# Master Financial Independence: Jim Rohn's Timeless Wisdom

An episode of [JIM ROHN](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1579900012), 10 May 2025, 20 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/6543d7e8/podcast/play/102456042/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-4-10%2Fabdeb326-3575-ecd3-2e2f-f92cf9fd42aa.mp3

Want financial freedom? It starts with a simple shift in mindset. In this powerful episode inspired by Jim Rohn, discover how to use discipline + compound growth to unlock lasting wealth and control over your life. 🎯 Don’t just listen—act. Download : https://gum.new/gum/cmpuvtj9c000e04gv3jco37h6 This one habit could change everything. Start now.

## Transcript

[0:00] Tired of starting strong and falling off?
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[0:30] through no matter what. So here's the move.
[0:34] Tap the link in the show notes because you don't need more
[0:37] time, you need a better system. And this is it.
[0:41] Let's get into the episode. Now let's talk about financial
[0:45] independence, how to become rich by 4035 if you're extra bright,
[0:51] much sooner if you find an opportunity like I did, let me
[0:54] show you how I did it. Financial independence.
[1:01] First of all, I like the phrase financial independence.
[1:09] Some people are a little bit concerned about using the word
[1:12] becoming rich or becoming wealthy, and I can understand
[1:16] that. I struggled a little bit with
[1:18] this. Is it OK to go for becoming
[1:21] rich? Go for becoming wealthy, and
[1:23] maybe that's a bit too strong a word or strong a term.
[1:26] So here's what I've come up with that I think is comfortable for
[1:29] me, and that is how to become financially independent.
[1:33] I think it's every person's heritage here, especially in
[1:36] America, to become financially independent.
[1:39] Now let me give you my definition of financial
[1:42] independence. Financial independence is the
[1:44] ability to live from the income of your own personal resources.
[1:50] Financial independence, Now it depends on how you want to live.
[1:54] If you need two, $3000 a month, if you need 45000 a month, If
[1:57] you need 10,000 a month. Some people may need, you know,
[2:00] 100,000 a month. But whatever you would need to
[2:03] live and you could earn that living from the income of your
[2:08] own personal resources. That's what I call financial
[2:11] freedom, financial independence. And let me show you how to
[2:15] acquire if you start at age 15, between ages 15 and 35 is 20
[2:24] years. And in my personal opinion,
[2:26] based on my own studies and my own experience, 20 years and my
[2:30] opinion is enough time to become financially independent.
[2:33] If you're not, you don't live in the wrong country.
[2:38] Probably what's happened is you have the wrong plan, and it's
[2:42] easy to be a nice person with the wrong plan.
[2:44] I found that when I was 25 years old.
[2:47] I was broke at age 25 and I was a nice guy.
[2:49] You would have liked me, but I'm telling you, my plans up until
[2:53] then, especially my financial plan, left me broke.
[2:56] I totally changed it the next six years and I became
[2:59] financially independent. So I know what I'm talking
[3:01] about. It is possible in a reasonable
[3:04] amount of time, 15 to 35, whatever. 20 years time, enough
[3:09] time. You can do it in a much shorter
[3:11] period of time like I did if you want to, but this is a
[3:15] reasonable enough time. But here's number one.
[3:17] First of all, you got to have the right philosophy.
[3:22] Philosophy is our ability to gather knowledge and sort
[3:26] through it and decide what's valuable to develop.
[3:29] A philosophy about life, a philosophy about our health, a
[3:33] philosophy about our family relationships, a philosophy
[3:36] about economics. And if you develop the right
[3:38] philosophy, that's what helps to set this sail so that in six
[3:45] years it takes you where you want to go instead of winding up
[3:48] like I did that first six years of my economics.
[3:50] Broke, no money, empty bank account, the right philosophy.
[3:55] Now, let me give you a couple of philosophies to consider.
[3:57] Here's the first one. It's called the philosophy of
[4:00] the poor, and here it is. Poor people usually spend their
[4:07] money and invest what's left. That's the philosophy of the
[4:13] poor. Now here's the philosophy of the
[4:15] rich. Rich people invest their money
[4:19] and spend what's left. And here's the startling answer.
