Let me start by saying this isn’t for everyone.
If you’re comfortable with middle class mediocrity, this isn’t for you.
This is for you if you have fire in your belly.
This is for you if you aspire for higher.
This is for you if you hated listening to your parents, your teachers and your boss.
This is for you if you hated every job you’ve ever had.
This is for you if you see the life plan laid out for you as a prison.
This is for you if you want to live free.
Because the middle class script won’t let you live free.
And if you want to truly be free, you need to free your mind.
Because your prison isn’t physical, it’s mental.
And you need to see through your prison to be able to break out of it.
You need to see that you have nothing to lose.
Because as long as you think you have something to lose, you’re not all in.
And as long as you’re not all in, you’re not going to make it when things get hard.
You’ll fall back on mediocrity.
And because things always get hard at some point, you need to be ready to do or die.
Meaning you’d rather die than follow the script for the next 40 years.
When you’d rather do than die, you’re unstoppable, you’re a force of nature.
But to truly get to that point, you need to murder your middle class mentality.
And to do that, you first need to understand it.
The Middle Class Script
The middle class script, like all lifestyle scripts, is the result of billions of years of human biology and culture. Its goal is noble, a better quality of life for its followers. Your parents and your teachers mean well. They think that by teaching you to follow the script, they are giving you the best shot at living your best life.
But because quality of life is not well defined in the middle class script, and because most people aren’t self-aware, it doesn’t work out that way. Quality of life in reality equals consistent happiness. Unfortunately, without awareness, the pursuit of quality of life often ends in:
- The pursuit of status
- The avoidance of shame
- The obedience to advertising.
This results in a lot of guys living an unfulfilling life by trying to do the right thing. Because most guys aren’t self-aware, and fulfillment isn’t the clearly defined goal, success is often defined by the guy who most closely follows the script – whether he’s happy or not.
The script starts with shame. Shame is the foundation of our society. Avoid shame and seek praise, this is what you’re taught – be a good boy. If you could define the middle class script in one sentence – it’s be a good boy.
And being a good boy is more about shame than praise. Because shame is more powerful than praise. Shame is what keeps men on script, even when they hate their lives. Praise is a small consolation prize.
And being a good boy is the foundation of all middle class values. Be a good boy and kiss grandma, even if you don’t want to. Even though mom knows you don’t want to, and grandma saw mom force you – you’re rewarded for your ability to perform.
You’re graded on your performance, not what you feel. And not just at home but once you get out into the world. Sit still, listen to your teachers, do your homework, don’t talk back and don’t question why you need to learn math and science. Questions get you in trouble, performance gets you praise.
You don’t study hard because you want to, you study hard because you’re told to. You’re told to because hard work gets you into a good university, where you get to study harder. And you get to go into debt for the privilege.
And debt is what keeps you middle class. Debt is the key to the control grid. And you get into the game owing. It’s called the deferred life plan or paying for today tomorrow.
And they get you again with the credit cards, before you even get to earn you’ve got student loans and credit card debt. And your B.A. doesn’t mean sh*t. You know it, your parents know it and your professors know it.
But it’s what you do. And if you want a good corporate job, it’s what you need. Not because it has value, but because it proves you can perform. It proves you can follow orders, because that’s what corporations are looking for – order takers.
Once you’ve proven yourself a good order taker, you get a good corporate job. And now you learn that what you’ve been working so hard for over the last 20 years results in you becoming a corporate slave.
And you learn to speak corporatese and how to fill out TPS reports 8 hours a day. You learn that as a grown man, to get access to revenue, you need to call another man your boss. And he tells you where to sit, what to do, when you can go for lunch and where to go to the bathroom. And you’re granted one week a year to do what you want to do.
And you put on a performance for the privilege of it all. Always a good boy and always performing. You’re a good boy for the company and in return you get the table scraps your boss deigns to give you – a tiny fraction of the profit of the operation.
That is as long as long as you’re useful. The second you become redundant you’re out on your ass, and you see what all the team building retreats and mission statements really mean. The same rules apply for not being able to put on the proper performance – your ability to pay for your existence is gone, at least until you can find a new master.
But you don’t start a business, because business ownership is risky and something bad might happen. So you play the good corporate boy and you give them your youth. Because you can’t take chances, because you need to be able to provide for your wife and children.
