I don’t have a money tree. However, I do possess a Luck Making Machine. You might be reluctant to believe me. But trust me, it is true. I have a Luck Making Machine.
With this machine, I can create luck out of thin air. I bring my Luck Making Machine everywhere I go. It doesn’t take much to keep it running smoothly, even in the most difficult conditions. I don’t need electricity or gas to power it’s intricate engine.
At this point, I expect you are doubting what I’m claiming. That would be a perfectly rational response.
But before you pass judgment, let me show you how I use my Luck Making Machine. Then you will believe me.
The best example of my Luck Making Machine’s pure power is my early retirement at age 33. I didn’t have to do anything beyond adjusting my Luck Making Machine to the right settings to enable my early retirement. Our brokerage account and 401k balances miraculously increased from near nothingness to seven figures.
The Luck Making Machine Makes Us Wealthy
Don’t get me wrong. The Luck Making Machine didn’t just go “poof” and make our investment accounts jump up to million dollar territory in the blink of an eye. Obviously the Luck Making Machine had to do more than that to fulfill my wishes. For starters, it gave me and Mrs. RootofGood excellent jobs. Throughout the years, the Machine kept us gainfully employed, and even provided generous raises and bonuses in some years. These weren’t ordinary jobs. These were jobs with good benefits like 401k matches, inexpensive health insurance, and supplemental retirement savings plans. The kind of jobs you can only get if you have a Luck Making Machine like us.
The Luck Making Machine didn’t stop at providing us with good jobs that paid a decent salary. It also diverted more than half our generous salaries into various savings and investment accounts. Even though we were living on less than half our salaries, thanks to the Luck Making Machine we still enjoyed a fairly comfortable standard of living. Without our Luck Making Machine, we would never have thought about saving so much money.
The Luck Making Machine didn’t exactly create those jobs for us and mystically implant us in the particular companies we worked for (that’s ridiculous, after all). But the Luck Making Machine did get us started on the right foot by granting us some undergraduate and graduate degrees from real universities. We were fortunate (some might say “lucky”) that we didn’t have to work hard and study to obtain these degrees. No one wants to work hard to succeed. It is much better to get lucky repeatedly throughout life. Having a Luck Making Machine is where it’s at.
Through pure luck, we were able to get solid college educations in fields that would allow the Luck Making Machine to place us in careers that would pay well. And then through more luck we saved more than half our incomes. But as we all know, even a Luck Making Machine can’t just “cause” us to save over half our incomes. Even the Luck Making Machine is constrained by the laws of mathematics. Here’s how the Luck Making Machine brought about our high savings: it kept our spending very low.
The Luck Making Machine Slashes Our Expenses
Let’s take a look at housing. The Luck Making Machine was in overdrive when it came time to provide us with a house. Some people research an area, identify the key attributes they are searching for in a residence, and then make a decision by weighing the various factors they decide are important in a home. Given the availability of our Luck Making Machine, we didn’t have to think about where to live. Sure enough, we lucked out.
Our house was somewhere between a quarter and a half of the cost of median priced houses within a few miles of our neighborhood. The house our Luck Making Machine chose is less than a 10 minute drive from downtown. Thanks to our Luck Making Machine, we don’t even have to get in the car to run errands, shop, dine or be entertained. We can walk to the grocery store, the library, the community center, two city parks, our kids’ elementary school, dozens of restaurants, a hardware store, multiple Latino grocery stores and Asian grocery stores, discount stores, and auto parts stores. Or we can walk a half mile and catch one of many bus routes that can take us all over the city (for $1). What luck!
Just today I was expressing my gratitude toward my Luck Making Machine for picking a house located on a small lake here in the city. I was watching a hawk circling the lake, when it swooped down for some delicious prey. Once I got the binoculars, I realized I was looking at a vulture (that looked like a hawk from below) who was eating something dead. A possum. Yeah, it was a little gross. But through the lenses of the binoculars I also spotted some huge turtles crawling in the mud, a great blue heron stalking fish, and a variety of other waterfowl floating around. Who wants to leave the house when that is your backyard?!
Without our Luck Making Machine guiding us, it would have been impossible to locate a house that was affordable, conveniently located in a relatively safe area, and situated on a mini wildlife preserve. We are able to save lots of money on gas since everything is so close to where we live. And we can watch the wildlife from our back porch or living room for free.
