3089: The Long Game Always Wins by Kevin of Financial Panther on Money Goals and Freedom

[00:00:00] Have you ever noticed how a calm mind can really set the stage for a good night's sleep? That's the idea behind our new podcast, Good Sleep. Greg, our host from Optimal Relationships Daily, is here to help ease you into a peaceful night's rest with some positive affirmations. And these affirmations aren't just comforting. They can help ease anxiety and nurture positive thoughts, setting you up for true good sleep.

[00:00:25] So press play on Good Sleep Tonight, because a good tomorrow starts with a good night's sleep. Just search for Good Sleep in your podcast app and be sure to pick the one from Optimal Living Daily. This is Optimal Finance Daily. The Long Game Always Wins by Kevin of FinancialPanther.com.

[00:00:50] There's an interesting truth that I think applies to everyone. If you give yourself enough time, you can achieve almost anything. As simple as that sounds, though, the reality isn't so simple. For many of us, time is a luxury we don't have. Sometimes it's on us. We lack patience and we want things to happen fast. And when they don't happen fast, we give up.

[00:01:17] We live in a world built on instant gratification. There's no shortage of people out there willing to sell you on the belief that big things can happen for you quickly. Other times, it's about the fact that we can't afford to give ourselves the time to achieve something. Practical realities might get in our way.

[00:01:38] We have family obligations. We have bills. We have a life to live and only limited time and resources that we can dedicate to other things. Like it or not, time is the secret recipe for success. Big things don't happen in days or months. They happen over years and decades.

[00:02:00] Give yourself enough time and decades. Give yourself enough time and you're almost guaranteed to make it. The question is, how much time are you willing to give yourself? The more of it you can give yourself, the better your chances are that you'll achieve whatever it is you're trying to achieve.

[00:02:18] The long game wins when it comes to money. When it comes to money, time is undoubtedly your friend. Give money enough time and it can grow to astounding amounts. Now, most of us don't have a thousand years to let our money grow. But what most of us do have is decades to let time work for us.

[00:02:42] If you start saving some money right now and you keep doing it for a long time, you're going to find yourself with a surprising pile of money. Interestingly, it doesn't take much money if you give yourself enough time. You might be surprised to discover that you only have to save about $30 per day to become a millionaire in 30 years.

[00:03:06] $30 per day isn't that much money. It's $10,950 per year. It's not chump change by any means, but it's money that most people can save if they try. And if you can't save that much from your existing income, you probably can figure out a way to earn an extra $30 per day doing something. I call this the reverse latte factor.

[00:03:32] $30 per day might not seem like much money, but 30 years is a long time to do anything. Most people won't think about money in that time frame. They think of it in terms of years or even months. They want those big returns, not in 30 years, but right now. Everyone wants to get rich quickly. But unfortunately, that's not the way you win the money game. I've always opted to play the long game when it comes to money.

[00:04:02] No, my investments won't make me rich tomorrow, but with time, I'll probably do all right. In fact, I'm almost guaranteed it. When it comes to money, you'll always win if you play the long game. The long game wins when it comes to success. Just like the long game lets you win with money, the long game also puts you in a position where you can almost guarantee some level of success at whatever it is you want to do.

[00:04:31] I started this blog as a side hustle over five years ago. If anything, it was barely a side hustle. It was really more of a passion project. I enjoyed writing and felt like I had ideas and a story to share. For years, this blog didn't earn much. Enough for me to cover my blog expenses, but that was basically it. It wasn't until three or four years into my blogging journey that I started to see something bigger.

[00:04:57] Not a huge amount to make me rich or anything, but enough that I could at least support my lifestyle. Spending over five years doing anything is as close to a guaranteed recipe for success as you can get in our world. I expect that if I spend another five years on this little blog of mine, things can only go up. It's not easy though. Every single day, I'm reading, writing, researching, and thinking of things that I can write about.

[00:05:26] The thing is, if you can put that much work into the world, it's hard to imagine something doesn't start to happen. The problem for most people comes down to a practical one. Do you have the resources and the patience to keep going until you start to see success? Five years is a long time to do anything, especially if you have a job and bills and a family and other things to worry about.

[00:05:52] I think you need two things if you want the long game to work for you in this area. The first is passion. If you do something you don't care about, you'll never stick it out. And the work you put out into the world will show your lack of passion too. Second, you need resources. Whether that's a day job, another side hustle that can create an income floor for you, or a working spouse that's able to support your family,

[00:06:19] you're going to need something to pay the bills while you continue to build or reach towards whatever goal you're chasing. Resources seem like a difficult thing to deal with, and it is. But it's also something that you can deal with. You can save a lot early on and reach financial independence. Then you can literally do anything. Or you can reach coast fire or barista fire, and suddenly you don't need to earn as much money to live.

