Myth 2 of 8: You Have To Work Hard For Money
Read previous Myth 1 of 8: I Did Not Graduate So I Can’t Be Rich
Another myth instilled in Filipinos’ minds is…”You have to work hard for money.”
A famous Filipino saying is “Kapag may sipag at tiyaga, may nilaga.”
Did you know that taxi drivers are hard-working? Some of them work 24 hours a day! What about jeepney drivers? The balut vendors? What about your neighbor, your officemate, your spouse, your best friend? Are they hard-working? “May nilaga ba?” Can they stop working today and still make money tomorrow?
What about you, my friend, do working hard and being persistent on your job give you financial freedom?
Filipinos focus too much on working for money that we miss thinking about having money work for us.
Speaking of taxis, I know a guy less than 30 years old who operates about 100 taxis with two partners. With about PHP 1,000 “boundary” per day per taxi, they make PHP 100,000 a day! They put PHP 60,000 back to their business for overhead costs, etc. and divide the rest. That’s PHP 13,333 a day without working hard…that translates to about PHP 400,000 a month!
What actually inspired me with this story was that he just couldn’t get accepted to jobs that he applied for so he eventually ‘ended’ up in the taxi business.
Yes, I do believe in hard work, but I also believe in smart work. I realized that “hard work” should not be a lifetime thing if you eventually make your money and your own talents or skills work for you.
There should come a time when you only work because you choose to, not because you have to. We all deserve it, but I think this can only happen if we increase our financial intelligence and learn ways to have the money we bring in work hard for us.
If others can do it, we can do it too!
“Hard work doesn’t solve money problems. The world is filled with hardworking people who have no money to show for it, hardworking people who earn money, yet grow deeper in debt, needing to work even harder for even more money.” – Robert Kiyosaki
Read Myth 3 of 8: I Don’t Have The Time
