The poverty of ordinary people is designed from birth There is less than a 1% chance of breaking the game. This world is a big millstone, and the poor at the bottom are donkeys that grind. The millstone squeezes every bit of the donkey's strength every day, and then transforms this strength into the owner's wealth. Do you think you are accumulating? In fact, the vast majority of people just spend their money. Money flows through your account like water, and your account is just a transit station, you can't keep it at all. The first pump is called to work. Many people have a huge misconception about going to work. They naively believe that going to work is an equivalent exchange. It's fair that the company pays for 8 hours of labor. Actually, this is a complete scam. The company doesn't buy your 8 hours at all, it buys your entire day, or even your entire life. Working for 8 hours, commuting back and forth for at least 1 hour. To ensure that you are energetic at work, you should sleep for at least 7 hours every day. Wash and eat for at least 1.5 hours. 24 hours a day, minus 17.5 hours, there are still 6.5 hours left. Do you think these 6.5 hours are truly your own time? Of course not. Your brain is still occupied by work, thinking about unfinished PPTs, busy clients, and the meeting summary report that needs to be submitted tomorrow. Exhausted both physically and mentally, I just want to lie on the sofa listening to music, watching gossip, scrolling through short videos, and I don't even have the energy to read a book. So you are actually using the vast majority of your life to exchange for that meager salary. But the cruelest thing is that your time is disposable, while the value created by your boss with your time is sustainable and renewable. The second pump is called a consumer. The little money you earned through hard work and sacrifice, before you can keep it warm in your pocket, the water pump you use continues to draw on your salary. Have you noticed a very strange phenomenon? No matter how much the salary increases, from a monthly salary of 3000 to 20000, most people will always be part of the moonlight tribe. Because this world has already tailored a whole set of consumption traps for you. When your monthly salary was 3000 yuan, they told you that young people should treat themselves better. A cup of milk tea worth 30 yuan is the reward you deserve for your hard work. When your monthly salary was 10000 yuan, they told you that life should have a sense of ceremony, and a 5000 yuan bag was a ticket to enter the middle class. When you earn a monthly salary of 20000, they told you that social circles are important, and a set of light luxury furniture worth hundreds of thousands is a symbol of your social status. They use advertisements, internet celebrities, and successful people around you to weave one beautiful and charming dream after another for you. The cost of realizing these dreams is to cross out the newly added number in your bank account. They are not selling things to you, they are defining success for you. And you willingly give up your hard-earned money to make yourself look like a successful person. The scariest part is far more than that. The scariest thing is debt. They know you can't afford it, it's okay, they can lend it to you. A small credit card, a lending app on your phone, and the so-called 'pay before use' policy can allow you to enjoy the future ahead of time. They package debt as a smart way of managing finances, called early consumption. But what they didn't tell you is that debt is a tight shackle they put on you. Once you take on a mortgage, car loan, or consumer loan, you will never dare to resign, say no to your boss, or even get sick again. You have transformed from a free person to a slave of debt. You work hard every day, no longer to achieve your dreams, but to repay your debts. The money you earn no longer belongs to yourself, but immediately flows into the pockets of banks and capitalists. You think you have a house and a car. Actually, it's the house and car that have you. The third pump is the most concealed and deadly, called survival risk. For the impoverished masses at the bottom, life is like walking a tightrope. Wrong, most people just survive and make a living, there is no such thing as a life. And beneath the steel wire lies a bottomless abyss. You must be careful every step you take because there is no safety net. Any insignificant accident can shatter you into pieces. You lived frugally for ten years and finally saved two to three hundred thousand yuan. And a serious illness can take you back to before liberation overnight, even carrying heavy debts. You worked diligently for seven or eight years and finally became a small supervisor. A company layoff can instantly make you unemployed, unable to find a job for several months, and exhaust all your savings. The wealth of the poor is linear and fragile. It can only be accumulated bit by bit and is extremely easy to reset. But the wealth of the rich is networked, elastic, and highly dynamic. Because they have various assets, including stocks, funds, real estate, and company equity. The east is not bright, the west is bright. This project suffered a loss, but another project can still make a profit. A financial crisis may be a disaster for you, but for them, it could be an excellent opportunity to buy at the bottom. Poor people are using their own flesh and blood, exhausted body and mind, to resist all the uncertainties in life. And the rich have already built a strong fortress for themselves, and can even use risks to expand their wealth. What should ordinary people do specifically? Only three steps are needed. The first step is to sell your certainty, not time and energy. The rarest and most expensive thing in business is certainty. Whatever I promise, even if the sky falls, I will complete it before the deadline. Everything