And you need a wife and children to make your family happy and to become a respectable member of society. Maybe you want a family and maybe you don’t. But if you want to be a good boy it’s what you have to do, whether you can afford a family or not.
But you can’t afford a family because you’re middle class and it’s not 1950 anymore. You can’t afford a family because the middle class has migrated to Asia and you live in the west. Where your country is in trillions of dollars in debt and you need debt to play the game.
But you play anyways, because you’re a good boy. So you find a nice girl and get married at the cost of $30,000 to $50,000 for the wedding. Money you can’t afford. And you buy a house, and a car, and furniture – all on credit of course because you can’t afford those things either.
But debt is the name of the game and you’re a good boy so you play along. You live on the deferred live plan where you buy things you can’t afford and spend the rest of your life paying them off.
And you assume that by following the script everything will work out for you. Despite the 50% divorce rate, you get the government involved in your personal life. And you give the men with guns the ability to redistribute your assets plus alimony and child support if things go wrong.
You do this because divorce is something that happens to other people, not to you. Divorce happens when people don’t follow the script, but since you follow the script, everything will work out for you.
And because married life and monogamy is the cornerstone of middle class existence, you take those filthy thoughts for other women and shove them deep down. Or quietly m@sturb@ting to internet p*rn while your girlfriend isn’t home.
Even though the divorce rate is 50%, and 70% of divorces are initiated by women, you follow through anyways because you’re a good boy and you want to make your family proud. And besides, losing half your assets and paying child support and alimony is something that happens to other guys.
So now you’re down $30k on student loans, another $40k on the wedding, $300k on the house, another 10 on furniture, and 25 on the car – double that if you and your wife have your own cars.
But it doesn’t stop there. A good boy is responsible for giving his parents grandchildren. To raise a child to 18 costs $250k. Since you’re following the script, that means you’re going to have 2 kids at the cost of $500k for the next 18 years or $28,000 per year.
And that’s not including your other monthly expenses like food and diapers and dental visits. And for the first six years you won’t be getting more than four hours of uninterrupted sleep because little kids don’t sleep.
And you can’t get your wife to put the kid to bed every night because she has to work too. Because it’s not 1950 anymore and a two parent income is built into the system. So instead of one tired overworked parent you now have two.
And the children don’t have fulltime caretakers so now you have to add daycare into your monthly bills. And because it’s 1950 anymore you’ll be expected to do half the housework, cooking and childcare once you get home from another long day at work.
And you can’t negotiate on price, even though you know debt is a bad idea and you can’t afford your life as is. You can’t negotiate because your neighbors are willing to mortgage their life away and if you want to keep up you have to do the same. And since you’re a good boy you stick to the script.
If your neighbors weren’t willing to put 30 years earnings into a house, and weren’t willing to go into debt, and believed in traditional gender roles where there’s a clear division between resources and childcare it would be a different story.
But it’s not – massive debt and a two-parent income is now priced into the equation. If you could afford your life you wouldn’t be middle class. Being middle class in the 21st century means you can’t afford your life.
In 1950 you were at least guaranteed a wife for life, a job for life and to retire with a gold watch and a pension. Now you get a wife for life if you’re lucky. And three years at any given job if you’re lucky. And your skills being relevant until your retirement if you’re lucky.
But that pension and that social security aren’t going to be waiting for you – that’s a fact. America is already 19 trillion down and those programs aren’t going to make it.
But it doesn’t stop there, even though you’ve got more than you can handle. Having a middle class mentality means being a respectable citizen. That means doing your civic duty to your community and to society.
PTA meetings, bake sales, dinner parties, in-laws, clubs, churches, rotary clubs, soccer games, playdates, violin lessons for the kids – a respectable citizen is informed and involved. And total buy-in is not optional.
A respectable citizen is also an informed citizen who is expected to believe in the right propaganda and tow the party line and vote. The appropriate outrage, and appropriate water cooler talk is part and parcel of the middle class package.
But being a respectable citizen is not just about what you believe, it’s about what you buy. And part of the middle class package is being a good consumer. That means you have to be practical, prudent and not trying to live above your station.
