny INVESTED is a dollar earned. 

Now before I go further, I need to clarify something important, I am no financial expert. I’m just a dude who happened to learn a thing or two about money. I’m not offering you any sort of advice or anything. I’m just telling you what I learned. Just throwing this here as a little disclaimer. Take what I say with a grain of salt.

Anyway, we’re going to talk about investing a bit but there’s something you have to take care of first before we even think of opening an investment account.

Have ZERO Money

This is the biggest, most crucial (slow n’ steady) step you must take towards becoming rich slowly.

Right off the bat, having “zero dollars” doesn’t seem like something you’d ever want. I mean certainly you want MORE than zero dollars, a lot more.

But you can’t start making millions, yet alone positive numbers if you don’t first reach zero.

As crazy as it sounds, having the net worth of ZERO DOLLARS is actually quite an accomplishment. Most people are in some sort of debt, whether that’s student debt, mortgage debt, health insurance debt, credit card debt, whatever sort of debt, people owe money to someone else.

And what is debt?
Negative money.
And having negative money means your wealth can’t go up. It’s stuck going down...until you pay it off.

Having zero dollars doesn’t mean you're broke. Being in debt means you're broke!

You can’t gain wealth if you don’t have any wealth.

A lot of these debts have such high interest rates, especially something like a credit card debt which has a whopping 25-30% interest rate on average, sometimes up to 40% depending on the card.

Since in order to get rich slowly you have to have your money work for you by growing over time, you’d need to make investments that exceed those high interest rates.

Frankly, unless you’re some sort of suave expert stockbroker, that ain’t happening. The average stock market interest is 7%. So in other words, you’re better off paying off the debt FIRST then investing.



Debt is not only slowing you down in getting rich, it’s actually backtracking you. The way interest works, the higher the debt is, the faster it accumulates, quite the reverse formula of growing your wealth.

Every dollar you invest in something that pays lower interest than your debt cost or worse, every dollar you spend on something pointless is going to set you back and keep you in the negatives for much, much longer than you really need to be. 

Aim for zero money! After all, you can’t start getting rich if you owe money to somebody.

You want to have money not IOU notes.

Now we could probably chatter on and on about how exactly to go about paying off debts and which ones to focus on first, but for the purposes of this article, we’ll keep it short for now. That’s another topic for another day. INB4 “I’ll do it tomorrow”.

The takeaway here, is that in order to build wealth you have to be at ground zero before going up.

Okay so we got the fact that your debt needs to be eliminated first and foremost, the next step is to start investing.

Now I know that might sound intimidating, but believe me, you don’t need to be any sort of financial guru to make a profit in the stock market. As a matter of fact...

Be BORING with your investments

There’s this idea that in order to “strike it rich” with investments, you’ve gotta make some smart moves with your portfolio. You’ve gotta trade the right thing at the right time.

But I want to introduce a little strategy to you, that works along the same vein of getting rich slowly called “Buy and hold”, or as the cryptonerds like to call it “HODL”.

It’s basically putting your money into something and keeping it there, without touching it, or without, god forbid, day trading.

Look, I’m lazy. I don’t want to sit there and trade stocks all day. I want to make money from the stock market and not have to fumble around trading back and forth for hours on end. I want to profit without much work. 



So what I recommend (again, my total non-expert dude opinion) is to invest in stocks you know are going to be around.

How do you know they’ll be around (and make a profit)? Well, you can start by looking around. What’s in your house? What products are you using?

Some of my favorite companies to invest in include Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson, McCormick (spices) and McDonald’s. Why? Well, these are companies that have been around. They have their product and it works.

Yeah, they’re quote on quote “boring” but who gives af? They’re profitable and if the goal here is to make profit in the stock market then cha-ching baby! Invest in that shit.

Everyone wants to buy “the next Apple.” Ya know, the startup company with cheap stocks that makes it big.

But why not just...buy Apple?

Being profitable in the stock market doesn’t mean making the right guesses. It means sticking to what you know. Sure, some people get lucky with their bets on small companies.  Some people don’t.

