Thinking-Rich.com

What’s your salary?

No, really, you can tell me.

Has the money you’ve put into your education paid off in a big way or would you have been better off using it to buy a Taco Bell franchise?

What about your years of experience? Think about the past year you’ve spent at your job, all you’ve done, all you’ve put in, what you’ve learned - most often on your own time - that you’ve acquired to do your job better.

Now try putting a value on that and think about what kind of raise you’re going to get for your efforts. Will it be three percent above the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA)? Four percent? Ten? Or will you consider yourself lucky if your employer actually honors the cost-of-living adjustment at all?

Let’s get wild and pretend I make between $35,000 and $45,000 depending on overtime and moonlighting. Can I live on this? In the area where I live, yes, I can for now. Not a real pretty or adventurous life, but I’m sure not living under the bridge.

But is that amount really worth a year of my life? And looking at my raise, I’ve been told I can hit a high of four percent if I’ve put sufficient time into certain tasks that were not a part of my job when I was hired and are not even hinted at in my job description. Not to mention, this was just decided from On High and applies to this year - whether it’s two weeks to my evaluation or six months. I can’t promise you I’ve been a good enough worker bee to get that raise, because it depends on something that can not be quantitatively measured. And I’m still waiting to hear if that’s above the COLA … I think my email must have been misrouted or something.

So, I’ve laid it pretty bare. What do you think of my financial situation? How about that fast track, huh? Don’t get me wrong, where I live, jobs like this are the upper end for someone like me and I’m sad to say that there are people who live in my neighborhood who would think selling their soul for my job would be a sweet deal.

Letting me wallow in this scarcity mindset a bit longer, let’s go back to my raise. If all works out, I could be looking at a hefty $30 a week increase. I’m just dizzy thinking about what I’m going to do with it. (And did we discuss whether I feel at all spiritually or emotionally enriched by my job?)

Thinking rich tells me that settling for this for a year of my life is as senseless as cutting off a body part to stave off hunger when there’s a free all-you-can eat rib shack down the street.

Yeah, giving your time for money is like donating your organs before you’re dead.

So what about you? Are you letting someone pay you to hate your life? Is the pay worth it?

Enough of that, now. Shake it off. Let’s look at abundance. If you’ve done any reading or even a tiny bit of soul-searching, you know you’re not going to reap the full abundance of the earth by tilling someone else’s field. I can say with complete confidence that I’ll never receive wealth without striking out on my own. And I kind of doubt you’d still be reading this post if you didn’t feel somewhat the same.

The choice of breaking out is yours, of course (Unless … well, let’s not speak of the unspeakable.). And whether you take the big plunge, do it one sneaky step at a time, or content yourself with moonlighting is up to you. It depends on your personality, your savings account, your support system and a raft of other intangibles that you may dream of or fear. But if we’re really going to think rich, we’re going to have to step out of any perceived zone of comfort. Fortunately, we are nowhere near the first to do this. There are true gurus of the “rich life,” well-known and not-so-known, who we can study and pick and choose what works for us. That’s what this blog is intended to provide, but don’t assume that I’ll ever stop asking prying questions about nasty things like your salary and what an hour of your life is worth.

And if you want to stay in your job and focus on enriching other parts of your life, that’s perfectly valid. We can work on that, because abundance will never be obtained by money alone. Just do me a favor and don’t stay in your job banking on security or harboring the fear that you can’t afford to leave it.

And promise me you won’t start planning your retirement on how much you can get from that extra kidney or lung, OK?