It means you have the right wardrobe, the right wristwatch and the right taste in wine. The right plates, the right drapes, the right coffee cups. And even if you don’t buy into that part of the package, you can be sure your wife will.
The truth is, our economy exists because of the middle class consumer – it’s a consumption-based culture. And it means that you, as a good consumer, need to buy the right things. Because without the right things you lose face, and status is a very important part of the package.
What the neighbors think of you is very important – keeping up with the Joneses’ is what you live for. That includes the way you look. You dress to blend in, standing out is above your station and looked at as flashy, gauche and tacky.
And you don’t try to build an impressive physique because that’s juvenile and vain and immature – you embrace the dad bod wholeheartedly. And the truth is, even if the script approved of bodybuilding, building a physique worth showing off is near impossible, because the stress of your life leaves you with very few rewards outside of food and beer and sportsball.
Chances are, the high point of your week involves those three things, and if you’re lucky, your wife will let you have a mancave for you and your friends to watch and admire younger, fitter men exercise. This is the primary outlet for your natural masculine instincts – competition and glory – and a perfectly acceptable part of the middle class mentality.
You’re also allowed to eat a reasonable amount of pizza and drink a reasonable amount of beer when you have your “boys” over, just as long as you don’t make too much noise. In return you allow your wife to have her girls’ nights where they sip wine and talk about you.
In some cases, especially if you’re younger, you’ll still be allowed to play video games and smoke weed, but this is a less acceptable form of the script. And as for your voracious sexual appetite for anyone other than your wife, you’re quietly allowed to m@sturb@te in the basement, just as long as it’s not talked about.
In our fathers’ day it would have been pros or the occasional affair, but in our day it’s pixels on a screen, and even then, in some cases p*rn is still a no-no even if watched discreetly.
As time goes on you get to watch your kids grow up, and like many father’s you’ll love your children more than anything else in the world. And so you teach them the middle class script, even if you’re barely surviving your life, because it’s all you know.
And if things go well, you raise them into responsible productive citizens like yourself, but it doesn’t stop there. The house needs renovations, and maybe you need a cottage on the lake, and a new patio, and a new driveway…
These things keep you busy on the weekends where you find yourself spending most of your time doing “productive” things around the house. Because you always have to be productive. Because there are so many things that need to get done.
Finally it’s time to send the kids off to school. Depending on where you send them and how much you’re willing to pay, that’s another $40,000 to $200,000 to give them the same education that you had and set them on the right path.
By the time the kids are 18 and off to college you’ll be closing in on your 60’s or “golden years” and be able to retire and enjoy the fruits of your labor. But since social security won’t exist and you probably won’t have a pension, it’s more likely you’ll be working into your 70’s.
That’s if you’ve dodged divorce. And if you dodged a major stress related illness from all the stress you’ve placed on yourself over the last 50 years. And if you saved diligently and watched your money very carefully.
If you managed to make it this far with a happy family intact and money in the bank you get to enjoy your final years in comfort, with your children and your grandchildren. And you get to congratulate yourself on a job well done.
And if you make it that far I’ll congratulate you too, because it takes one tough MF hold it down for 50 years with the weight of today’s world on his shoulders.
But if things didn’t go well for you, it’s not pretty. 50% of the time you’ll find yourself on the wrong end of a divorce, with your house and half your assets stripped from you. Plus child support and a lifetime of alimony to pay. Even if you plan on never getting divorced, you don’t always have a choice as 70% of divorces are initiated by women.
Then you’re starting from scratch at 50 with nothing in the tank, more bills and payments then you can handle and only being able to see your kids on weekends, if at all.
But even if your marriage holds up it doesn’t mean it will be a happy one. You might have an unhappy wife to deal with or affairs or you find that no matter how hard you work you just can’t make all your expenses and you watch as your debt brings your life down around you.
Or the stress of the situation might make you sick and you might give in to a stroke or to cancer or to any number of stress related illnesses that are so common under our debt driven, usurious consumer culture.
At 35, I see all of guys struggling to get by and start a family. And not just the guys making $50,000 a year. I know guys who are making $200,000 a year who can’t afford their lives.
