Teach me how to break free of 9 to 5 drudgery


Your life is a set value. You have 60 seconds in each minute, 60 minutes in each hour, and 24 hours in each day. Adding things up, hour after hour, day after day, year after year, you’re only guaranteed today, and a lifespan of 80 years or so is only a theory. What would you do differently if you knew you were done at 50? How about at 60? Life goes by fast. Why are you spending so much of your life giving up your hours to an entity other than your loved ones? Money? Yeah, no. Want to know how to break free of the 9 to 5 drudgery of the working poor? You only have a given number of hours on this planet, what is each one of them worth to you?


What is one hour worth to you?

I live in British Columbia, Canada, so here’s the stats for a useful consideration.

Minimum wage in British Columbia went up to $13.85 recently, that’s the third hike in as many years. By June 1, 2021, the minimum wage per hour is mandated to climb to $15.20 per hour. Let’s run that out to the nines…

A standard work week is 35-40 hours. There are 52 weeks in a year.

35 hours x 15.20 per hour $532.00 Gross Pay per week

$532.00 x 52 weeks = $27,664.00 Per year. Not bad, a single person without kids could do ok on that wage, if they were careful.

BUT! Don’t forget about the mandatory deductions.

CPP – 5.10 % of your Gross Pay = 5.1% x $27,644.00 = $1409.85

Employment Insurance – 1.62% of Gross Pay = 1.62% x $27,644.00 = $ 447.84

Assuming you have no other source of taxable income, the income tax you pay will be about 15% (generally) of your gross pay as well, so $27,644.00 x 15% = $4146.60 (approx.)

Following along here?

That’s $27,644 – $1409.85 – $447.84 – $4146.60 = $21639.71 If two parents are working in the home, that’s about $40,000 of spendable income that has to cover housing, vehicles/transportation, medical and health concerns, education, food, the list is endless.

So I ask again, what’s the value of one hour to you? Keep in mind that I am in my mid forties, and can be reasonably assured of another 40 years on this planet. Our time is finite. Our worth is not.

Can you see the prison walls that you live within?

Trapped. Can’t get out. Banks win, institutions win, corporations will always win, but how do we win at life? I know it’s not a numbers game, but to break free of the cages we allow ourselves to be led into, what’s that worth?

I’ll be the first to admit that this is a very posh prison. But it is a prison. Our time is not our own. Our money is not our own, at lest not most of it. As I detailed above, even before we get to touch the money we earn, twenty percent of it is handed over to our government. Now, this might be different for different countries, but I don’t live there, so bear with me.

Society expects certain behaviours, if you want to be accepted, you have to behave as expected. Regulations beyond measure are being enacted and enforced each and every day; regulations that often curtail our very lives before we even know that our freedoms are being sacrificed for the greater good.

However, not being in politics or law enforcement (not directly anyhow), all I can do is point out the social confines that we’re living within. Most of us are taught that you go to school, then secondary training (university and student loans anyone?), and finally, you get a mediocre career that will pay you by the hour to spend your life for the betterment of a company that will replace you in a heartbeat if you’re not there.

What if I told you there was a better way?

Truly, there is a better way. No matter how much you make, and all considerations of minimum wage side (despite more than half the population I know earning at or barely above minimum), your earning potential from an hourly paid career has an upper finite limit. At most you get 5824 hours per year, that’s seven days per week, stopping only for eight hours each day to sleep. Sound like a good life? Even at $300 per hour, which is what laywers around here usually charge, that’s a maximum upper limit of 1.7 million, which under Canada’s tax laws, leaves you with just under a million net income.

While I would love to earn that in a year, it’s still bound by the laws of time and energy. There’s a better way. Selling your expertise in time set slices will only ever get you so far. But how about creating an asset that will generate income for you, limited only by how much you want to build your asset base?

There are basically three ways to put such assets to work for you:

1- Setting up an expertise or passion focused blog and monetizing it, as detailed at Weathy Affiliate or other such sources (WA is not just about affiliate marketing, they teach you the whole spectrum if you’re willing to sit down and learn it). Check it out here.

2- Produce something (think book, course, imagery, music, etc) that you can sell again and again. Time committed once, sold as many times as YOU can market it out.

3- Advertising revenue, drop shipping, re-marketing, etc. Basically you get to take a chance on a business, and without putting anything up front, you might just make a go of it once it’s set up and automated.

Want a shot at greatness?

As I started out with, life has a defined limit. You’re going to die. Period. Why spend the intervening time bettering somebody else’s fortunes?

Do some soul searching over the next few days, and figure out what makes your heart beat faster and get’s your adrenaline coursing through your body. Then when I come back to it here, we can talk about next steps. But let’s start simple.

You are already an amazing person, it’s time to tap into that greatness and become the force you were put on Earth to be.

Step One: Change your mind, change your world

Step Two: Start at the beginning, with the ends in mind.

Step Three: Define your prison so you know where to break out of.

Step Four: Define your freedom, after all, how will you know where to aim for if you don’t have goals?

Step Five: Plan your breakout. Knowing everything you know and with the sites, training and such that I’ll go over in the next few posts, you can plan and act on those plans so that your world will be changed.

So, that was a lot of words, sorry about that.

Until next time.

DFTBA and have a blessed day.

Duke.

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