“Filthy Stinking Rich” — A Moral Lesson

Here’s a quick exercise for you.

Finish this phrase: “Rich people are______________.”

How did you complete this phrase? Are your answers mostly positive or negative? Did you think of words like successful, accomplished, and disciplined? Or did you come up negative words like greedy, snotty, or ruthless?

Whether you admire or despise the wealthy, how you feel about money and the people who have it will determine–more than the knowledge in your head or the situation you grew up under–whether you will be financially successful or not.

You cannot be wealthy if you feel wealth is bad. If you have negative associations with money you will repel it rather than attract it.

This concept is nothing new, but the ramifications are huge.

I hope you want to become wealthy. More than that, I hope you want to be filthy stinking rich.

I’ll tell you why in a moment.

But first realize that if you’ve been telling yourself “I’d like to have enough to live on and do what I want, but I don’t need more than that” then you’re missing the point.

The point of becoming wealthy isn’t so that you can gorge yourself on expensive things, live fat and happy, and tell the rest of the world to go to hell.

If you’ve seen “Batman Begins” you’d seen how Bruce Wayne’s father, Dr. Thomas Wayne, had left Wayne Enterprises in the hands of “more interested” individuals so that he could volunteer at the hospital. I’m sure he, speaking as if he were a real person, touched the lives of hundreds of people through his simple service.

But more than just the services he provided I’m sure that, because of the billions of dollars he had from business, he was able to provide needed medical equipment to the hospital, allow people to get surgeries that they couldn’t afford, and a lot of good was done because he had the resources to back up his volunteer work. Good people can do so much more good in the world if they have money.

Somewhere along the line many people developed the idea that being poor is holy, and that if you live in poverty amongst the poor you can do the greatest good.

I think that’s ridiculous.

I think scratching to make a living keeps people from serving others, and living paycheck to paycheck is so time consuming that it keeps people from reaching their full potential. If you can barely help yourself, it’s going to be hard to really help someone else.

“Playing little” doesn’t do anything to help the world. If that’s your game, you’re going to need a whole lot more ambition than that to make it in the real estate investing business. Only those who want to do big things with their lives are going to have the drive and vision to make it in real estate.

Get it in your head that you are going to be very wealthy, because it’s the wealthy that have the time and resources to really make a difference in the world.

Even Mother Theresa, sworn to poverty, could not have accomplished a fraction of what she did without the financial backing of wealthy donors. She raised millions in her lifetime, and hard-working individuals had to earn enough money to take care of themselves first and then earn more money so they could give it away.

That is why I hope you want to be wealthy.

By the way, why do people use the term “filthy stinking rich?” Answer: Jealousy.
-Jarom Adair
Real Estate Investing for Beginners