[4:23] It really doesn't matter what the amount is.
[4:26] What's most important is not the amount.
[4:28] What's really important is the philosophy.
[4:32] So I would ask you to adopt this philosophy of spending after you
[4:38] have invested. Invest first, then spend.
[4:41] And I've got a little formula that I'm going to share with you
[4:45] now. What should a child do with a
[4:46] dollar? I mean, there's a lot of debate
[4:49] going on, I'm sure, across the country on what a child should
[4:52] do with the dollar. Here's one opinion.
[4:53] It's only a child and it's only a dollar.
[4:55] What difference does it make? Well, in my opinion, it makes
[4:59] all the difference in the world. A person's economic future
[5:03] starts with a child with a dollar.
[5:06] Somebody says, oh, no, you're only young once, let him spend
[5:09] the dollar. Well, when would you hope that
[5:11] would stop? Somebody says well wait till
[5:14] he's 50 and broke like me and you know, and then he'll learn.
[5:17] Well, no, we don't want to wait that long.
[5:20] If I would have known earlier than age 25, I would have
[5:22] changed in high school. If I if they would have had
[5:26] classes called wealth 1, Wealth 2, I'd have taken both classes.
[5:30] I would not have waited until age 25 S the earlier the better.
[5:35] So what should a child do with a dollar?
[5:37] Here's the simple premise to begin with.
[5:39] Don't spend it all. And if a child wants to spend
[5:42] the whole dollar, you got to say, hey, don't spend it all,
[5:45] you know, don't spend it all. They'll say, why not?
[5:49] It's my dollar, I earned it. You say I know you earned it,
[5:52] but don't spend it all. They'll still say, why not say
[5:55] let me show you why not? So you put them in your car,
[5:58] take them to the other side of town and show them where people
[6:01] live that spend the whole dollar.
[6:03] Just drive them around. Kids learn best by visual.
[6:06] Just drive around and say, would you like to live here?
[6:08] Kid says no, Would you like to live like these people live?
[6:12] Kid says no, no, then you can't spend the whole dollar.
[6:17] So kids will get the message. So, you know, take them the
[6:20] other side of town, show them around unless you already live
[6:22] there and then just show them around anyway.
[6:26] Don't spend the whole dollar. Now, let me give you my best
[6:29] view of what to do with the dollar.
[6:32] And I promise you, if you started at age 15, now, if
[6:35] you're over 15, right, you still got plenty of time.
[6:38] You still got 20 years. You know, if you're 30, you've
[6:40] still got 20 years. I mean, you know, you've still
[6:42] got plenty of time to start. What I'm about to share with
[6:45] you, what to do with a dollar. Here's my first bit of advice.
[6:52] Never spend more than $0.70. Never spend more than $0.70.
[7:00] Now you got to pick some number, and the number you pick is going
[7:03] to be determined by your philosophy.
[7:06] It's going to be determined by what you've been taught or your
[7:08] experience teaching yourself. When I first met my teacher, Mr.
[7:12] Shoaf, I was at about 110% of each dollar.
[7:16] You know, I'm down at budget finance Hawking my furniture in
[7:19] my car one more time. And then I learned a whole
[7:23] better formula for financial independence.
[7:25] Number one, don't spend more than $0.70.
[7:29] Now kids say to me, well OK, what do I do with the other
[7:33] $0.30? And here's what I teach them.
[7:37] $0.10 for charity. Charity or church for helping
[7:44] people that can't help themselves, $0.10 to support
[7:49] worthy projects. Projects that you feel good
[7:52] about. $0.10 out of every dollar.
[7:55] It's called being generous with part of what you've taken out of
[7:59] society. Now in my opinion, nothing
[8:03] teaches us character better than generosity.
[8:07] No class, no teacher, no book teaches generosity, teaches
[8:11] character better than generosity.
[8:13] And the best time to start is when the amounts are small.
