In his bestselling book, “The Four Hour Work Week“, Tim Ferriss defines The New Rich as those who abandon the deferred-life plan and create luxury lifestyles in the present by harnessing the currency of the New Rich: time and mobility.

This is an art and a science now commonly referred to as Lifestyle Design.

To understand the paradigm shift toward thinking like a “New Richer”, you must understand the truth about what financial prosperity actually is…

Financial prosperity is how many weeks you can buy forward.

• If you have $1,000 to your name, and your living expenses are $1,000 per week – then your prosperity figure is 1 week.
• If you have $50,000 to your name, and your living expenses are $50,000 per week – then your prosperity figure is still 1 week.

You might be thinking, no one needs $50K per week to live on, that’s obscene, that person could just cut down his lifestyle to buy more time… But it’s wise not to judge. Once upon a time, when you were a child, perhaps you spent $20 per week while being supported by your parents. Now as an adult who spends $1k per week, could you divide your expenses by 50 and go back to your former lifestyle?

It’s unlikely!

This is exactly how someone with a $50k per week lifestyle feels about going back to a $1k per week lifestyle.

Once you acclimate to a particular lifestyle, it will become very challenging and stressful to return.

In any case, 1 week worth of prosperity is stressful. It forces an individual to either work, beg, borrow or steal just to stay afloat. Most of the time, they’ll have to sacrifice their truest desires just to pay for food, shelter, clothing and entertainment… and nearly all of the time, they’ll have to sacrifice their mobility as well.

When the entirety of your earnings are exhausted on food and shelter, your labors can no longer be viewed as an opportunity for economic advancement, but rather as an act of self-preservation… In the real world, that’s called slavery.

So what’s the solution?

Build mobile passive and semi-passive income that exceeds your living expenses.

Try this at home

Ask a typical working-classer what an ideal financial objective is. They’ll often mention something about net worth, lump sum cash figures, or a high paying job position. The reality is that even some of the highest paid 6 figure employees, if uneducated on this topic, will have no idea what new rich prosperity even means. I’ve met people who spent years climbing the corporate ladder into very powerful, respected and high paying roles – only to have their lifestyle expenses rise 1:1 along the way. While their current lifestyle is no doubt impressive, they still actually only have a new rich prosperity of 1-3 months. This means if you took away their paycheck, they’d only last 1-3 months before running out of cash.

In my opinion, this isn’t success at all. Besides a 1-3 month buffer they have saved up, their time on earth is nearly entirely governed by their need for cash flow.

Time and Space

In the introductory lesson of Infinite Prosperity (which you can access here) we introduce students to the income matrix. See, all types of income can be measured on a matrix of time and space requirements.

Pure passive income flows in regardless of your time or geographic location (space). There are still mentors and business leaders today who refute the existence of passive income. This is absolute insanity – as any holder of a dividend yielding stock will attest. A dividend is an example of pure passive income. At the time of this writing, if you own shares in the Ford Motor Company, you will receive a 5% annual dividend.

In other words, if you have a million dollars invested with Ford, you will receive a $50,000 per year passive dividend income.

This income keeps flowing regardless of the time and space of your physical body.

At the other end of the scale, pure active income requires both your time and your space. Think of an office job where you need to show up at a specific geographic location at specific times on specific days.

All income methods can be placed at some point in the time/space income matrix.

Income Types

• Mobile: Income that can be generated regardless of your geographic location.
• Non-mobile: Income that can only be generated in a specific geographic location.
• Active: Income that is directly linked to your time input. Anything that pays an hourly rate is active income.
• Semi-passive: Income that requires less than 7 hours per week and is scalable independently of time input.
• Passive: Income that requires no time input.

Income Type Examples

• Patented invention (Royalties): Passive + Mobile
• Write a book (Royalties): Passive + Mobile
• Dividend yielding investment portfolio: Passive + Mobile
• FX Swing Trader: Semi-Passive + Mobile
• FX Day Trader: Mobile (Active)
• Affiliate marketer: Semi-Passive + Mobile
• Blogger: Semi-Passive + Mobile
• Work a job from home: Mobile (Active)
• Work in an office or factory: (Active, Non-Mobile)

Summary

The New Rich is a label given to entrepreneurs who focus primarily on creating businesses and income models that transcend the limitations of time and space. This should not be confused with the many fantasies and gimmicks perpetuated by those who sell “turn key passive income systems”. I already wrote a full blog post on that here.

Creating genuine and sustainable passive and semi-passive income streams was simply not as achievable before the dominance of the internet. In speaking to those who grew up and developed their world view before the world wide web, don’t be surprised if you run into challenge and scepticism when broaching the topic of passive income. Many people cannot fathom it as a real possibility.

If you’re interested in learning more about our philosophies on income and personal finance, I urge you to consider a free membership at Infinite Prosperity! With the free membership, you’ll receive access to our first 2 lessons as well as an education library packed with valuable resources designed to expand your awareness.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to use the support platform located at the bottom right hand side of this page. We’re here to help!