I saw my uncle have a heart attack in his 50’s from the stress of his business and from his first divorce and his second wife. He came out of it with permanent brain damage while his second wife cheated on him and eventually divorced him and took a good chunk of his money.
I saw a colleague in his 60’s have a stroke from the stress of his job which ended up getting him demoted to a 20 year olds job and eventually fired, even though he can’t afford to retire.
And when you look around at the people you know, you’ve probably seen enough horror stories of your own. It’s nasty, and it’s ugly, and it’s vicious, and it’s sad, but this is reality for a lot of men out there and you need to understand that clearly.
It’s not 1950 anymore. The middle class script is not what it used to be. And even if it was, it probably was never for you in the first place. Because you don’t want to just get by. You want to thrive instead of just survive.
And I don’t like to be the bearer of bad news. And I’m not happy about what I see around me. It doesn’t make me happy to see people going under. But I want you to see the truth with your eyes wide open so that you don’t go under, and so that you have the best possible shot at a happy life.
The good news is, as a player in the game of life, there is always a move for you to play. And it’s not that you can’t find a good woman or have children, it’s just that you can’t do it like everyone else. Or maybe, family life isn’t for you, at least not now.
Either way, you need a new script and you need to be willing to murder your middle class mentality and take on that new reality.
Your New Reality
As we covered, the middle class mentality is all about being a good boy, first for your parents, then for your teachers, then for your boss and then for your neighbors. You live to perform in the movie of respectable citizen.
The foundation is shame, shame for what you truly want out of life. And praise for living in the eyes of others, for being a good boy.
But what if you’re like me, and you’re not a good boy?
And you hated school.
And you hated every job you had.
And you hated every boss you had.
And you hate being told what to do.
And you hate doing what you don’t want to do.
And you hate settling for mediocrity.
And you don’t believe, and you don’t buy in.
Not to community or country or any other concept.
Instead you buy into yourself.
And you want to live life on your terms.
What do you do then?
The answer is you burn it down. You murder your middle class mentality and join the outcast class. You literally live outside of your caste. And you accept the shame that comes with it in return for living free. For living life on your terms.
But to do that, you need to examine your beliefs. The beliefs that keep you from living a fulfilling life. The beliefs that keep you following the middle class script, even when you know better.
Because change is hard. And when the going gets tough, you’ll be tempted to fall back on your old, comfortable programming. That is as long as you think you have something to lose. When you see through it clearly you’ll realize there isn’t anything there, and you’ll have to choice but to murder your middle class mentality.
To start we need to bring those middle class beliefs to light, examine them, and bury them – one by one.
Your Middle CLASS BELIEFS
Be A Good Boy And You’ll Be Rewarded
Be a good boy, listen to the teacher, don’t talk back, don’t complain. In return you don’t get in trouble. You learn from a young age that following orders is important, no matter what you feel. And that it’s the performance that counts.
It’s that path that leads you to accepting a boss. Or accepting bad service in a restaurant. Or accepting bad treatment from women. As long as your primary priority is being a good boy, someone else will always be telling you what to do and taking advantage of your submission.
If you want the life you deserve, you have to make your own way. And you don’t get there by following the rules, you get there by making the rules.
From being a gentleman to being a good employee, this only leads to you being taken advantage of. While you’re friendzoned she’s hooking up with a guy who doesn’t know her last name. While you’re working 10 hours a day for your company, the company owner is relaxing on his yacht.
You need to become the guy who takes what he wants.
Work Hard And You’ll Be Rewarded
Starting with school you’re taught to work hard, study hard and don’t question the material. In return you’re supposed to succeed in life. But the truth is, hard work is not enough to get what you want once you get out into the real world.
If it was, you could work at Mcdonald’s 12 hours a day and still be able to feed your family – but you can’t. Instead, value is rewarded, and if you can’t sell a service or a produce a product of value, you’ll never make real money, no matter how hard you work.
It’s not enough to work hard, you have to work smart and constantly generate value.
The truth is, you’re only as good as the value you bring to the table.
You need to make yourself and your products and services valuable.
Be A Gentleman And You’ll Be Rewarded
The natural extension of being a good boy and studying hard is being a gentleman when it comes to women. When you first get to dating age you learn from mom that it’s important to be a gentleman and bring her flowers, put her on a pedestal, don’t move to fast, listen to her problems and all the rest…
But you quickly learn that being a gentleman is the fast track to the friendzone while she’s off hooking up with guys who don’t even know her last name. Of course some qualities of a gentleman are important, but putting her on a pedestal is not one of them.
