Three Stages of Money
We have to spend money every day in our whole life, everything costs money. There are three stages in terms of money during everyone’s life.
Stage 1: From 0 to 20 or 25 years old, that is what people call Learning Years. During this stage, you don’t have to worry about money since your parents spend money to provide food, education and entire livelihood to you.
Stage 2: From 20 or 25 to 60 or 65 years old for most people. This stage is called Earning Year. Starting from this stage on, you will have to make money to support yourself, and then your family. People have to deal with money every day regardless they like it or not, and even start worrying about money as it always seems to be insufficient. A few people in this world are able to get rid of their money issues in a relatively short period of time, they are celebrities, like movie and sports stars, business genius, like Steve Jobs type of guys. Some people can even inherit huge wealth from their rich parents. As a result, these guys will never need to worry about money again for the rest of their lives. But if you are one of the 99% populations, you will have to make the living and sometimes worry about money more or less at this stage of your life, and it will last fairly a long time in most chances.
Stage 3: From 60 or 65 years old to the end. Some people call this life stage as Yearning Years. More and more people are believing this stage should be the best time of a person’s whole life. When you reach this stage, you hope you don’t have to worry about money any more. As you have stopped working, voluntary or involuntary, the money from your work stops. You can then get money either from government, which will let you survive, or from your children, if you are lucky, or from your assets, which mean anything that can generate income for you without your physical work, examples are superannuation, investment properties, shares, term deposit savings, managed funds, businesses etc. The preferred choice is obvious because that is the only way of not worrying about money as well as living a life with dignity and respect. You won’t get the true freedom until you’ve reached a point that you are never going to worry about money again.
So for most of us, average human beings, how to get rid of money worry by the time when we reach our 3rd stage of life? The answer is you have to save and invest during your 2nd life stage and keep doing so until the money coming from your assets has grown to a level that can sustain your lifestyle needs, and that is the only way to go, no shortcuts, no lottery wins, as simple as that. It is a journey, if you start early, it will finish early, if you start late, it will finish late, and it might take long, it might feel boring, but the good news is as long as you follow the rules and do it properly, you are guaranteed to succeed. You don’t have to be a high income earner, you don’t have to be smart. All you need is a strong desire, a clear goal, a firm commitment and a little bit patience.