Are you better off today than yesterday?

Pew Research has released a long report on the state of the American mid­dle class, and the punch-line isn’t very good (there’s a short sum­ma­ry too, though you might, as I do, find the num­bers in the long ver­sion inter­est­ing).

The American mid­dle class is los­ing ground as judged by income lev­els as com­pared to the past. Most income growth is going to the wealthy. Those who aren’t wealthy are falling behind.

I believe in The Elephant’s Paycheck because it’s focused on income, not on net worth. It’s hard to fig­ure out how to trans­late net worth into qual­i­ty of life at a day-to-day lev­el (at least, I find it so).

With income, it’s dif­fer­ent.

I can plan to an income lev­el and cre­ate a qual­i­ty of life that’s in line with my income (with­out sac­ri­fic­ing my net worth by liv­ing beyond my means). I find it much hard­er to design my qual­i­ty of life to my net worth.

I don’t feel so wealthy

I look at the num­bers in reports like this, and I strug­gle to inter­nal­ize them. Living in NYC is expen­sive. With two peo­ple work­ing “white col­lar” jobs at big com­pa­nies, we’re obvi­ous­ly in the “upper range”. Being in the upper range real­ly does­n’t say any­thing though about our day-to-day qual­i­ty of life. Simple things, like tak­ing a fam­i­ly vaca­tion or splurg­ing on some hol­i­day gifts have to be care­ful­ly con­sid­ered. Even though they’re the kinds of things you’d think would be “easy” when one has “made it” to the upper income range.

My per­son­al sit­u­a­tion of course is not the point. The point is that I’d like you to be in a posi­tion where you can grow your income streams (and your income) by cre­at­ing an “invest­ing busi­ness”. This “busi­ness” not only gets you a pay­check, it’s a pay­check that grows all the time — with each rein­vest­ment, with each div­i­dend increase, and with each extra few dol­lars that you stash away.

Even though I don’t feel wealthy, I don’t have the same stress that I used to when it comes to finan­cial secu­ri­ty. I can relax a lit­tle because I have a min­i­mum income from my invest­ments that cov­ers a lot of my basic needs. Looked at anoth­er way, my vaca­tion and hol­i­day gifts are ful­ly paid for even before I wake up for work in the morn­ing (regard­less of how the mar­ket hap­pens to be doing at any giv­en moment in time).

Just this week, I got two div­i­dend pay­ments. Since they were rein­vest­ed, I got two rais­es. It’s just cool.

I want you to be cool.

I want you to have less finan­cial stress.

I want you to have fun AND build wealth for your future.

I want you to buy my book.

Seriously though, I want you to have a bet­ter life. Like it or not, a bet­ter life often includes hav­ing a lit­tle more income to get by.

This is prob­a­bly one of my last posts for the year, as I’m on a fam­i­ly vaca­tion lead­ing up into Christmas. Thank you for mak­ing 2015 a suc­cess for The Elephant in the Room has a Paycheck.

I wish you all the best for 2016 and hope you get to enjoy your fam­i­lies dur­ing the hol­i­day break.