Part of the rat-race mentality is that people should get hired by a company, work, get paid, retire, and live happily ever after. As long as the employee produces, he/she continues to get paid. If you continue to do a good job, the company will reward you with a promotion and more pay. The goal of the wage-slave is to be looked after by the corporation, hopefully increase his/her standard of living over time, and to retire with a little nest egg and company pension.
Well, don’t get me going on “standard of living,” but aside from that, people are lead to believe that there are no other options. To think otherwise would be “fool-hardy” and “reckless.” “Just work, don’t rock the boat, pay your bills, pay your taxes, pay your debts, and don’t worry about anything. The company will look after you.”
Yeah, that model might have been a person’s only option 30 years ago, but these days, the practice of out-sourcing, contract work, no benefits, and no pension, should be a wake-up call to employees that nothing is secure anymore.
Years ago, a person held a job through retirement and never considered any other options – it was a given. These days, the smart people tend to change jobs often and also rely on more than one source of income. Now, there are still the sticklers that are looking for a lifetime commitment from these companies, but that entitlement attitude tends to be dying out. These days, career savvy people expect to, and are prepared to work for more than one company, and/or have more than one source of income.
“Multiple streams of income” is, by far, the safest and most stable financial model – and also provides an individual with more freedom than the average wage-slave. As opposed to putting your faith in a company to look after you (all your eggs in one basket), this model does not bank the future financial health of an individual on a company’s whims. It provides redundancy and is much more robust than it’s predecessor.
Why, then, do we not all adopt this financial model? Well, it’s harder to get started and is more risky in the early stages. Once it matures, and is allowed to thrive, it will provide a much more stable financial platform.
Most of us are not willing to invest the effort and take the risks that are necessary in the beginning stages of this model. Instead, we trudge through life as a miserable slave to the system and to the decisions of one company.
And companies love this. It means that they have you, to do with as they will, for as long as they see fit. There are no choices here – you have traded your freedom for security and have no one to blame but yourself.
Personally, I am opting for the “multiple income streams” model. I’ll tell you about my plans in my next post.