Thirteen years ago when we decided to buy our new cars, the Luck Making Machine guided us to two highly reliable fuel efficient cars. Our Honda Civic and Honda Accord have served us well since then. Operating costs have been very low. Auto expenses other than gas have been mostly routine maintenance items including fairly inexpensive tires. Both cars still get over 30 miles per gallon on the highway. Insurance and property taxes have remained low as well. How fortunate are we that our Luck Making Machine didn’t force us to buy a pair of Lincoln Navigators or Cadillac Escalades? We avoided autos that cost three or four times the purchase price of our modest yet reliable sedans. And we probably avoided a doubling of our operating costs over the last 13 years. Thanks again sagacious Luck Making Machine!
The Luck Making Machine gave us tons of free travel and free cash. I can’t tell for sure, but I’m fairly certain the Luck Making Machine figured out a way to apply for a bunch of credit cards in our name and then let us use the airline miles and hotel points for free vacations for our family. The Luck Making Machine calls this “travel hacking”, whatever that means. How kind of the Luck Making Machine!
Luck Making Machine: Myth or Reality?
By this point I expect you are convinced beyond any reasonable doubt that our Luck Making Machine is real and that it has greatly benefited us throughout our entire lives. To think otherwise would mean you are dismissing this entire article as mere satire. As nothing more than poorly phrased sarcasm.
Believe me, the Luck Making Machine is real and fully operational. It isn’t exactly a machine in the physical sense, like a vacuum cleaner, computer, or lawnmower. But it exists nonetheless. Some might describe it as an algorithm or process instead of a physical machine. You could almost call it a mindset. Whatever you call it, it’s still a machine. It reliably spits out bits of good luck year after year. All you have to do is listen to the Luck Making Machine for advice.
I can hear you thinking “this Luck Making Machine sounds really great!”. Are you interested in getting one for yourself? The good news is you can get Luck Making Machines for free. Even better news is you probably already have one. Look around your house, your car, and in your couch cushions. Dig down really deep inside yourself. You’ll probably find it somewhere. Yours might not generate as much pure luck as ours does right now. After all, it takes years of experience to really know how to optimally use your Luck Making Machine.
Why not give it a try now? Before you make a big decision, consult your Luck Making Machine. Ask it what you should do or how you should approach a problem. It might tell you to do some more research. Maybe it advises you to put together a spreadsheet or analyze the pros and cons of particular choices. As long as you listen to your Luck Making Machine, you should slowly increase your luck over time.
I have a Luck Making Machine and so do you.
What has your Luck Making Machine done for you lately?
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I guessed that you were going to say “your brain” about two paragraphs in! Is that close enough to win a prize 🙂
My luck making machine has only really been working overdrive in the last few years but in those years it has caused me to buy a house, get married, and get 2 big wage increases at work.
What a lucky b***ard, eh?!
Recently it has caused me to start working on the blog more and as luck would have it my traffic is starting to rise nicely. What a great machine to own!
It’s amazing how you can create your own luck.
Really enjoyed this! It’s amazing how wonderful and efficient that Luck Machine really is…
Mine also helped me get: a great education without student loans, a stable job with a nice salary, a spouse who thinks about money the same way I do, a significant investment balance just by putting money away each week regularly, an inexpensive house in the best school district in our area, and so on and so on…
I’ve really been fortunate to have that Luck Machine as I don’t know what I’d do without it…
I have to give a shout out to Jeremy at Go Curry Cracker. His take on “luck” is what gave me the idea for this post. His article on the “luck” of finding an ideal place to live (kind of like what we did) is here: http://www.gocurrycracker.com/home-sweet-home/
I love Go Curry Cracker!
Haven’t had time to go through their archives yet though. I’ll get straight to it tomorrow I think, getting late here now!
I love Go Curry Cracker too! 😉
The luck machine has done a lot for us. Some things we haven’t earned, like being born in an affluent country where we could do things like go to school instead of selling trinkets to tourists or carrying fresh water miles each day. But once you have basic needs met, the noodle is a powerful weapon.
Mrs. RootofGood didn’t even have the being born in an affluent country. A plane ticket to the US (out of the refugee camps) at age 7 was when her luck making machine first functioned properly.
I suppose this disproves our theory that bald heads yield greater luck 😛
She had lice in the camps. Soon after they had to shave her head to clean her up. Maybe the bald head worked its magic?
