The hidden cost of living debt-free

You know, every Tom, Dick & Harry online is preaching about saving and cutting our spending? That standard advice to “always live below your means,” “always hold back on spending,” and those motivational talks on “delayed gratification,” blah blah blah! They’re pretty accurate, but that advice seems to be designed to keep people stuck struggling financially or, at most, barely surviving.

Think about it. Wealthy people barely ever follow that kind of advice.

Haven’t you seen how they lavish on fancy cars and luxury wants like a vacation home? What does that tell you? They didn’t get rich by hoarding pennies and starving to save. No! They leverage the money they didn’t work for in some ways, like inheritance or the most actionable and common; they use borrowed money. Note my word, ‘use’, not 'spend.' That’s a massive difference between the rich and the poor. The poor borrow money to spend on things like rent and irrelevant things to impress society and end up in more debt as interest accrues. The rich, on the other hand, are also hardly debt-free. They take huge debts and invest in businesses or income-producing assets that make them more money.

Remember, one of the key takeaways in the popular Robert Kiyosaki book ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ was saving up your allowance. The saving he was referring to is not saving to spend as most people…