[00:06:47] You have more options than you think. Compounding works with everything. A lot of people think of compounding as something that only applies to money and numbers. But in fact, compounding applies to everything we do in our lives. Every decision we make, every action we take, all of it ripples down over time. The small things add up.

[00:07:12] The work I do on this blog has a bigger impact than it did when I first started. It didn't happen overnight. I've written hundreds of thousands of words over the years. I may have written a million words for all I know. Each word I write is me building on my craft. There's no doubt in my mind that I'm a better writer and blogger now than I was five years ago. But it didn't happen overnight. It was a slow trickle.

[00:07:40] Something that happened because of the small amount of work I did every single day. Most people don't understand this. They start something and expect that they should be good at it from the beginning. Or worse yet, they decide they suck at it and quit before even giving themselves a chance to get better. Quitting is fine. We sometimes have to quit. But quitting because you suck at something shouldn't be the reason. The truth is, we're all terrible when we start.

[00:08:08] It takes time, practice, and a lot of the compound effect until we start to become good at whatever it is we're doing. Time is on your side, but you have to do something. Time is on our side. But the funny thing is, it can work against us too. Because for many people, the long game ends up being about inaction. So many of us say we want to do something. We tell ourselves we have ideas. We say we want to make a difference.

[00:08:38] But then, we never act. We let fear hold us back. We keep waiting and waiting for that perfect moment. Eventually, the years pass by and we've done nothing. I'm guilty of it too. I have a lot of ideas and things I want to do. But somehow, I never get going on them. Here's something for you to know. There is never going to be the perfect moment.

[00:09:05] Whatever moment you're in, start doing something, even if it's just a little bit to get started. Start saving some money today, even if it's just a few dollars. If you want to create something, start creating now. Let your skills develop. Think in terms of years and decades, not in months. The long game will work for you. You just have to take advantage of it.

[00:09:34] You just listened to the post titled The long game always wins by Kevin of financialpanther.com ServiceNow unterstützt Ihre Business Transformation mit der KI-Plattform. Alle reden über KI, aber die KI ist nur so leistungsfähig wie die Plattform, auf der sie aufbaut. Lassen Sie die KI arbeiten, für alle. Beseitigen Sie Reibung und Frustration Ihrer Mitarbeiter und nutzen Sie das volle Potenzial Ihrer Entwickler. Mit intelligenten Tools für Ihren Service, um Kunden zu begeistern.

[00:10:03] All das auf einer einzigen Plattform. Deshalb funktioniert die Welt mit ServiceNow. Mehr auf ServiceNow.de slash AI for People. This article reminds me of a quote from Ryder Carroll, who created the bullet journal system. He says, quote, The long way is the short way. In a cut and paste world that celebrates speed, we often mistake convenience for efficiency.

[00:10:29] When we take shortcuts, we forfeit opportunities to slow down and think. End quote. I can see the truth of what Kevin is saying in this article and the time it's taking me to build the Economy Conference, which is an event I produce. I started working on it in the summer of 2018 and held my first event in 2020 where I took a $40,000 loss.

[00:10:55] Thankfully, I didn't have to take on any debt for this loss and I could just cash flow it out of my 60% savings rate for my W-2 employment. I now consider this loss an investment in the business. I think I've had a huge advantage in building this business because I've had the financial capacity to take a big loss and to work on this for five years before ever seeing any profit.

[00:11:21] So I wholeheartedly agree with Kevin that you need to have the resources to be able to chase your dream. And I did this by saving a large percentage of my income during my peak earning years and keeping my expenses really low. My belief in the mission and desire to create something I'm really proud of has allowed me to have no regrets, even if it was never profitable. I know there are plenty of other things I can do to make money.

[00:11:51] And so relieving that pressure that economy has to pay my bills has ironically put me in the position where economy will likely pay my bills someday. Like Kevin, it started as a passion project and it's taken me a while to stop seeing it as a hobby and start seeing it as a real business that has the potential to make a tremendous impact.

[00:12:14] So if you have something you want to create, start stockpiling your resources now so that you can give your dream the gift of time. That should do it for another edition of Optimal Finance Daily. Have a great rest of your day and I'll see you on the Sunday show tomorrow where your optimal life awaits. Chris C Robert Resefsバ alrightえ