We’ve been taught how to work for money. Not how to make money work for us. Someone recently asked me: “How do you keep adding money to your investments when you’re not working?” It made me realize how big the gap in financial knowledge is. Most of us are taught: Work → get paid → spend → save what’s left → repeat. And when you want more money? Work more. But there’s another way: Earn → invest early and often → compound → let your capital produce more capital. Once your money is invested, it can potentially work for you in several ways: 📈 Appreciation: investments increase in value 💰 Dividends & distributions: investments pay you income 🏦 Interest: your money earns interest 🏢 Business ownership: you participate in the growth of companies 🏠 Real estate: appreciation + potential rental income 🔄 Compounding: your returns start generating their own returns 🧾 Tax efficiency: you keep more of what your money earns 💻 Income-producing assets: assets can generate money without trading hours for dollars I’m retired, and so far this year, my investments have grown and generated roughly $200,000 in value and income. I didn’t work a 9–5 for that money. My capital was working for me. And this is the part I wish more people understood: The goal isn’t simply to save money so you can eventually stop working. The goal is to invest early, invest often and give your money enough time to compound, so eventually your investments can help pay you instead. That’s when your money can start buying something even more valuable than things: Your time. Time to travel. Time with family. Time to pursue what you love. Time to simply enjoy the life you worked so hard to build. We’re taught how to earn a living. We should also be taught how to build capital that can eventually earn a living for us. Were you taught this growing up?
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32 Comments
Catherine @ffcatherine · 15d
The key is to learn the game, learn the tax rules mostly or the tax shark will always win, stay willing to take risk in order to beat inflation while also hedging for the cycles that always come. Life isn’t a competition against strangers rather the goal should be to beat & never rely on the system. The less we depend on the system to take care of us the more freedom we have…for some of us that balance is a life long journey
Carletta @sunshynstaccs · 15d
No I was not taught this growing up but it is something that I would definitely like to instill into my children for sure while they are still young!
Sunil Lalwani@sunil1985 · 15d
As an immigrant, I always believed real estate was the best investment because that was what I knew and understood. Before learning more about investing, mutual funds were pretty much the only investment option I was familiar with—and unfortunately, many came with high MERs and disappointing returns. Thanks to Blossom and the investing community, I began to learn about building wealth through investing and letting compounding do its work. It has completely changed the way I think about money and financial freedom. It’s never too late to start investing—but the sooner we start, the more time we give our money to grow. Thank you for continuing to educate and inspire people to take control of their financial future!
Richard Verhaeghe@ravonar · 15d
My parents grew up in the shadow of the Great Depression so they had a massive mistrust of WallStreet. The Stagflation of the 1970s, the destruction of Alberta with the National Energy Crisis in the 1980s, the Edmonton Courthouse had 2 more courtrooms built and the Masters In Chambers Justices brought back for that specific purpose, the 2008 crash made them believe in 2 things: stop spending and put your money in the bank, don’t invest and buy revenue generating properties, which was a bit of a disaster in itself; so, I was taught to save but not to invest and until recently, i only invested in a secure “meh” RRSP returning 7-10% a year. Until this year, my TFSA was largely unused; and, I finally figured out how to build up a tax harvesting portfolio in my prof corp for later use if and when I fully retire, so it’s been stressful and learning and developing a thesis.
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