- Most of the middle class don’t understand life. They don’t understand how the world works. Most of their income and achievements are due to the dividends of the times, but they mistakenly believe that they have earned them through their own strength.
In a society, as long as you do not control production resources and survive by selling your intelligence and physical strength, no matter what class you are in, you are just an object that can be harvested at any time.
All you need is a wrong judgment, a wrong investment, and the wrong partner, and they will bring you countless problems and eventually consume all the dividends accumulated from all your eras.
So why do many middle-class people fall back into poverty? Because they simply don’t understand what their own position is.
In fact, you can observe Japan. Although Japan is very rigid, there is a group of people who are very conservative. People in small villages and towns mostly have their own shops or fields. Unlike here, these people in Japan control small production resources.
Many young people who cannot make it in Tokyo return home to inherit their ancestral property. These ancestral properties are actually the basis for a stable social status. As long as they have these ancestral properties, they can generate a continuous cash flow.
Do you understand?
The most important thing is the ability to generate a steady stream of cash flow, and the cash flow generated must be greater than your monthly investment, which will eventually form a family business that can be passed down from generation to generation.
If you look at the big families in the United States, the first batch of people, they actually rely on their original ancestral business to survive until now. You can go to all parts of the country and see that as long as there is an "ancestral business", it will not collapse no matter what. You can go to the streets and alleys of the city, sometimes you will see some small shops that have been open for a long time.
The characteristic of this kind of small shop is that they own the shop and the business. No matter how the world changes, they always have cash flow because they can afford to wait.
When the world is prosperous, their business will be relatively good, and the money earned can provide their family with a better life. When the world is difficult, their business will definitely decline, but the money earned can still support the family. The existence of ancestral property maintains the lower limit.
If your lower limit can reach the middle class level, then you are a very difficult target to be harvested. Most of those who are harvested are middle class who rely on labor and intelligence. Any ancestral property that cannot be inherited cannot maintain the family class.
2. Stay away from the trap of consumerism. There is a kind of consumerism trap that is very difficult to detect because its bait is nothing else but "using consumption instead of what you should pay" and then you succeed easily.
The most "grand" trap is probably the establishment of a value system that equates consumption level with personal success, self-identity, and happiness in life. Because the Chinese education system is silent on key topics such as success, happiness, and dreams, the definition of these keywords has been handed over to Internet celebrities, WeChat merchants, and shopping diversion websites.
When you have no dreams, a travel account tells you that quitting your job and flying to Tuscany to grow flowers and raise horses is a dream. You think it makes sense. That’s what dreams are. When you work overtime at home on weekends and your girlfriend dumps you and you feel unhappy, smzdm tells you that sitting on a lazy sofa with HiFi headphones and typing on a mechanical keyboard is happiness. You think it makes sense. That’s what happiness is. When you see your elementary school classmates getting rich and you envy, hate, and crave affirmation and success, the bank tells you that if you apply for this VIP Global Black Card and live in Ritz-Carlton9 and eat bluefin tuna, you will be a successful elite of the times. You think it makes sense. That’s what success is.
In short, you don’t know how you became “middle class”, and then you are coerced into the consumption upgrade wave tailored for the middle class. In fact, whether you are a WeChat businessman, an investor in Zhongguancun, or RenX Daily 9, you don’t know what the definition of the middle class is, because this is originally a concept created to encourage consumption. Those who buy my products are the new urban middle class, and those who don’t buy are migrant workers, referred to as migrant workers.
AND.
Most people are yearning for a "better life", but the definition of a better life has been monopolized by businesses. They provide too many ways to superficially help you solve the ultimate needs of success, happiness, and dreams, which involve the meaning of life. They are just helping you create a dream and then realize it. Success originally requires decades of hard work, dreams must be tempered, and happiness requires constant self-reflection and enlightenment from the daily necessities of life. Now all you have to do is buy, buy, buy, and that's it. Isn't it great?
3. You can lie flat, but you must avoid the five fast lanes that lead the middle class back to poverty:
First place: Too embarrassed to lend money to unreliable relatives and friends. Time to return to poverty: Return to poverty immediately
Second place: Falling back into poverty due to a serious illness, including the cost of treatment and subsequent convalescence expenses. Those with commercial insurance are lucky enough to be able to cover part of the medical expenses, but those without insurance can only spend half of their life savings. Time to return to poverty: 1-5 years
Third place: Children’s education and studying abroad. Most people know whether their children are good enough but are unwilling to admit it, so they spend money and console themselves by saying that their children will “broaden their horizons.” Return to poverty: More than four years
Fourth place: cross-industry investment, including stocks. If you are not too unlucky, at least you can get some money back instead of losing everything. Time to return to poverty: 1 year at the fastest and 3 years at the slowest.
Fifth place: middle-class entrepreneurs, who cannot bear the hardships of the proletariat, have no asset background, and are unfamiliar with the industry, can only end up in a mess. Return to poverty time: half a year to one year
Conclusion: You are not young anymore, so calm your unruly heart, take good care of your body, and hold on to your wallet. The more you fight inflation, the faster you will return to poverty.