Working for money versus money working for you

This is something I started reading about for sometime now. Majority of us got the idea of working for money. But the idea of money working for you is rarely talked about or explored. There is a lot of fear and anxiety when just talking about money. Many avoid it believing it is bad or money comes and goes or it is not worth the arguments and discussion.

Working for money is where you trade your time and energy for an exchange of a salary (whatever amount) at the end of every month. Many believe this is safety and security. No matter what, I have a safety net. Wherever I go or do, I still receive my monthly pay check.

However when you see yourself having expenses, your family is growing, thinking about the future of your kids and having commitments towards the banks or other people, you realize that is only a part of the story. Is it really just working for money, paying for your monthly expenses and wait to repeat the cycle again? For all your life? Until you retire?

On the other hand, money working for you is a whole different scenario. It is where you understand the numbers game, the story behind your numbers and you decide to smartly play it. It includes terms like assets, liabilities, cashflow, profit, income and expenses.

Examples of assets that produce income and profit are rental properties, gold and silver and company shares and stocks. With the generosity of the internet, you can easily read about them and discover what people have done in that arena to improve their financial wellbeing.

Surprisingly this is not taught in schools and colleges and majority of graduates complete their education with only one idea which is finding a job and work for money. To grasp this idea, you got to find the books yourself and self-educate. Examples of books are rich dad poor dad (by Robert Kiyosaki), build a rental property empire (by Mark Ferguson), ABCs of real estate investing (by Ken McElroy) and Brandon Turner books as well.

At the end, to create a context in your mind, it is better you start listening to podcasts like rich dad channel or bigger pocket podcast to create your foundation or basics before jumping directly to the investing books. So that you become aware how did we reach this stage, how did the idea of working for money started and what you can do next to escape this addictive cycle.