It’s all a gamble, really. I suppose you have better chances winning a wall street bet then you do at winning the lottery, but still.

It’s much better to invest in companies you’re familiar with. Look at the companies you purchase products from and start form there.

Plus, a lot of these “boring” companies offer what’s called dividends and dividends are basically profit the company makes and shares with you (hence why they call it a “share”, as you literally “share” ownership of the company,, a small fraction of it). It’s nothing huge, but it does add up. That on top of the interest (in share price increase) you’ll be earning makes for an easy steady way to make it rich.

I recommend using Robinhood for purchasing stock and crypto too. It’s a pretty easy app. Not a lot of the fancy schmancy features of some of the other brokers, but if you want simple and you want lazy, this is where it’s at.  Plus, it's fee FREE (a lot of brokers charge some sort of trading fee which can be quite a steep entrance fee to get started but Robinhood eliminates that shit) If you want, you can use my referral link and get a free stock once you sign up.
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Save a little bit

Now I know I mentioned earlier that saving money doesn’t actually earn you wealth, but when you look at wreath you look at the ability to be comfortable financially, and one of the things that would make me feel comfortable, and I’m sure you can agree with this, is being able to cover my ass when shti hits this fan.

You have to have some savings. Now most of your assets are going to be stored in stocks so you can make it to retirement (the permanent vacation, baby!) but you need some sort of funds that are immediately available, something not held behind any sort of trading delay or anything.

You need a “in case of emergency” fund.

Like what if there is...I don’t know? A global pandemic! 
You have to be able to financially keep yourself afloat.

Some people recommend having up to 6 months worth of living expenses tucked away in this sort of emergency fund.

After over a year of this corona-pocalypse, I’d reckon that 6 months isn’t enough quite frankly. You need more like an entire year’s worth of income saved up.

That said, you don’t want your savings to be your focus. Ideally, you want to build wealth as much as possible.So when it comes to allocating where you put your money, put a small percentage (maybe 1 or 2%) of your total income into savings and have between 30 and 50% dedicated to your investments, depending on your cost of living (rent, bills, etc.)

As you can see, we’re getting into budgeting now. I’m not going to get too overly detailed here, but you should have a plan of where you decide to put your money and stick to it.

You should be aware of just what exactly is going on with your money. Rich people account for every cent and that’s part of how they get rich. 

They don’t make impulse purchases. They spend frugally and budget efficiently. They’re not surprised when they look at their bank statement like you are. Like “OMG how do I only have 4 dollars in my account!?”

The better you are at being decisive with you’re money, the easier it will be to have it grow.

You can’t become rich if you have no idea what your money is doing or where it’s going.

Procrastinate with purpose. Grow rich with purpose.

Let your Money Procrastinate

Don’t look at it. Don’t touch it. Don’t bother it.

And most certainly DON’T SPEND IT!

Spending digs you in deeper debt because instead of either paying off said debt or adding to your investment wealth, you’re throwing it away. Now I ain’t sayin don’t spend at all, but do so sparingly.  Be the cheap lazy bastard that you are.

You may be tempted to check up on your account, but DON’T. 
Set it and forget it. HODL.

When it comes to the stock market, there’s spikes, there’s crashes, there’s surges and downfalls.

Watching the stock market is like watching the weather form the window. It’s going to change every day.

Thing is, over time, a long period of slow ass time, it WILL go up. Historically, it’s been proven.

We’ve had the Great Depression. We’ve had COVID-19. We’ve had a lot of SHIT. And still, to this day, the stock market continues to climb.

It does of course fall for a bit, but the overall trend is upwards. And that’s what you’ve got to keep in mind.

You can’t panic when you see news headlines of “THE STOCK MARKET HAS CRASHED!”

Don’t invest with your emotions. Invest with your money.

 Leave it alone and let it grow.

Remember, there’s no rush to building your wealth and making it rich. You’ll get there…eventually.









Take it easy,

N8
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