[8:17] And I know if kids learn these lessons well, they'll give a
[8:20] dime out of a dollar, help people that can't help
[8:22] themselves, support worthy projects.
[8:25] Or if you belong to a church, they teach tithe piece of.
[8:28] That's very important now because when the amounts get
[8:33] larger, sometimes it's a little more difficult, you know, giving
[8:36] 100,000 out of 1,000,000. Someone says, oh, if I had a
[8:38] million, I'd give 100,000. I'm not sure that's a lot of
[8:41] money. So the time to start is when the
[8:44] amounts are small, $0.10 out of the dollar.
[8:47] OK, next $0.10 I call active capital.
[8:53] Active capital means do something to make a profit.
[8:58] Active capital, set aside a portion of your income.
[9:03] Wages are OK, but I'm telling you wages will make you a
[9:06] living, Profits will make you a fortune.
[9:09] So set aside part of your income as capital called active
[9:13] capital. Any kind of projects you can
[9:16] possibly think of, you can possibly come up with.
[9:18] I'm going to write a new book, I think for kids.
[9:20] I think the title is going to be, of course, kids should pay
[9:23] taxes. It's kind of an interesting
[9:25] title. In California, kids do pay
[9:27] taxes. When a child walks into 711,
[9:30] buys something that costs a dollar, the proprietor says give
[9:33] me 7 more pennies. And the child says hey, what's
[9:37] these 7 pennies for? And the proprietor says that's
[9:39] the taxes. Kid says well hey, I'm only 8
[9:42] years old. Proprietor says congratulations,
[9:45] you're my youngest taxpayer, give me the money.
[9:47] So in California where I live, kids do pay taxes.
[9:51] Big question is should they? And my book will answer that
[9:54] question. Of course kids should pay taxes.
[9:56] Nothing is for free. If you want to ride your bicycle
[9:59] on the sidewalk instead of in the mud, you got to pay the
[10:02] seven pennies. Nothing is free, so we all have
[10:06] to pay. So $0.10 out of your living, out
[10:12] of the money you earn, set aside for capital.
[10:15] Capital to try your best to show a profit.
[10:20] And in my books, going to be all kinds of ways kids can make
[10:22] money. Ride 2 bicycles, one to ride and
[10:24] one to rent. I mean, you know, it doesn't
[10:26] take long to figure out some enterprise that'll start making
[10:30] a profit. Then you must jot this down if
[10:33] you're taking notes. Profits are better than wages. 1
[10:38] You can't usually start wages until you're about 161516, but
[10:43] you can make a profit long before you're eligible to start
[10:47] earning wages. And then there's no limit to
[10:49] profits. And they can, they can double
[10:51] and triple and quadruple. You know, there's no limit.
[10:55] It's incredible how fast profits can grow.
[10:58] So profits are better than wages.
[11:00] Wages make you a living, Profits make you a fortune.
[11:04] Now the 3rd $0.10 is vitally important.
[11:07] I call it passive capital. Capital, you let somebody else
[11:12] use a financial institution, stocks and bonds, mutual funds,
[11:17] whatever, Let someone else use it.
[11:19] You furnish the money. They use it to make a profit,
[11:22] but they pay you for the use of it called interest.
[11:25] And here's one of the things that'll make you financially
[11:27] independent fairly quickly, and that's called compound interest.
[11:32] And this is how you get it. Letting someone else use a
[11:35] portion of your honey, your substance, they show the profit,
[11:41] they pay you interest. And this passive capital, I'm
[11:44] telling you over a sustained period of time, if you'll
[11:47] develop this little 10/10/10 and 70, especially starting at age
[11:51] 15, I'm telling you by the time you're 35, you will be
[11:54] financially independent. You'll have the ability to live
[11:57] from the income of your own resources.
[12:00] And then one more point on passive capital.
[12:02] There's a Bible philosophy, I'm an amateur on the Bible, but
[12:06] there's a Bible philosophy that teaches the borrower is servant
[12:11] to the lender. And if you want to be in a
[12:14] powerful position as you grow older, finally when you become
[12:18] mature, maybe have your own business, things have worked out
[12:22] for you for the future, the position you always want to be
[12:24] in is the power position, and that's called the lender.
