The pandemic made individuals reconsider their positions. Many people lost their jobs. Some people want to join the rat race again while some want to escape it forever and are looking at different opportunities instead of doing 9 to 5 jobs to earn their livelihood.
Did you get a thought in your mind about quitting the rat race? But before you act, THINK - Is it the right time to quit the job?
The ideal moment to quit your job is:
- When you have capabilities but do not have much to receive or provide in your job.
- When you have a complete view of the business of the company.
- When you are virtually in charge of the show and feel you could do it better on your own.
- When you know how to deal with business risks.
- When you are an expert problem solver.
If you believe you meet all of the above requirements, you have a chance and you are a budding entrepreneur ready for leap from employee to entrepreneur.
If you do not fulfill any one of the above criteria, then you need to fix that.
How to escape the rat race?
The first step to getting out of the rat race is to calculate your actual monthly expenses. How much does your way of life cost you? The Rat Race Escape equation must include spending with intention. If you've never kept track of how much you spend on a monthly basis? Take a moment to think about it: do you spend $5,000 per month? Do you have a monthly budget of $10,000? How much does your way of living cost you? This is the amount of money you'll need to make, not out of your job but through alternative non-job sources.
Traditional Investments
The first option is to use standard investments to save your way out. This is the most generally recommended route for getting out of the rat race. This includes shares, bonds, mutual funds, and ETF investments. There are risks at the same time. But this is how traditional investing works to get out of the rat race. Build up a large enough sum of money during your working years. The problem is that you won't have to wait decades to save enough money.
Once you have a million dollars in the bank, through the returns from traditional investments, you can comfortably survive on dividends and interest. You would need approximately need $2,500,000 in traditional investment if you spend $100,000 as per Trinity study.
These investment instruments are easily accessible and can be traded using just your mobile phone. These are also highly liquid instruments that allow you to pull out money quickly. The most common drawback with traditional ways of investment is that it takes a lot of time to accumulate wealth or if you want to shorten this time, you will have to invest a higher sum of money.
This path of traditional investing is suitable for people who are high earners who live a relatively inexpensive way of living. In such cases, there is a wide margin that being the gap between what you earn and what you spend. For example, you and your spouse may be earning $300,000 each but the spending is just $50,000, the margin is $250,000.
Considering you start from zero. It would just take 5 years to reach the target of $2,500,000 for two of you. But if you earn just $50,000 and spend $49,000 there is not enough margin to save and hence traditional investing would never get you out of the rat race. In such cases, you can try the second option.
Real Estate
It's enticing since it's simple to comprehend how real estate works to get out of the rat race. It's a simple business model: buy a house, rent it out, and pocket the difference between your monthly expenses and your rent. Buy another, rent it out... Repeat it until you have enough monthly cash flow to leave your job.
Investing in rental properties might help you get closer to financial independence in a number of ways. In contrast to typical stock market investment, you can take advantage of leverage by borrowing money. Whereas twenty thousand dollars can get you twenty thousand dollars worth of stocks, the same twenty thousand dollars in real estate can be used as a down payment on a $100,000 home.
If you own a home worth $1 million or more, you can pay off your loan using rental revenue over the next 30 years. Isn't it true that it's other people's money? Real estate appreciation is the next major benefit. Houses, as you may be aware, are more expensive today than they were a generation ago.
As a result of owning those properties. You can cash in on the appreciation when you sell the house or borrow against the equity to fund future acquisitions.
Additionally, this has a number of tax advantages, including the ability to write off your mortgage and depreciate the properties you own.
Finally, real estate can be a relatively low-maintenance source of income. There is an upfront time investment once you have your tenants and other key team members in place, but there are no trading hours for bucks down the line.
Although property values do not fluctuate as much as stock prices, investing in real assets requires more effort and your capital is less liquid. When you need money, it's difficult to sell a house quickly.
Real estate is typically a money-making opportunity. If the house is unoccupied with no tenants, you'll experience vacancies as a landlord, which will wipe out any positive cash flow you were counting on that month. You'll have to pay for repairs and maintenance too. Also, there could be some unforeseen costs, such as renovations, etc.
People that take a long-term approach to real estate and are devoted to managing several properties. There are several economies of scale that makes life easier especially if you can buy multiple properties in one location. You'll be better prepared to absorb a vacancy or an unforeseen expense as your Empire grows.
Be an entrepreneur
Building a business is a viable means of escaping the 9-to-5 grind. A business is nothing more than a mechanism that solves a problem for money. The good news is that we're all born problem solvers. That is exactly what we do every day. That is to say, in order to come up with a business idea, you must first identify a problem.
Consider what bothers you, as well as the problems or challenges you are facing in your own life. What are the problems that other people bring up with you? Because there could be a commercial opportunity on the other side of those problems. In most cases, the solution will take one of three forms.
1. Create a service that solves the problem. For example, You can employ a house cleaning service if your home is dirty.
2. Create a product that solves the problem. With the same example, you can buy cleaning products to clean your house.
3. Create content that solves the problem. This is the business concept for growing an audience. You have a dirty house, but you can go to YouTube and watch tutorials on how to arrange and maximize your space. When the money from your solution starts to outweigh your cost of living, you'll be able to leave the rat race behind.
What makes entrepreneurship so appealing is that it is the only of these three pathways in which your major investment is your own work and effort. Nowadays, you can establish a business with a fairly low initial investment.
Furthermore, starting a business allows you to focus on something you care about; bringing an idea to life is more thrilling and satisfying than receiving stock dividend payments. And this is in contrast to the stock or real estate markets. You have far greater control over the success or failure of your own company, as well as the rate at which it can happen.
If you construct something at a large scale on purpose, you'll find that entrepreneurship is really time efficient. That is to say when your firm expands, you gain earning power and your effective hourly rate improves.
Job stability is a thing of the past, and we're seeing a trend towards a freelance workforce. There are no disadvantages to developing entrepreneurial skills. Nonetheless, half of all small enterprises fail within the first five years. As a result, it's critical to start small, cut costs as much as possible, and grow at a rate that you're comfortable with. And if and when you fail, it's time to pick yourself up and start all over again.
Building a business is time-consuming, and many entrepreneurs fall into the trap of working in rather than on their company. They believe they have created a job for themselves, although one with a demanding employer who makes it even more difficult to leave.
For most people, entrepreneurship is the most viable rat race escape path, particularly for those who don't have a high-paying job, aren't terrified of failure, and are impatient.
I was just reading about this more and more. And thought, I could share it with everyone. It would serve as a reference for anyone who wants to quit the rat race. Have a great day. Success is Trending.