If you want to get women you need to act like a man.
Strong, confident and willing to go after what he wants.
Because a closed mouth doesn’t get fed.
Just like in business, with women you need to be the guy who takes what he wants.
Go To College And You’ll Be Rewarded
Once you’ve learned to be a good boy and sit still and listen and be a gentleman, it’s time to go off for more sitting still in a classroom. Except now you have to pay, anywhere from 20 grand to 200 grand for the privilege.
And if you’re like most students, you get a B.A. a degree with almost no practical value, taught by people with no real world experience. And if you’re like most students you come out of school with a mountain of debt, four years of your business-building youth spent in a classroom, and a degree that makes you barely more marketable than a high school graduate.
Instead you could have spent those four years mastering a skill and learning how to sell so that by the time your friends are getting out of school, in massive debt, you have your own business and a healthy savings account.
The smart move is f*ck college and start a business as soon as possible. Or if you are going to go to school, get a practical degree you can turn into your own business – programming, accounting etc.
Get A Good Job And You’ll Be Rewarded
So now that you’ve spent the last 20 years of your life sitting in school being a good boy for the teachers, and going into debt for the privilege, you enter the job market where all that hard work is supposedly going to pay off.
But you quickly see that all that hard work results in you sitting still in your cubicle being a good boy for your boss. And if you’re sharp, you’ll realize this is what you’ve been trained for. And this is why corporations care about your degrees, not because your knowledge is useful, but because they prove you can take orders.
And taking orders is what you’re going to be doing for the rest of your life while your boss gets rich off of your hard work.
Now it would be one thing if you had the job security our grandparents did, you’d at least know that you we’re trading your time for a lifetime of stability, but job security is a thing of the past.
In our world, you’re only as good as the value you bring to the table and the second you become redundant to your company, you’ll be out on your ass and not a minute longer.
And it won’t matter how long you’ve worked there and how good an employee you’ve been. The second they can outsource your job to the Philippines or get a computer to do it – they will.
Just ask this Norm Szewsky, profiled in humans of New York, a man who gave his loyalty to a company and assumed they would do the same for him:
“I thought I was going to work until I died. But they came in and told me that I was too old and that I didn’t know the computer. They thought I was obsolete. If that’s true—then how did I get so far without the computer? I’ve got that computer in my head. I can design the whole process. I can start with a blank sheet of paper and cycle the whole line: the robots, the tooling, everything. That was my life. At night when I go to sleep, I’m still building welding lines. There were only 1800 of us in this town that could do it. And each of us had our own style. People could recognize Norm Szewsky’s work. But you know what happened? They took all 1800 of our brains, and they put them in a computer. So now a guy who don’t know nothing can just press a button, and out comes a clamp. Oh well, I don’t really give a sh*t. I’m checking out soon.”
Don’t let this /\ happen to you. Take ownership of your revenue as soon as possible. You’ll never be fired from your own business no matter how much conditions change. You just pivot and power through.
Stick To The Script And Don’t Take Risks
Despite the fact that it’s common knowledge that job security no longer exists, the middle class script hasn’t adapted to reality. Sure it’s understood that you won’t be able to work one job for the rest of your life, but it’s assumed you’ll be able to be employable for the next 50 years.
And you’re taught that employment is still the better option, and that starting a business is risky, because something bad might happen. And you might fail and look bad in the eyes of your neighbors.
And it’s true, starting the wrong business is risky – dumping a bank loan and your life savings into a restaurant is very risky and you’re odds of success are very low.
But starting a service business is not. All it costs is an internet connection and your time. And you can make six figures selling copywriting, coaching, marketing, real estate among many other services. All you need is the passion, the skill and the ability to sell.
And when you own your own revenue stream, no one has the ability to turn the taps off on your money machine because you became redundant, or because you said a thought crime at work.
Sure as a business owner, you’re responsible for generating revenue, and you don’t have a steady paycheck to fall back on. But that’s what you want. Because as a winner, you’ll know you’ll always make more money from eating what you kill then waiting for another man’s leftovers.
