Showing Up to Work Every Day May Be the Reason You'll Never Build Wealth
Twenty-five years ago, I was working in a desk job, in a drab cubicle, like most people my age. Good job, steady paycheck, following the conventional path we're all taught to pursue. I grew up the child of two teachers. But somewhere in those early years of my career , watching how businesses actually operated from the inside, I started noticing something that bothered me.
The people who owned the companies I worked for weren't necessarily smarter, harder working, or more talented than the employees. But they had something fundamentally different: they'd figured out how to get paid without trading their time hours-for-dollars. They made money while they slept, while they were on vacation, while they were doing other things entirely.
That observation led me down a path I never expected. I started questioning why we organize our entire society around this time-for-money trade when clearly there are other ways to generate income. Why did I accept that work had to mean showing up somewhere for eight hours a day to justify my economic existence?
The more I thought about it, the more I realized our whole system trains us for this limitation from childhood. It took less than one year at my first office job for me to realize that real estate would become my laboratory for testing a different approach, one where I could work once and get paid forever.
This is what I learned about breaking free from that system: our educational system trains us to be wage-slaves. The system was designed in the 19th century to produce human resources for industry.
I stopped thinking of myself as a human cog turning in that much bigger machine that I called my employer. There is a different way, one where I am the value creator and I am the innovation engine. When you start thinking more like a writer or a musician, you think about the value of your work over time instead of the income you get for time spent. The author gets paid every time a book sells a copy, the musician gets paid every time their music is played. These professionals work once and get paid forever!
Our social concepts of employment formed over the centuries during a period when we acted as little more than replaceable human cogs powering big machines. The simple act of being present was the most critical responsibility of the employee. Back then, the only access most people had to capital was through work. But today, financial innovation provides people much greater access to capital, from government-backed mortgage schemes, auto loans, to credit cards and even small business loans. All a part of a new path to creating future income.
Sometimes value is created by simply accepting risk. The value in real estate is created by holding the risk that comes from owning the facility and accepting the responsibility of financing, maintenance, and operations. You are lending someone your house or apartment in exchange for "interest" (aka rent) on that loan.
The not-so-secret secret about real estate is that it can continue to pay out the owner for decades or centuries. The work once and get paid forever mantra is all about replacing paycheck revenue streams with yield revenue streams. It's your classic get-rich-slow scheme. A single-family rental may only bring in $250 in profit per month in the first year, but as the months pass, mortgage payment drip drops of principal, the price of the property rises, dripping drops of equity, and as the years pass the rent increases dripping drops of free cash flow. Drip by drip, drops become trickles. A few years pass and you have enough equity to refi and buy another, bigger, investment property. The trickle becomes a stream. And if you are like me after 25 years, that stream becomes a river large enough to float your boat.
After years of testing this principle, I've learned that the best 'forever income' strategies share three characteristics: they add lasting value, require minimal ongoing time, and can be implemented without massive capital. Here are the ones that have worked best for me and my friends:
Rent out part of your garage for storage
Add a rental unit in your basement
Build a rentable campsite
Build an ADU (additional dwelling unit) rental in your back yard
Have a rental? On turnover add a washer/dryer and raise the rent
Install solar and sell the power to tenants
Turn a large one-bedroom into two small bedrooms
I'm not going to sugarcoat it; most people will read this list and do nothing. They'll nod along, maybe bookmark it, then go back to trading their hours for dollars until retirement forces them to live on whatever Social Security decides they're worth, if Social Security still exists by then.
But if you're still reading this, you're probably different. You see what I saw 25 years ago: that the game has different rules for owners than it does for employees. The question isn't whether these strategies work, they do, I or someone I advise used most of them myself. The question is whether you're ready to stop being a battery in someone else's machine.
Here's what I wish someone had told me at 25: you don't need to quit your job tomorrow or buy a 20-unit apartment complex to start. You need to add one small income stream that doesn't require you to show up. Just one. Maybe it's renting out your garage for $150 a month. Maybe it's converting that spare bedroom into a studio apartment.
Twenty-five years later, I can tell you the hardest part isn't finding the deals or managing the properties. The hardest part is changing how you think about work itself. Once you do that, every property becomes a laboratory, every renovation becomes an experiment in creating value, and every rent check becomes proof that there's a different way to live.
The river that floats my boat today started with a house hack to save on rent 25 years ago. What drop will you add to yours?
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