Have you ever been so broke it’s hard to breathe?
I remember one of my lowest days.. One I will remember forever. But the crazy thing is, I actually enjoyed it.
I had 3 one-dollar bills in my wallet, $3.29 in my checking account and $0.01 in my savings. Ya! One cent! Haha!
Oh yeah. And I had NO gas in my car.
I needed to drive to Seattle to take my exam at 8:30. With $6 to my name, I had to plan this out. I drove out of my apartment building which was luckily virtually touching a chevron, ran inside and the dude driving the BMW (me) hands over three one-dollar bills.
‘Um, three dollars, of gas, on that one, over there. Um, ya, there. Please. Thanks.’
Who gets 3 dollars of gas? She probably thought I stole the whip. I just realized that I avoided eye contact. Funny how that works. It was kind of embarrassing.
So I made it accross the toll bridge to seattle (the toll had been leaving me voicemails saying they are unable to charge my account for a while aka pay me nuhkkah!). Now I need to pay for muhfuggin parking. Fucking PARKING! How long is my exam? It was a 3-hour exam and parking was $1.50 per hour. Fuckit I guess I’m paying for just two. I inserted my debit card and held my breath as I waited to approve my account with $3.29 in it. I could’ve been fucked here. A parking ticket would put be overboard, and if I had to drive around the block in busy ass confusing ass downtown seattle to look for another spot I would miss the exam and have to pay another god damn $138 bucks to retake it… APPROVED. I now had 30¢ to my name. Three dimes. Too funny. I’ll never look at three dimes the same again 😉
So Somehow I passed the exam when I was sure I would fail, so that made me feel like the universe was on my side. (I literally walked out of the testing room prepared to be back – I was positive I didn’t pass – but I did).
Crazy emotions. ?
So I’m the brokest I’ve ever been since my mom opened me a kids banking account probably in first grade, at an all-time financial low, but I’m fuxkkin pumped about the universe not makin me take that goddamm test again. Godforsaken place.
It was rock bottom with a new beginning. I got a new hustle in the real estate game.
So I barely made it back to the appartment on fumes, and now came the toughest part of all. But somehow I enjoyed it. It was humbling and grounding experience of the real world.
I walked.
This was not just to get outside and go for a stroll. This was because I HAD to walk. My energy reserves had depleted, so I no longer had the energy to buy some carbon-oxygen containing compounds to combust so I could extract their chemical energy to push up a piston that pushes a lever that moves my car wheels. Or something like that.
No money = no energy = you’re walkin my dude
I had to walk to my parents to borrow $ for freakin gas. This was my true ‘Walk Of Shame’. And it was appropo because it gave me time to reflect on how I got to where I got. MILLIONS of Americans are broke. It gave me a chance to sit in and experience what many other poor Americans and humans feel every day. When your that broke, you actually physically breathedifferent. You can’t take easy nice deep breaths because it feels like there is a weight on your chest squeezing you like you are stuck in a trap. Like you are stuck in a 5-foot deep hole and you’re too heavy to climb out. Paralyzed.
I actually wasn’t feeling like this on my walk of shame because I had felt it a bit earlier. On my walk I was actually happy – because I knew I would be able to write about this in the future when I’m living an abundant life and tell my true story of when I walked to my parents house with cents in my bank account to ask for gas money for my BMW!
‘I could’ve sworn it was you we drove by on the way home’
Yup, that was me. My dad gave memory for gas then jokingly goes ‘do you even have any food to eat?’ Then it crossed my mind I had no food in my fridge! I was officially a poor person! Yay! No money to eat!
It also dawned on me that night why there’s so much crime in poor America – and the world. Because I actually stole food from my friends pantry on my walk home so I could eat when I got back. Crazy. I took a small bag of pasta and a ziploc of pecans. ???. I actually went back to put the stuff back though cuz it was too grimey.
But that’s what poor people do every day without even thinking about it!! They fear that they won’t be able to eat dinner that day so they break into houses and steal stuff! Without even thinking! The fear of starving conquers all. Up to this point in my life I’ve never faced that feeling of possibly having to go to bed without any food available for dinner. Going to bedhungry. Freakin cray cray!! There’s millions of kids all over the world who have to accept that there’s no fluffy substances to put in their mouths and just go to bed with an utterly uncomfortable growling stomach. It makes me cringe. That’s actually my worst fear. And it crept into my mind subconsciously and propelled me to jack some food when no one was around. And I never jack shit. Wowwww.
Crazy emotions.
So why did I get so broke in the first place? I realized. Same reason almost 80 percent of NFL players do.
IT DOESN’T MATTER HOW MUCH MONEY YOU’RE MAKING. IF YOU TAKE A PAY-CUT, IT’S JUST A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE YOU GO BROKE.
That is, for people who are not financially smart/savvy/disciplined with their money.
If you are having a good year or a string of good years financially, your lifestyle will reflect that. Aka level of consumption. The amount of entertainment you buy. The shopping you do. The amount of times you eat out per week (or per day). The stupid shit you buy. The more money coming in, the less you think about the money going out.
And the faster it comes in, the faster it goes out.
And when it starts to come in more slowly (and for NFL players when they retire, exponentiallymore slowly), it still goes out FAST because psychologically you have mind-fucked yourself into that high level of consumption. So the moment the typical NFL player retires, the hole in the bucket is bigger than the stream pouring in. So it’s just a matter of years before they have CENTS in their bank accounts. Aka that’s when when they say you went broke. Bankrupt.
Bankruptured.
Your bank has fucking popped, and all money spills out. We call it bankrupt. That’s funny.
But I’m glad I learned my lesson early on about going broke. It’s pretty clear why the ones who don’t go broke after their playing days don’t. They invested their time and money into assets that pay them continually – to keep the stream pouring into the bucket thicker than the stream leaking out. Simple as that.
Many NFL players invest in businesses like restaurants. Those are great assets to have that pay you every month that for the most part run themselves. Or real estate. Same thing for rental properties. They pay you, but you don’t spend time on it. The cash just flows to you automatically, hence the term ‘cash flow property’. Also stocks and many other types of businesses you can start or buy.
Moral of the story: it’s HARD to bring your level of consumption down.
People always want upgrades. Not downgrades. So when you want an upgrade in lifestyle, people who trade time for dollars are screwed spending even more of life out in the field raking in dollars.
What’s easier, is to work SMARTER.
INVEST time and money in things that keep pouring money into your bucket. So you will never have to tape up any of those holes on the bottom. That’s not fun. Life should be always filled with new and more exciting experiences, not be ‘toned-down’ as we get older…. Society accepts getting older as ‘toning-it down’, but that’s just lame, I say!!?. This is the coolest place to be in spacetime right here&now, but that’s for another rant.
~~Here’s to a long life of abundance
..with family (and I use that word interchangeably with friends..)
and..
NBA: “Neva broke again, neva, neva, broke again!!” ~ joe buddens ? (good song)
$.world.freedom.