[12:28] The lender is the power position.
[12:30] So if kids learn early enough and then you ask them what
[12:32] they'd like to be when they grow up, I'm telling you, once they
[12:35] understand, they'll say, well, one of the things I want to be
[12:38] is one of those lenders. That's the power position, not
[12:41] the spender. No, you'll be pitied the rest of
[12:44] your life if you just become a spender.
[12:47] You got to become a lender. And I think this is the one.
[12:49] Formulas to follow, $0.10 out of every dollar.
[12:53] Let someone else use it. Be the lender power position,
[12:56] then try to show a profit. Can't we teach our children how
[12:59] to take a dollar? Search the neighborhood, find a
[13:02] broken wagon, pay a dollar for it, bring it home.
[13:06] You know, clean it up, sand it until it's clean, paint it red
[13:10] till it shines, Straighten out the wheels.
[13:12] Still there. True.
[13:13] Take it back to the neighborhood, sell it for $5.
[13:17] Anybody can do that. Now, Does the child deserve
[13:20] $4.00 profit? And the answer is yes.
[13:21] Society now has a mended wagon. That's what America's all about.
[13:26] Finding something, touching it, making it better, making a
[13:30] profit, taking part of your resources, helping people who
[13:33] can't help themselves. Let someone else use it to make
[13:35] a profit. Some projects require more
[13:37] capital than one person has. Exciting.
[13:41] And then let them pay you for the use of it.
[13:45] America's had this philosophy. Now, all these years communism
[13:48] has taught, all these years, capital belongs in the hands of
[13:51] the state, not in the hands of the people.
[13:54] We've been teaching all these years capital belongs in the
[13:56] hands of the people, not in the hands of the state.
[14:00] And we turned out to be right. Capital in the hands of the
[14:03] kids, capital in the hands of the people.
[14:05] Enterprises that make a profit, enterprises that grow.
[14:09] It's the hope of our future. So that little simple formula I
[14:13] hope will help you. Now, one more key on financial
[14:15] independence, and that is attitude.
[14:19] Attitude. Here's number one.
[14:23] I used to say I hate to pay my bills.
[14:27] My teacher straightened me out on that.
[14:29] He said, let's see, Mr. Owen, what you hate to do is pay $100
[14:31] on an account and reduce your liabilities and increase your
[14:35] assets. I said, well, no, not if you
[14:37] look at it that way. He said, well, it all depends on
[14:41] how you look at it. So wouldn't you love to pay your
[14:44] bills, reduce your liabilities, increase your assets?
[14:47] You got to have that kind of attitude.
[14:49] I found out the same attitude about taxes.
[14:51] I used to say I hate to pay my taxes.
[14:53] And Mr. Schiff said, well, that's one way to live.
[14:55] But don't you understand? Taxes is how we care and feed
[14:58] the goose that lays the golden eggs.
[15:00] Wouldn't you want to do your share?
[15:02] Someone says yes, but the goose eats too much.
[15:04] Probably true, but hey, we all eat too much.
[15:07] We all need to go on a diet. Better a fat goose than no
[15:10] goose. So I finally became a happy
[15:13] taxpayer. Now I think taxes are too high,
[15:15] so I'm working to get taxes lowered for our economic future.
[15:19] But then, whatever they turn out to be, I gladly pay and do my
[15:23] part. Because that's what makes the
[15:24] whole system run, each of us doing our part.
[15:28] Now I want these three subjects to be valuable for you.
[15:33] I want them to have meaning for you.
[15:35] I want you someday to be financially independent.
[15:39] I want you to have the personal development so that you feel
[15:42] good about yourself. If I had a chance to meet you
[15:45] someday, I'd like to have you show me the list of goals that
[15:48] you got started and say Miss Drone.
[15:49] Here's some I've already checked off.
[15:52] Here's the books I'm reading. Here's what's happened.
