A Lesson On Wealth From My Nine Year Old In A Dirty Truck

Last Saturday my 9 year old Joshua and I headed over to the car wash after a full morning of basketball.

I played in my game then we rushed over to his game. I love coaching his squad and we beat the last undefeated team in the league.

It was a fun morning. Then we took the truck over to the car wash.

The night before, Joshua and I were at the boat show with my dad, brother, and his two kids.

Joshua saw a wake board for little kids and he asked me if we could buy a wake board for him to learn on this year. He’s been waterskiing for years but we haven’t started him on wake boarding yet.

I asked him how much it was and he said 300 dollars.

I said do you have $300? He replied no. We’ve been working on story problems at school for math so I asked him “How many hours would you have to work to earn $300?”

I take Joshua to work with me to stuff books in packages for $2 per hour. (In fact you may have received a copy of a book he stuffed!)

He started trying to do the division in his head and grandpa was there to help him out.

He finally figured out he would have to work 150 hours to buy that wakeboard. He instantly lost interest because he can hardly work for two hours without coming up to my office from the stockroom asking for something to eat.

I grew up working at my dad’s manufacturing plant cleaning bathrooms for .25$ each. It was miserable dirty work. I learned from a young age the value of work and the value of a dollar.

I also learned that I wanted my money to work for me not the other way around.

So as we went through the car wash I told Joshua “Think about the owner of this car wash. He’s not here today but his company is making him money while he’s at home relaxing. How long do you think it takes us to get through this car wash?”

“2 minutes” Joshua replied.

“Okay and so if it takes 2 minutes then we can get 30 cars through in an hour. We all pay 10$ so how much is he making per hour?”

He quickly did the math, “$300! …That’s a lot!”

“Yeah so with a business you can make $300 per hour and working for me you make $2 per hour. Do you see why it’s important to own a business? In one hour he can buy that wakeboard instead of working 150 hours.”

The light bulb came on.  Then he said “Yeah but he has to pay his people working here right?”

“He doesn’t keep all $300 but he gets a lot of it… And he’s not here working either! He invested his money and now his car wash is working for him instead of him being here working for it.”

That’s why you need your money to be working hard for you. Far too many people save and invest far too little of their income.

The richest man in Babylon teaches an eternal principle that you must pay yourself first. And pay yourself a lot! You are worth it. Sacrifice to pay yourself more than you pay everyone else and put that money to work for you. There are a couple simple ways to do that. First if you don’t have a 101 Plan you need to start here.

If you do, then you can skip to amplify your wealth and go here.

And lastly, if you want to really multiply your wealth by starting a business then click here to learn about our process to build a business starting with just an extra 500$ per month to $5000 per month all the way to a million per year and beyond. We’ve built three million dollar businesses and last year we did over 4 million dollars all starting from my unfinished basement a few years ago.

To Your Wealth and Prosperity,
Brett Kitchen