I handle does not require anyone to review it, and I can ensure its accuracy and correctness. Wherever I am, chaos will cease and order will be re established. In a world where everyone pursues efficiency and intelligence, stability and reliability are your certainty. All transactions are built on trust, and certainty is the only source of trust. When you have nothing, this certainty is your only and most important primary capital, which is more valuable than money. Money will be spent and diluted by inflation, but your reputation, as long as you don't destroy it with your own hands, will snowball and generate trust compound interest. Don't think about how to earn a million, just focus on how to make the small things at hand more reliable than everyone else. Noble people are not waiting, they are attracted by certainty. The second step is that you must be like an ascetic, constantly accumulating and improving, reviewing and improving, until you become a true expert in a specific field. When you make your first money or win your first promotion by selling certainty, you will find that you are still selling time at this moment. But there are only 24 hours in a day, and time is extremely limited. If you want to exchange limited time for unlimited value and wealth, then you must increase your unit price. There is only one way to increase unit price, which is to become a monopolist in a specific field. When you have nothing, never pursue the so-called slash youth or the so-called polymath. There is no need to talk about work life balance, it is a privilege after owning capital, not an option for proletarians. Be sure to be like an ascetic, locking yourself in a very small field and crazily digging deep until you become the head of that field, the 1% of people. Scarcity is value no matter when and where. But the process of becoming an expert in a specific field is extremely painful. You must quit those fancy and cool hobbies, quit ineffective socializing, and then choose a direction and track to delve deeper. Get up early, try to go to bed early, read, practice, review and improve. Endure loneliness, endure boredom, endure not being understood by family in the short term, even for several years. You have to drip down like water until you penetrate the stone that belongs to you. When you truly become that irreplaceable person, your income will begin to grow exponentially. You will save up the first 100000, 200000, and 500000. And this is your first bucket of gold, and also the beginning of your transition from a linear growth curve to an exponential growth curve. The third step is to build a moat to defend against consumerism and wait for the fatal blow. The vast majority of people, when they earn their first bucket of gold through ascetic like efforts, basically come to an end. Because at this time, they often start to slack off and constantly reward themselves. For example, changing to a bigger house, buying a good car, or traveling around. If we really do this, almost all the previous efforts and accumulation will be in vain. Not only can't they turn over, but they may also be trapped by inflated desires and high debts, and the situation may even get worse than before. Making money is not too difficult, what's even harder is holding onto the money. Countless capital will weave huge webs, constantly changing ways to extract money from your pocket. If you don't have your own moat, your money is like putting it in a funnel, and as much as comes in, you miss out. And guarding the money itself is inhumane. You must avoid consumer debt like avoiding a plague. These debts are not leverage, but shackles. It will constantly deprive you of your freedom. Under this shackle, you dare not lose your job, dare not try new jobs, and dare not say no to your boss. Be sure to treat every dollar as your soldier, not a tool for consumption and enjoyment. When you have ten thousand yuan, what you see is not a branded bag, but an army. Spending it means killing your soldiers, while keeping it can bring you more soldiers. This means that you have to continue living the life of an ascetic while others are enjoying themselves. To continue to endure the questioning of family, the boasting of friends, and one's own inner desires. But all of this is worth it. The fundamental reason why most middle-class people are stuck is that they are like a leaking dam, never able to accumulate enough momentum to change their destiny. When you have done the first two things well and defended your soldiers like a miser, you have transformed from a poor man with nothing to a general with a heavy army. In fact, you are already invincible. And at this point, all you need is one last fire. That's like a cold sniper, firing that deadly shot. When you finally save enough money to enter the capital market, and if you start trading frequently at this point, you will be a fool with a machine gun sweeping around and soon run out of ammunition. Charlie Munger said that he is not a genius at picking stocks, but he is a genius at waiting. What truly makes him invincible is holding onto cash and doing nothing until opportunities arise. Wait quietly, hide your strength and bide your time. When the critical moment comes, be steady, precise and ruthless, and dare to place heavy bets. Qianlong knows how to wait and accumulate strength. If you only have the first savings, don't engage in diversified investments. Diversification is to protect the defenders, not to help those who have turned over. Keep a close eye on the field you know best, wait for the most certain opportunity, and once it arises, send all your soldiers into battle without hesitation. Investing in BTC, gold, Nasdaq, and S&P is enough. If you really understand one thing, it's not a risk anymore. Just as you see a peach blossom blooming on a roadside branch, all you need to do is pluck it. Encouragement together!!!