Are you working for money or is your money working for you? That is a familiar statement to those that read RichDad books. I’ve just finished reading RichDad’s Cashflow Quadrant all over again. It is not my first time of reading the book. But this time around a question really kept ringing in my heart. What kind of Income are you earning? If I stop working now, can I sustain my present level of monthly expenditure?
There are two kinds of income.
Income Earned By Working For Money
This is where most people start from, except you inherited some income generating asset from your parents. It consists of Salaries, Wages etc. The issue here is that you only earn by working. If you don’t work, you don’t earn. Once you stop working the income stops. So, it is not the best source of income. For many small scale entrepreneurs in Nigeria, this is the case.
Income Earned By Your Money Working For You
This refers to income generated from assets you own. Here, you invest in an asset and the asset in return generates passive income for you. Even if you decide not to work again, as long as you have a system in place to manage and maintain those assets the income keeps flowing.
Now that I’m done with the brief definition, let’s get back to my question.
What kind of Income are you earning?
Initially, when I read Cashflow Quadrant, I was congratulating myself that I receive income from different sources. Some are earned by me working while some are from assets that I owned. However, now I am more interested in the percentage of the passive income to the total income.
I sat down and wrote down all the income I earned monthly. I then classified them into Passive Income and Non-passive Income. The analysis was an eye opener. I realized for the first time that even though I was earning passive income, it was less than 10% of my total income. Invariably, I am still in the rat-race. I’m still busy working for money. That means, if I stop working today, I will not be able to sustain my present standard of living. The income from my assets is grossly insufficient to cover my monthly bill.
Since I made that discovery, I’ve been working on a plan to change my strategy. I don’t want to work for money at my old age. I will rather spend my time doing what I really enjoy doing while my money works for me. So, now is the time to start acquiring assets that will generate the volume of income that I desire to earn so as to sustain the kind of lifestyle I want to live.
The Cashflow Quadrant is a great book for small scale entrepreneur to read. I recommend it to my fellow Nigerian Entrepreneurs. It offers some great financial knowledge that would have cost you years to acquire. The paperback edition is readily available in bookshops and is not expensive. Please note that this is not a product review. Now it is your turn to answer the question, What kind of income are you earning? Tell us in a comment. Cheers.