To me the riskier proposition is working a job and hoping you don’t get fired, or that your skillset holds up into your 60’s.
The truth is, if you want to enjoy your life you need to be in control of your time and your revenue. And if you want to retire comfortably, you need to get rich, and you can’t get rich as an employee.
The risky move is not starting a business.
Legal, Monogamous Marriage And Family Is The Only Option
So now that you’ve proven yourself to be a good boy, and a gentleman and a good employee it’s time to get married and start a family because marriage because family is the cornerstone of middle class living.
But just like with job security, the middle class script hasn’t adapted to reality. And the reality is that lifetime marriage no longer exists, at least for 50% of the population, with 70% of those divorces being initiated by women.
And divorce for the modern man is a disaster zone – heartbreak, children traumatized, alimony, child support, asset seizure – God help you. This is the reality for millions of guys many of whom we’re good husbands, fathers and employees.
It’s important to understand that legal marriage is no longer a must, neither is monogamy, you can have healthy relationships with multiple women. And you can put having a family off until your mid to late 30’s after you’ve built your business and financial security.
And you can have children without getting legally married and with an airtight asset protection agreement in place before you move in with your partner.
Or you can not have a family altogether and spend your time doing fulfilling work, dating, travelling and eating well.
At the end of the day, you have the option to live life however you want to, and to protect yourself from the disaster zone that is the modern divorce.
Going Into Debt Is A Good Thing
At one point in time, debt wasn’t a part of the middle class package, in fact it was expressly forbidden. Our great-grandparents generation, the ones who survived the great depression would have avoided any debt whatsoever like the plague.
But we’ve come a long way since then, to the point where people believe in such a thing as good debt. The truth is, there is no such as good debt, unless you’re the CEO of a too-big-to-fail investment bank and know that either the government or the bankruptcy courts will bail you out.
But we’re not talking about corporate debt, we’re talking about personal debt where your ass is on the line.
The script calls for you to take on a 25 year, $300,000 mortgage. Plus student loans, car debt and in many cases using credit for your wedding, furniture and often times monthly expenses.
This is not good. When you’re in debt, you’re a slave to that debt and you’ll be forced to structure your entire life towards paying it off.
Instead you want to avoid debt like the plague – there is no good debt!
If you need debt to buy it, you can’t afford it.
Stay out of debt like your life depends on it.
Being An Informed, Cultured, Respectable And Dutiful Citizen Is Important
So now that you have a wife, and a family, and a career, and a house in the suburbs (that you can’t afford), you’re now a respectable member of the middle class. And it’s your duty to present that image – informed, cultured, respectable and dutiful.
Being informed means memorizing and repeating the mainstream media talking points and having the politically correct opinion. It also believes you think your vote matters.
Being respectable means dressing the part, speaking the part, having the right car and vacationing in the right location.
Being dutiful means going to PTA meetings, and bake sales and church functions and all the other boring things you don’t care about.
Being cultured means knowing the right whisky and having the right wristwatch. It also means you have cultured hobbies, extra points if you take pictures of your wine tasting events and post them up on Fakebook.
What all these things have in common is that they don’t matter, all that matters is your happiness.
There are no rules to life whatsoever.
There is nothing you have to do.
The script is not a reality, it’s an illusion.
What the neighbors think about you does not matter. They’re opinion only matters if you let it, and if you choose to live around people who follow the script. And the truth is, they barely think about you because they’re too busy thinking about themselves.
Life is too short to live for an imaginary audience that barely thinks about your existence. And besides, you can’t take that middle class respectability with you when you die.
And more importantly, you can’t afford to chase middle class status because if you’re like the average middle class man – you’re a subsistence level peasant living paycheck to paycheck.
You don’t have time for PTA meetings of pretending to be cultured when your house is on fire!
Instead you need to chase fulfillment over status.
Start living for yourself and not in the eyes of others.
Being A Good Consumer And Buying The Right Things Is Important
Similar to being an informed, cultured, respectable and dutiful citizen, you’re taught to be a good consumer and buy the right things.
The right things are middle class products, anything below or above your station will be suspect. You need the right china for entertaining the right people and you’ll be judged by how well you’re able to stick to the script.
