I’m not interested in shaming anyone, especially when it comes to money matters. However, the stark truth about your net worth is that it’s proportionately related to what you believe you’re capable of. It’s astonishing how much of our financial landscape is dictated by our inner landscape.
What is net worth? Net worth is defined as: your assets minus your liabilities. There are different types of assets and we won’t dive down the rabbit hole on this one, but from a broad perspective, the net worth question is this: do you owe more than you own? If yes, you have a negative net worth; if no, it’s positive.
And while I don’t concern myself too much with net worth numbers (they are constantly changing anyhow — your car will be worth less in two months than it is today), it is an interesting gauge of your self-worth. Hackles up? Let me put you at ease.
Let’s talk about ye ol’ rat race. I used to think I wasn’t in the rat race. I had a relatively flexible schedule with my job, I could travel without too much trouble, and, well, I was fundamentally against it so I couldn’t be in it, right? Wrong. Unless you have passive/residual income that is enough to cover your monthly living expenses, you are not financially independent and thus, you are reliant on the rat race to be supported. You must continue working for someone (even if that person is yourself) to survive.
For those of us in the middle class, we’ve been taught to get a decent job, get good benefits and save for retirement. We haven’t been taught to see the possibility for more. Sure, people might say, “you can be anything you want,” but they’re still referring to the economic scaffolding that upholds “architect,” “senator,” “doctor,” etc. They aren’t saying, “Make sure you know how to buy companies from a young age and how to handle taxes so that you can live exactly the life you were meant to live, regardless of what you do with the rest of your time.”
We haven’t been taught how to exist outside of the race. We haven’t been taught to keep our money and our work separate. We haven’t been taught the fundamentals of the financial system so that we might invest, build/buy companies, learn about real estate, or how to become dispensable so that we might travel to Greece for 10 weeks and NOT be needed at work.
Isn’t it interesting how we’re always taught to be indispensable? What if you were dispensable? What if you built something, even something small, that became a machine that sent you money each month but the machine sort of… forgot about you? Isn’t that actually what we’re all after?
So what does this have to do with your self-worth? It’s time you grabbed the bull by the b*lls, darling. Yes, you can invest in the stock market, in small start-ups, in real estate. Even if you don’t have much money. Yes, you can write an ebook and sell it and earn residuals each month. Yes, you can design gift cards and sell them on Etsy, yielding ongoing returns from something you make one time.
Once you shore up your self-worth, recognize your deep and wildly coveted talents, you too can be on the track toward financial agency and freedom. You can be wealthy, my love. I’m not saying you should quit your day job. Jobs are fulfilling! Jobs are social! Jobs are purposeful! I am saying you need to get in the captain’s seat of your financial expression and stop relying on others to support your existence.
Three months ago, I had my first experience with recurring income (aside from gains from interest-earning accounts) for my Money Juice monthly membership program. This program is a way for people to connect, stay accountable and come together one time per month to learn lessons and get work done on their financial to-do list. This money will come in again next month. It’s a small amount, but let me tell you, it feels enormous. And it will grow as the community grows. To have a machine that is generating even a little bit of income is doing wonders for my self-worth. And it’s telling me I’m making my way off the conveyor belt, out of the rat race, and higher up the net worth scale. So what’s the first step in building your machine?