Even with a family and a full-time job.

family walking outdoors with the parents lifting up a smiling girl

We are swamped. We are tired. We are worn out. We are overwhelmed. We work all the time but don’t make enough money.

We own a nice house, new cars, and fancy things but still aren’t happy.

We have kids that are educated in the best schools but still worry about paying for their college education.

Sound familiar?

This is the state of the average middle-class family these days.

We went to school, studied hard, got a job with an impressive title and/or salary, and yet we still don’t have what we had hoped for.

Why aren’t we building wealth the way we hoped? Why is everything so hard?

And what can we do about it? Especially those of us with kids and mortgages and other “adult” responsibilities.

Fortunately, there are ways to build wealth that don’t require you to quit your job and try to sell stuff on Amazon full time!

Traditional advice doesn’t help

Most likely you learned growing up, as I did, that your job, your house, and your 401k were the limits of your financial world.

Work hard, get promoted with a better salary — that will bring you the good life!

Buy a big, nice house — it is an investment!

Put your extra money into your 401k so that you can retire, hopefully before you die!

I don’t know about you, but I tried this advice, and it didn’t work as advertised.

Despite having a “good” job, a nice house, and maxing out my 401k, I was building wealth at a snail’s pace.

A few years into living the “middle-class dream”, I decided to make some changes.

I read a lot of books and learned that mainstream advice was never going to get me the wealth or freedom that I desire:

My job was making my boss rich, not me.
My house was not an investment, it was sucking up all my cash flow.
My 401k would grow and help me after age 60, but it would not help me retire early.
Fast forward to today, about 10 years later, and much has changed in my life.

I still have a day job for now, but I have worked to increase my income without requiring a promotion that takes all my time.

I now have four kids that I spend time with every day.

I’ve focused more on my health and have lost weight.

My wealth has grown exponentially, giving me the financial security to the point that I no longer worry about being laid off.

I’m close to financial freedom, where I could walk away from my salary if I choose to.

Read also: How to ferociously increase your net worth to become rich

How did I get here?

Hint — I didn’t follow mainstream financial advice!

And I did it all in my spare time, though it was a lot of work.

Getting Rich Part-Time

We are busy, I get it.

The problem with being too “busy” is that when we do have some spare time, we waste it.

If we are emotionally drained by a bad boss, we just want to “veg out” and watch Netflix.

I understand, I do it too!

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Once you understand how you can build wealth in your spare time, you will be energized again.

This extra energy will allow you to focus on productive activities in your spare time.

Instead of watching Netflix, you may read a book that teaches you how to invest in real estate.

Instead of eating too much junk food, you may talk to someone who can help you understand the tax rules around a type of investment that interests you.

There are several ways to build wealth in your spare time, such as:

investment real estate
stock market
side hustles
You can be successful in all of these areas without quitting your day job or losing your health insurance.

I prefer to look for systems that help me generate passive income and wealth.

I don’t want to spend all my time interacting with customers, flipping houses, or trading stocks. So if you want to get rich in your spare time, look for something that can make you money while you sleep.

My favorite and what I consider the best way for regular people to get rich is investment real estate.

Learning how to buy and manage single-family rental houses can help you build life-changing wealth.

And it can be done in your spare time!

You don’t have to be a full-time real estate agent, you will hire one.

You don’t have to be a full-time property manager, you will hire one.

While it takes a lot of effort to find a good house to buy, owning a portfolio of several properties is not difficult at all.

I spend about 2 hours per week managing my real estate portfolio. This portfolio increased my wealth by more than seven figures last year.

That is over $100,000 per month for about 2 hours of work.

Not a bad return, right?

This isn’t to brag, it is to help you understand that you can do something in your spare time that can make a meaningful difference in your life and the life of your family.

Read also: passive income ideas to get inevitably rich ( highly recommended)

Conclusion

If you follow average advice, you will get average results.

If you aren’t happy with your results, then you need to make a change.

Read, study, learn, and grow.

Find ways to build wealth in your spare time that you enjoy and can get good at.

It takes knowledge and practice, but over time you will find that the results speak for themselves.

In as little as five or ten years, you too may find yourself asking when is the right time to walk away from the day job because you don’t need it anymore.

Isn’t that better than just working all the time, buying an expensive house, and putting what little is left over into your 401k that you can’t really use until you are much older?

I think it is, and I hope you do too.

So what do you plan to do about it?

CONTRIBUTED BY Building Arks with Jason Clendenen

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