But again, you’re in a burning house and you don’t have the money to buy $200 golf shirts.
Taking pride in being a consumer and buying the right products will bury you.
Instead you need to take pride in being a producer.
You can’t get rich, and you can’t get free as a consumer.
You need to be a producer to get paid.
And that means you need to produce valuable products and services.
And you need to produce as much as you can and consume as little as possible until you’re able to buy your freedom. Minimalism is the move.
Then, once you’ve built your money machine and your bank account, then you can you start buying toys.
Let The Professionals Manage Your Money
The middle class financial script is get a stable job, go into debt and let professionals invest your money. This is the absolute worst approach you can take.
Except the reality is, you don’t have any money, because you’re in debt. You have income, but your actual wealth, or savings is a net negative. Instead of giving other people a fraction of your income to invest, you should be doing everything to get out of debt.
And even if you were to invest your money, the average mutual fund underperforms the S&P 10 times out of 10. You’d be much smarter to invest in an ETF and buy the S&P directly and at a much lower MER.
In reality though, the best way to retire comfortably is to get rich. And you don’t get rich from the stock market, the stock market just makes wealthy people wealthier.
You get rich through business ownership, where instead of the 8% per annum you get from the market (and only if you play your cards right), you can get 1000% returns. My margins for blogging are insane and the same goes for any service based business.
You should be focused on getting your money into your business and taking advantages of those returns. And the rest of your cash should be going towards paying down your debt.
Only once you’ve maxed out your reinvestment in your business, cleared off your debts and built a comfortable amount of savings, can you start thinking about passive, ETF investing or a mid-term bond fund.
Escaping Reality Is A Good Use Of Your Time
If you’re still with me so far, it should be clear that following the middle class script is a stressful way to approach life. When you understand the game, you’re not surprised when you see so many worn out, overweight, exhausted looking dads walking around.
It should also come as no surprise why there is so much money to be made selling escapism to middle class men. The biggest one is sports. Watching the game with a beer and the boys is the highlight for a lot of exhausted dads.
They live out their masculine, competitive fantasies through watching fitter, younger guys compete. And then when the wife goes to sleep, they sneak onto the computer to live out their sexual fantasies through watching fitter, younger guys f*ck women.
The high points of their week are escaping their lives. Instead, what you want to do, is to create a reality you don’t want to escape from. A reality where you have fulfilling work, low stress and are sexually fulfilled.
Your Sixties Are Your Golden Years
Finally we get to your retirement. You’ve worked hard for the last 50 years, you’ve raised two kids, you’ve stayed married, you’ve saved money and you’ve paid off your debts, so now you get to enjoy your “golden years” sailing around the world.
This is what Tim Ferriss calls the deferred life plan, or sacrificing your present for the future. Basically, taking on a ton of debt and stress, killing yourself for 30 years so that you can pay it all off and live comfortably.
That by itself is hard enough, but the truth is, by the time we get to our sixties, that comfortable retirement will be an expensive proposition. Because that pension and that social security check won’t be waiting for you, because the system is already bankrupt. Which means you need to be rich or have income still coming in from your business ventures – ideally both.
Not to mention that with all the debt most guys take on, just making their monthly expenses is hard enough, let alone saving for the future. Many men end up with a subsistence level retirement, especially if they’ve been through a divorce. And that’s not including the stress related health problems that many men develop by 65 from trying to hold it all together.
At the end of the day, the best defense is a good offense. That means you want to focus on making six figures in your youth and keeping your expenses low. And instead of living the deferred life plan, you plan on enjoying your life today and in the future, and you don’t take on massive amounts of debt to do it.
How To Murder Your Middle Class Mentality
REALITY IS MY DRUG. THE MORE I HAVE OF IT, THE MORE POWER I GET AND THE HIGHER I FEEL. – 50 Cent
To murder your middle class mentality you need to understand reality. Reality is that there are no rules to life and you can live it as you damn well please. And the most logical way to live is through the pursuit of happiness.
To be able to pursue your happiness unashamedly, you have to understand that you don’t owe the world anything. Because the truth is the world doesn’t care about you. The world isn’t going to be there for you when you’re struggling and rent is due.
