Living the Rich Life … Well Below Your Means

In last week’s blog, I said that multi-millionaires are risk takers and, sure, sometimes those risks don’t work out but with enough time, determination, and a good game plan, taking risks do pay off.

Viewing multi-millionaires from a distance you might not realize that most of these people also have a “lack of attachment to spending”, especially on their way up the financial ladder. But even after arriving at the multi-million dollar status, they still tend to live below their means. This is because they still pay close attention to their spending; it’s a habit they formed when they were poor and working on climbing that money ladder.

This trait jumped out at me just a few days ago while planning a trip to Europe.  I got on line to buy two first class tickets to Paris and, on my first search, saw that prices ranged from $8,000 to $11,000 for each round-trip ticket. Even though I could easily afford those kind of prices, I just couldn’t stop there.  I spent another 20 or 30 minutes looking at different route’s, dates and airlines and those minutes paid off big time.  I found a $2500 ticket for a nonstop flight to London, knowing that we could catch a ride on the great Euro star train which only takes 2 hours and 15 minutes to get to Paris. The only minor problem was that we prefer to fly on Delta airlines since we get a lot of free miles and our million-mile status gives us all kinds of benefits and privileges.

I told my wife and she told me to wait a few minutes because she was checking a few different dates for Delta and sure enough within 5 or 10 minutes she found a round trip, first class flight on Delta into London for $2600 dollars—for another $100 it was well worth it to us and we quickly booked our 2 tickets.

Like I said, I could easily afford the higher price but I would much rather use the savings to buy more properties or even make more donations to my favorite charities.  Maybe if I were a multi billionaire I would just not bother shopping around and would pay the much higher price.  But then I look at someone like Warren Buffet and even with his $75 billion, he lives far below his means, still residing in a very modest house that he’s been in since 1958.  He very much has that great “lack of attachment to spending” trait and knows how to live below his means!  We all need to learn a lesson from him and yes, pass it on to your kids and friends and anyone who wants to make it big and stay there.

A little P.S. here … that Euro star train ride is fantastic! It’s smooth, quiet, and travels at 200 miles an hour, straight from downtown London to downtown Paris. I love that wonderful and very scenic ride! You should make your own plans to take Euro Star and visit Europe in the not so distant future.

Immoveable Deadlines

While I was preparing for a trip to Kauai a few days ago, I was suddenly hit by a pretty powerful thought.  The thought came as a result of my packing and getting hundreds of things organized before I was to leave.  I noticed how really organized and efficient I was becoming–making lists of items I needed to take, the things I must do before I left, and the people that I needed to meet with or email or call.  I will be gone for months so I knew all these things needed to be done, without question, and there was definitely a dead line on all of it–my flight out.  This kind of deadline pushed me to become an almost perfect picture of efficiency and effectiveness.

In the midst of my packing, I stopped for a few moments and observed what I was doing, how I was I was plowing through dozen of tasks so quickly and quite smoothly. Of course the motivation was obvious. I had a very fixed and non-movable deadline that I couldn’t easily be changed without a huge expense and hassle. But the thing that struck me was that this packing was a goal with a deadline I was not willing to miss.

Especially now at the beginning of a new year, as I am setting goals for myself, I realize how important this is–goals need to be set with time deadlines we are not willing to miss. Deadlines, ones we adhere to, are a huge key to pushing ourselves to be more effective, more efficient and ultimately more successful!

Think about that a moment.  Look at your own habits and behavior when you know you have a flight or other seemingly immovable deadline to meet. Don’t you get done what needs to be done? The great lessons here are:

1. We all need to recognize how very beneficial it is to have deadlines attached to our goals.
2. We must become tougher on ourselves by setting goals with absolute time deadlines attached to them.

Never forget that you and I only live, on average, about 700,000 hours, so it’s critically important to use our time wisely. If you want to accomplish a lot in your life and do big things for yourself, your family, your friends, and for mankind, you need to be efficient and well-motivated.

So with your next goals, pretend that your deadline is like a flight you have booked to Paris or Hawaii and if you miss it or have to postpone the flight it will cost you many thousands of dollars.  Depending on what your goals are, missing a time deadline may actually be more costly than a few thousand dollars. In the long run, a missed goal could cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars or even worse if you have a huge loss of confidence or damage your self-esteem.  Bottom line here is, make time deadlines your biggest friend, helper and partner by seeing them as the important, unnegotiable deadlines they really are.