One day my dad told me "I am retiring!" My parents have a farm and my dad has business as a land surveyor, as such he has worked every day of his life. Therefore my first question was "What does that mean to you?" He smiled and said "I am doubling my hourly rate!" A few years later I asked how is retirement and he commented "I have more work now than I did before, it seems people think I am more valuable now and want my services that much more."

This is an interesting subject as it points out how retirement has different meaning to different people. Generally people look at retirement as when they do not have to work for money. Specifically it is often based on a graph like this one:

Here when your investments make enough money such that it can support you for the rest of your life then you can retire.

What I find interesting is what happens to people when the blue line crosses the red line. This inflection point in peoples life is when I start noticing a change in their wealth mindset. That is they start thinking about time and money vastly different than they might have before.

I did not understand this wealth mindset (my blue line was still dominate) until I talked to friend, who was much younger than me but already had his investments dominate. He made comments like "No I am not taking that contract, as I do not like the guys." That is he was turning down work because he did not get a good feeling. It was not about the pay rate or if he needed the work but rather how decent the people were. As I talked with him more I found out that he turned down more contract work than he accepted, yet had a full schedule of work. He basically said I do a good job for a reasonable price so I have work. Could It be that he could do a good job because he worked with good customers?

Specifically because he had the mindset he did not have to take work and turned down bad customers, he actually had more work and customers.

This concept has been said several ways one I heard was if you have $100M making 10%, $10M, from it is inevitable, however if you only have $100 it is extremely hard to make it earn you 10% ($10). This concept basically says that owning money is not linear, but exponential like the red curve above. However it is even beyond this as my friend proved that by having certain mindsets promote the exponential growth. This is why the wealthy not just remain so but grow more wealthy.

Some have called this "the wealthy mindset" others have said "think rich grow rich". Whatever you call it the reality is that it exists.

So what can you do if your blue line is dominate? The first thing is make friends with someone who has the wealthy mindset. Just talking with these people help you, but also asking them for advice. The interesting thing is most people want to help others who want to learn. So the wealthy people have no need for money, therefore they are often get more reward from seeing you grow and helping you than you get. I heard once "Show me your friends and I will show your your future." Pick your friends wisely.