[15:55] I'm developing the skills. I'm better this year than I was
[15:57] last year. I've got more self-confidence.
[16:00] My skills are developing. That's what I want for you and
[16:04] that's why I took the time to come and share in this video
[16:07] message with you. I do seminars all around the
[16:10] world, but this is one way that I can reach out and touch you in
[16:14] case you can't come to my seminars wherever I am.
[16:17] Maybe this video will reach you somewhere and it'll have an
[16:20] impact on your life. And what I'd like to do is later
[16:23] hear about it, a letter, phone call, or to have a chance to
[16:27] meet you in person. And now I'd like to leave you
[16:30] with these four questions called questions to Ponder.
[16:35] These questions were valuable for me and I want to make them
[16:38] valuable for you. Here's the first one.
[16:40] Why we all ask why we should work this hard?
[16:45] Why take that many classes? Why go to school that many
[16:49] years? You know, why take the notes?
[16:51] Why read the books? Why work that hard?
[16:54] Why put yourself through the push ups and the disciplines?
[16:57] Why? Good question.
[16:59] Why? Best answer to why, I think is
[17:02] the second question. Why not?
[17:05] Why not see how many books you can read, how many classes you
[17:08] can take, how many skills you can develop?
[17:10] Why not see how valuable you can become to the marketplace and to
[17:13] your friends and to your family? Why not see what you can make of
[17:18] yourself? Why not see how far you can go,
[17:20] how much you can see, how much you can earn, how much you can
[17:24] share? Why not?
[17:26] That's the heritage all of us have in America especially, is
[17:29] to see what we can make out of our lives now that we've been
[17:32] given this extraordinary opportunity.
[17:36] Now my third question, I'd love to ask you in person, but since
[17:40] I can't do it in person, I want to ask it of all of you, but I
[17:43] want you to take it personally. And my third question is, why
[17:46] not you? Why not you with good self
[17:51] esteem? Why not you starting to change
[17:53] and setting goals? Why not you starting to make
[17:56] progress toward financial independence?
[17:59] If I can do it, you can do it. I wished I had a lot more
[18:02] testimonials here today besides mine.
[18:05] A whole steady stream that would come by and tell you their
[18:08] story. Someone who started with nothing
[18:11] finally run a big enterprise. A mother who was on welfare.
[18:15] Now she owns her own business. In addition to my story, I wish
[18:19] I had a lot more. And if all of them told their
[18:22] story, guess how they would probably wind up their story?
[18:24] They'd probably say, just like me, why not you?
[18:27] If we can read, you can read. If we can change, you can
[18:29] change. If we can figure it out, you can
[18:32] figure it out. If we can turn it around, you
[18:34] can turn it around. There isn't anything you can't
[18:36] accomplish. That's what those testimonials
[18:38] would say. And so I want to say it to you
[18:41] personally. Why not you?
[18:42] You, you've got the brains, you've got the the stamina,
[18:46] you've got the vitality, you've got the interest, you've got
[18:49] your life ahead of you. You've got the future.
[18:51] You can do it. If anybody can do it.
[18:53] You can do it. If one of us can do it.
[18:54] Hey, we all can do it. And now here's my last question.
[18:59] Why not now? This is a good time as the 20th
[19:03] century starts to wind down a few more years as we get ready
[19:07] for century 21. What a good time to set your
[19:10] goals, work on yourself, work on your skills.
[19:13] What a good time to get it together, What a good time to
[19:17] start this process, personal development, growing, changing,
[19:21] developing, having a good plan for your money and for your life
[19:25] and for your future. Why not now?
[19:29] And I hope I have a chance to see you one of these days and
[19:31] share with you the experience, the reaction, response you might
[19:35] have had from my message today. And until I get a chance to see
[19:39] you on this side of the world or the other side of the world, in
[19:42] some school or some seminar, or maybe I'll come and speak for a
[19:45] company that you work for someday, I hope I get a chance
[19:48] to meet you. Until then, I wish you the best.
[19:51] I want all that I've gotten to be yours and much, much more.
[19:56] God bless. Goodbye.

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