{"id":3469,"date":"2010-03-17T12:07:32","date_gmt":"2010-03-17T17:07:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dobermandan.com\/?p=3469"},"modified":"2010-03-17T12:07:32","modified_gmt":"2010-03-17T17:07:32","slug":"free-yourself-from-slavery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dobermandan.com\/blog\/free-yourself-from-slavery\/","title":{"rendered":"Free Yourself From Slavery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Wednesday, 10:45 AM<\/p>\n<p>Dear Friend,<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t really have many outward signs of success.<\/p>\n<p>I live in a middle class neighborhood&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>My uniform of the day is usually jeans, a t-shirt and gym shoes&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t belong to a country club, don&#8217;t hang out in swanky night spots or go out to fancy restaurants.<\/p>\n<p>My mom grew up dirt poor in Mississippi, many times going for days without anything to eat. One time she didn&#8217;t even have any shoes and had to go around barefoot for over a month.<\/p>\n<p>When I was a kid growing up, my mom, sister and I lived a lower middle class existence in Barberton, Ohio. I had no idea we were that far down on the socio-economic scale until I was much older.<\/p>\n<p>When I got older I did what was expected from somebody of my low economic status&#8230; I set my expectations very low and got a dead end civil service job.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s the kind of environment I grew up in. I learned about money by observing what my parents did and said.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s probably the reason I&#8217;ve never really gone hog wild buying the trappings of success.<\/p>\n<p>I guess I do have one kinda cool car. I bought it used. Enjoyed it for a while but now it&#8217;s just a pain in the ass.<\/p>\n<p>The mechanic just called with a $3,000+ estimate for some &#8220;minor repairs&#8221;. I should have known better than to buy a luxury car.<\/p>\n<p>Oh yeah&#8230; one other little &#8220;trapping of success&#8221;&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I bought a Rolex a few years ago.<\/p>\n<p>I lusted after that watch for over 15 years. For me, it represented success. I was so excited when I first bought it. Now it never leaves the house. My $100 Citizen looks great and keeps better time than my $10,000 Rolex.<\/p>\n<p>You see, I&#8217;ve made a lot of mistakes with money.<\/p>\n<p>I seem to have the same problem as Gary Halbert&#8230; it&#8217;s a lot easier to make it than KEEP it.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s how I finally figured out how to solve most of my money problems:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Read and internalize <em>The Richest Man In Babylon<\/em> and&#8230;\n<p><\/li>\n<li>Follow the <em>Doberman Dan #1 Rule of Money Management<\/em>&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If You Can&#8217;t Pay For It In Full&#8230; <br \/> Don&#8217;t Buy It!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Call me crazy, but in my book, that includes your residence, too.<\/p>\n<p>If there&#8217;s a mortgage, note, lien or loan against it&#8230; it&#8217;s not yours&#8230; and the REAL owner can take it away at any time.<\/p>\n<p>Even if you pay on time month after month for 29 years and 11 months and 29 days&#8230; but don&#8217;t make that last remaining day&#8217;s payment of $33.33&#8230; the mortgage holder (the REAL owner) will put you in foreclosure and take your house back.<\/p>\n<p>Trust your uncle DD&#8230; I knoweth of which I speaketh. I learned it the hard way.<\/p>\n<p>The borrower is slave to the lender.<\/p>\n<p>You can&#8217;t be free if you&#8217;re in debt.<\/p>\n<p>So do whatever it takes to get out of debt. Then STAY out of debt with <em>DD&#8217;s #1 Rule of Money Management<\/em>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If You Can&#8217;t Pay For It In Full&#8230; <br \/>Don&#8217;t Buy It!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I know a few guys making $750,000 a year&#8230; and <em>still<\/em> dead broke.<\/p>\n<p>Sure, they&#8217;ve got the new Mercedes, wifey drives a new Escalade and they live in a McMansion&#8230; but I always have to pay for lunch because they don&#8217;t have the $40 to cover the check.<\/p>\n<p>Seriously.<\/p>\n<p>If these guys followed the DD rule, they would be living like I am&#8230; but would have a few million fungolas in the bank.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, they have all the trappings of success (and the back-breaking burden of debt that comes with it)&#8230; and a bank balance of less than $4,000.<\/p>\n<p>Following DD&#8217;s #1 rule of money management means that if you have to drive a 10 year old clunker instead of  that nice new car you can &#8220;afford&#8221; to make the payments on&#8230;\u00a0 you drive  the clunker.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll be honest with you&#8230; it&#8217;s not always easy to do this. ESPECIALLY  when you start making a few bucks. The temptation to show the world you&#8217;re a success is a powerful trap.<\/p>\n<p>Just be patient.<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;ll enjoy buying the trinket 1,000 more when you pay for it in full and truly own it.<\/p>\n<p>So learn from my mistakes. You&#8217;ll not only make a lot of money&#8230; you&#8217;ll KEEP a lot of money, too.<\/p>\n<p>All the best,<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/dobermandan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/dobedansig_sm12.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-65\" title=\"dobedansig_sm12\" src=\"https:\/\/dobermandan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/dobedansig_sm12.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"74\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>P.S. I&#8217;m going to shoot the first video for my <a href=\"https:\/\/dobermandan.com\/the-youtube-30-day-challenge\/\"><em>YouTube 30-Day Challenge<\/em><\/a> later this afternoon. Got any suggestions for me?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wednesday, 10:45 AM Dear Friend, I don&#8217;t really have many outward signs of success. I live in a middle class neighborhood&#8230; My uniform of the day is usually jeans, a t-shirt and gym shoes&#8230;. I don&#8217;t belong to a country club, don&#8217;t hang out in swanky night spots or go out to fancy restaurants. My [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,13],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3469","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-money-management","7":"category-success-mindset"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Free Yourself From Slavery - Doberman Dan<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dobermandan.com\/blog\/free-yourself-from-slavery\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Free Yourself From Slavery - Doberman Dan\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Wednesday, 10:45 AM Dear Friend, I don&#8217;t really have many outward signs of success. 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