My Family’s Money

I love to see things grow. It releases wave after wave of warm fuzzy chemicals throughout the synapses of my brain. Its like a warm meal on a cold, hungry day. When I see the ah-ah in the face of a child, or the development of a new skill in an athlete, or the rose bush in my father’s back yard bloom – I smile. Its like part of me awakens to life and I want more. I grow insatiable with growth. I want my life to be life where I see as many people grow as I possible can.

And this relates to money, because like other things in my life, I like to see it grow. But then again, who doesn’t. And like everybody else, I am a little afraid of the risks involved with growing money – especially now – when our financial tire is a little thin for the trip were planning. I don’t think my wife and I want to be stuck in the proverbial Yuma on our road to kids, education, and eventual career. Yuma sucks. But then again we could be two of the 3 billion in the world who live on less than $2 a day. Yuma may suck, but Death Valley can kill you (like a ninja would if you knew their actual name).

There are a couple of things that I am thinking about using to help make my money grow.  I don’t have very much experience in any of them, but they do seem like really good ideas at the moment and warrant future research and experimentation.  These money growing ideas are:

• Learn to make money on the internet
• Invest in the stock market
• Invest in real estate

Most of these are pretty much no brainers and are what everyone and their mother do.  I think the angle that I am taking with that might be a little different than most people is to maximize my cash flow as quickly as possible so that I can stop working for food and shelter needs.

So when I learn to make money online it will be to generate a steady stream of cash so that I can accumulate enough cash to start investing in real estate or in the stock market.  These investments will be used to create a positive cash flow now rather than create future wealth.  As such, I will make investments primarily in dividend yielding stocks and rental real estate.

As of today, my needs for cash flow amount to around $2,200 a month.  Once I reach that number I can officially consider myself “retired” and I can start doing only the things that I want to be doing.  That definitely means not going into an office and working for someone else.  I want to be in charge of my own financial destiny and hate being away from my family for 50-60 hours a week.

This process is going to take some time maybe 6-7 years, but once that is over and done with I can sit back, watch my money grow, and spend time doing what I want without having to worry about my family eating.