Saving For Retirement Will Not Make You Wealthy | Cashflow Explained

The Financial Guru's make Millions teaching people to live in scarcity. Yep, I'm talking about people like Suze Orman and Dave Ramsey. They've been telling you this:

❌ Get used to living below your means.
❌ Have a plan to work into your 70's.
❌ Stop going to Starbucks because that money you spent on a latte could compound to a million bucks over 40 years.
❌ Pay off your mortgage & cut up your credit cards.
❌ Scrimp and save until you turn 67 and hope you don't outlive your nest egg.
❌ Save all you can and don't spend, be frugal.

They teach people to work their entire life to build up a big ole pile of cash (net worth), then at retirement start taking money out of it and hopefully there will be enough. It's a scarcity mindset that cause people to live in fear of running out, playing defense instead of offense. Saving money isn't a bad thing, its just doesn't create true wealth (freedom to do what you want, when you want).

On top of that, it's not working, the numbers are dire on how much people have saved for retirement, to say that most people are ill-prepared is a massive understatement. The proof is in how few people are actually prepared for retirement, the numbers are dismal. Did you know that only 13% of Americans have more than $300k saved for retirement? That might be great for a 20 or 30 year old but won't last very long if you are approaching the retirement age, and the vast majority have less than that. 

If you are 65 and want to live to 100 (lifespans are increasing), and you want a 6 figure income in retirement, factoring inflation, you'll need a pile of about $4.4 million. That's a massive gap from where people are and where they need to be to live a wonderful life in the retirement years. 

What none of these popular gurus talk about (other than Robert Kiyosaki) is building cash flowing assets.

Yet they have plenty of them 🤔:

✅ Books & royalties.
✅ Sponsors & advertisers.
✅ Courses & trainings.
✅ Franchises.
✅ Real estate.
✅ Brand endorsements, licensing & merchandise.

𝗡𝗲𝘁 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗵 𝘃𝘀. 𝗖𝗮𝘀𝗵 𝗙𝗹𝗼𝘄:

Net worth is how big of a pile you've saved. Cash flow is how much money you or your business has coming in. Instead of focusing on creating a big old pile that can get depleted very quickly once we stop working, we should be learning how to build streams of income that keep cashflow coming in while removing us from the equation.

What I find so concerning is this: we are not taught financial literacy or money mindset in school, we are trained to think like an employee, which is trading time for money. 150 years ago, it was great to have school, not only to teach basic skills, communication and building relationships but also it kept children out of the work force and from child labor. 

Higher education once created a higher status and prepared people to work their way up the corporate ladder while blue collar jobs in manufacturing were left for those who couldn't afford higher education. Perhaps there was a time when school could predict financial success. Those days are long gone now and school far from guarantees success and often leaves an unbearable amount of financial burden for those who are just trying to do the right thing. 

The paradigm has to shift, we need to teach people about money mindset and financial literacy. School won't do it, and the popular financial guru's are either teaching outdated information that applied to the golden age of higher education. We must evolve and teach people how to thrive in the modern day creator economy where there are the tools to not just supplement income but build thriving online businesses. 

One other thing, these financial guru's are teaching people that your home and car are assets (they are not). They are assets on the balance sheet of the bank and they do not provide cashflow, unless you already have a home and car and have additional ones that you can rent out, then it becomes an asset.

Drop in on the High Value Skills Podcast for my latest episode on why savings does not create wealth or abundance, available on Apple and Spotify. High Value Skills that are discussed on this episode: financial literacy, money mindset, cashflow, assets, net worth. 

Also make sure to grab my free guide that shows 7 ways I've created brand new streams of passive income in the last year. Commit to creating at least 1 stream of passive income and start shifting your mind away from 'saving' and trading time for money and building cash flowing assets instead.