The middle class script assumes the world is fair, just and reasonable and that bad things happen to bad people, and that crooked politicians and businessmen always get caught. And that as long as you’re a good boy, and you work hard, and you stick to the script, good things will happen.
You’re taught that the world is fair, just and reasonable – it isn’t. And that as long as you stick to the script and work hard and do the right thing, life will work out for you. And that bad things happen to bad people, and there are no short cuts, and crooked politicians and businessmen always get caught.
But none of that is true, the world isn’t fair or just or reasonable, and bad things can happen to you even if you follow the script to the letter. And bad people don’t always get caught. And ruthlessness isn’t always punished, it’s just as often rewarded.
And in fact it’s these same ruthless people that make the laws, push the propaganda and sell you the middle class dream. Think how much of the mental picture of your idyllic, white picket fence, middle class life, comes from their advertising and movies. And think how many of your political beliefs come from their news outlets.
The truth is, that’s all game being sold to you. When you buy in you’re playing their game instead of playing your own.
The truth is there is no authority, all the institutions and the laws and the rules are just concepts created by men just like you, breathing the same air you do. They’re all illusions.
There’s no path you have to follow and nothing you have to believe in. It’s only your shame and your fear that keep you trapped in the matrix. Nationalism, patriotism and all the other isms. But once you see through them, the world is yours.
It’s like Mom and dad left you at home to go to a party, but you now you realize that they’re never coming back and the house and everything in it is yours. And that the authority you’ve known for your whole life is gone in an instant.
It’s scary at first, like the truth always is. But once it sinks in you realize you have the freedom to do anything. Literally anything you want – you can fly to Brazil today. You can f*ck 20 year olds. You can smoke weed every night in your boxers.
Complete freedom is available to you, you just have to write your own script. And the smartest script is the one that brings you the most happiness and the highest quality of life. And the most logical thing to do is live every day following that script.
Because why not, the elite write their own script, and do whatever the they want, because they know there’s no real authority. So you might as well too, because there aren’t any rules. You’re free to be as you want.
Your new script is about living for yourself. Living for yourself means doing what you want and pursuing your own happiness. Because the pursuit of happiness is the most logical way to live.
The best frame I’ve found for the pursuit of happiness is to look at yourself as a player in the game of life. And your game is to structure your life for the best state available at all times, and always be willing to play for it, no matter the hand you’ve been dealt.
Complaining or wishing things were different won’t help you. Neither will expecting the world to be fair, or just, or reasonable. No, a player in the game of life sees the world for what it is and plays his hand accordingly.
A player looks at reality and what he can do with it. It’s not a belief system but observing what exists outside of the belief system you we’re born into, observing what’s really there and playing around it.
And not falling back into the trap of buying into another ideology. A lot of guys unplug from the matrix only to plug back in to another dream – this is a mistake. A true player doesn’t buy into dreams, he buys into reality.
JOINING THE 1%
When you murder your middle class mentality, you’re joining the outcast class. And I mean that literally, because you’re literally stepping outside of the caste system. And since you’re no longer following the script, it means you’re going to be subject to society’s most powerful control mechanism – shame.
It’s not fun to be shamed, but you have to eat a little bit if you want to live free. If you’re smart about it, you can make the transition to the outcast class as smooth as possible. You do this by broadcasting your new reality as little as possible.
To me however, that’s a tiny price to pay for doing what I love. But before I went public, my lifestyle, at least on the surface was barely different from the average middle class man because I learned to move freely within the system.
You do that by keeping quiet about your reality, especially around family or at work, because people have a tendency to shoot the messenger, or shame him from living the life they want to live. Believe me, the fully invested middle class man does not want to hear this stuff.
And besides, you can’t convert anyone who is not already moving towards freedom.
No, instead you just quietly build the life you want to live and avoid people who get in the way of your dreams. A big part of this is removing yourself from the workplace and from the influence of your family, unless they’re supportive.
Limit the time with anyone holding you back and focus on living the life you deserve and doing what you want to do.
I’m not saying that you can’t have a partner and a family, just be smart about it.
In fact be smart about everything, because you only get one shot at life, so make it count, and live it on your terms, at all times.
You don’t focus on other people any more than you need to, you just focus on living the life you deserve which is…
