21st Century Academy

In the last post we looked at what Jamie McIntyre had to say about looking at our failures as clues to our current financial status. We introduced the concept of denial, whereby people use excuses like saying that money is not important to them, or that there are more important things in life. A lot of people have a hard time arguing against that, but if you read what Jamie and his millionaire mentor have to say, you start to figure out that yes, indeed, most of us are living in denial of how important having money is to each and every one of us.

More Important Than Money

Jamie McIntyre‘s mentor explained it best:

“You know most people would agree with you that there are other things more important than money. A lot of people say they are not interested in money, but can you guess what the people do who usually say that? They go and work for it because they are just like you Jamie. You go off and work your whole life for money and the whole time you say you are not interested in it. Would you not say that is a classic case of denial?”

No doubt, put that way, you can deny this no less than Jamie could. It is entirely self-defeating to say that you do not care about money, but then allow your entire life to revolve around it.

The beauty is that it really does not have to be this way. You can find a balance in which you can create wealth, make money, and live life—and right the balance so that making money by working your life away does not have to rule your life and times.

Think about it. You may say, and certainly believe, that there are more important things in life; things like family, security, and enjoying life. That is even true. But if you spend the majority of your time chasing the dollar by traditional means, are you really attending fairly to those things? No, you are not. And therein lays the paradox. If money is not the most important thing in life, you have to stop letting it rule yours. Easier said than done? For most people, the answer is yes, until they get a real financial education, an education for life.

To Your Continued Success!
Sean Rasmussen
21st Century Academy
Universal Wealth Creation © 2004 – 2009

By now you are probably getting the point of the last few posts:

If you want to be rich, you have to do things differently. The best way to put this is the way Jamie McIntyre puts it in his book, which is the way his millionaire mentor put it to him:

“…If you want to succeed, you need to figure out what…[most people] are doing and do the exact opposite.”

You’ll notice my edit there—all I did was replace “Australians” with “most people”—because this is a universal message and I wouldn’t want any international readers to think this applied only in Australia. This is as applicable anywhere in the modern world. The statistics and results are really not all that different for any of the wealthy, developed nations.

Doing It Differently

What “most people” do is follow that traditional formula for success; and end up broke, dead broke, or relying on family if they are lucky enough to live beyond a few years past retirement. Does this make any sense?

Certainly not. There’s more to life than this. Life is not just one journey to and from work. It’s an experience worth living!

Stories And Morals

The moral of the story up to here then, is that if you want to live a life outside of the norm, you have to do something different. You have to achieve the real wealth equation:

• Lifestyle = Time + Money

You cannot achieve that through the old formula for success, but you can do it by doing something different—just like what Jamie McIntyre did. Jamie’s formula was a bit more like this:

• Commit to building a better life for you and yours
• Discover what it takes to be different
• Find new paths to wealth that do not rely on time-consuming employment (Get educated!)
• ACT to build wealth and achieve your lifestyle of choice

The key to this is figuring out how to do it differently—precisely what the 21st Century Academy is for. Find out how to do it bigger and better, and live the best possible life that you can live!

To Your Continued Success!
Sean Rasmussen
21st Century Academy
Universal Wealth Creation © 2004 – 2009

In one of the last posts, we talked about the traditional formula for success that most people are following in hopes of becoming wealthy one day. The formula, as you may recall, goes something like this:

· Go to school
· Get a “good” education
· Work approximately 45 years (or more) until you can retire

This is what most people do—we get educated, find a job, and work until around age 65. More likely, as age expectancies continue to climb, you’ll end up working past 65, because you’ll have that many more years to fund beyond retirement.

So let’s see how this success formula works out for us.

Where Will You Be At Age 65?

At age 65, you will fall into one of three categories:

1. Rich. If you are lucky, you will be among the 1% of the population who will be considered “rich.” Odds aren’t with you, though, and really not in your favor at all if you follow the success formula above—that’s not how the rich get here.
2. Financially Independent. The odds are a little better here—you may be one of the small 4% of the population that is able to stop working as planned and maintain a comfortable lifestyle—not a wealthy lifestyle, but you’re able to pay the bills and remain out of the workforce.
3. Dead, Dead Broke, or in Need of Family assistance. These are the options for 96% of the population—the 96 percent who continue to follow the “Formula for Success.” At the age of retirement, the great majority of the population will be either dead, near death (within, say, less than three years), or living on a very fixed income and in need of family assistance.

This all sounds very doomsday, but this is reality. Not as uplifting as most of our posts around here, but this is a stark dose of reality aimed at showing you the path you are heading on, if you continue to follow the traditional route to “wealth.”

Not everyone is following this path, though. Four to five percent of the population has veered off, because they can see where it’s heading. Those are the five percent in the top categories.

Which group do you want to fall into?

To Your Continued Success!
Sean Rasmussen
21st Century Academy
Universal Wealth Creation © 2004 – 2009