There’s some good reading at Go Curry Cracker, particularly if you are interested in the perpetual traveler lifestyle. Jeremy also paid me 3 gorditas to say all this. 🙂
They are in the mail
Surely you were just extra lucky to have retired at 33:)
You’re probably right. Without luck, I would have been at least 36 or 37 before I retired. 😉
This reminds me of a couple of years ago when I quit a job to go hiking. A couple of people remarked how “it must be nice” to be able to do that. Since they made the same money as me they could have done the same thing. They weren’t willing to save money and avoid ongoing obligations like I did so I’d be able to afford to hike.
I’m using my luck making machine now on my plan to retire early. I’ll be about 20 years older at retirement than you are though; I should have started using my luck making machine earlier.
It’s nice to plan for something like taking an extended break to go hiking. Using that luck making machine is a great way to reach your goals. It’s amazing how the luck making machine tells you to save money toward your goals.
I would love to have a luck making machine working it’s magic in the background as I went about my life. I’m one of those saps that thinks that we make our own luck 🙂
It is a nice thing to have! Just look around, you may have one laying around somewhere.
My luck making machine wakes me up every morning at 4:30 to work on my side hustles for 2 hours before getting ready for work!
Your Luck Making Machine is like my kid. Waking me up at 4:30 am that is.
Seriously, that’s some devotion. I always wondered how successful bloggers with full time jobs do it.
Woah… I need to up my game!!! Alarm set for 4am tomorrow!
Same here! I’ve tried as early as 6:00 AM… maybe I need to step up my game too!
I like this a lot. My luck making machine helps me to see 2 or 3 moves beyond the decision I’m making now, and that helps me decide if I really want to proceed or not. That has been handy for both the job I have now as well as my online activities.
Good thing you have that Luck Making Machine! Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to think beyond the immediate decisions you face today! 🙂
Love this, Justin. So many people use the excuse of “bad luck” for the troubles they have – financially and otherwise – but once you learn to use your “luck-making machine”, you understand what a bunch of hooey that is.
Every so often, you have bad luck. No one has a 100% successful luck making machine. Even Warren Buffett made mistakes, yet created quite a bit of wealth for himself (and others).
But my luck making machine always says “hey, I didn’t get it right that time, but let’s do it again and we’ll probably get it right the next time”.
Love this post so much. So much so that I am going to go back and add this in my roundup for the week.
My luck making machine is finally fired up and roaring! It just needed someone to turn it on and point it in the right direction.
Hey, thanks! Once you get that Luck Making Machine going, it’s hard to stop it.
I was so entertained by this post and it got me thinking real hard. I can feel that there is something I can do to tap my luck machine and make it work from here on.
Make use of your Luck Making Machine!
The fact that I am dirt cheap is my luck-making machine. It helps guide all of my decisions! =/
No shame in being frugal Holly!! Haha!!
We are on track to save 63% of our income in December – and I have been taking the express and brown-bagging lunch all month. Keep up the frugal hustle!! 🙂
This blog was funny, I was also waiting for the great reveal that the ‘Luck Making Machine’ was your brain. But it’s not luck, it’s hard work!
Funny twist on making your own luck in life. Setting a plan early is vital and being a natural born saver is also important. Without the two you would be an average non retired american.
The horror! An average non-retired American! I would simply start saving and investing to hit the retirement goals again!
It really is all about being intentional. I’m sure you guys have had some bumps along the way – but luckily you had the Luck Making Machine to bail you out!!!!!! 😉
Excellent post sir.
I have listened to my luck making machine for years, it has served us VERY well. And the one time I said “you know what! screw you luck making machine!” I ended up with a huge mortgage. Need to clear the wax outta my ears and go to it for housing advice once again… 🙂
Great post!
Hey Jacob, thanks for stopping by!
Housing can crush your budget, even after the mortgage is paid off. All the other costs of ownership add up, and are generally correlated with size and value. Housing costs still constitute about 25% of our budget even ignoring our small soon-to-be-paid-off mortgage. I think my early retirement would have been set back at least 4-5 years if our house was 2x the size or value of the one we call home.
Love your post, not sure how I ended up here…guess it was luck! I guess I have had a Luck Making Machine all along because I was able to find a great hobby of entering sweepstakes ten years ago and winning many, many things, cash, and twenty free trips all over the US and to St. Barths! In fact, I am posting from one of the four ipads I’ve won in the past two years. I am working on being able to retire too, although I am a lot closer to retirement age than you are. I just want to get there sooner than later.
My wife is attractive and I’m not. I have often received comments on this disparity. My favorite is “you’re a lucky man!”
I just smile to myself knowing that “I make my own luck.”
Ha ha! Sometimes you have to make your own luck!
Do you calculate savings % on Gross or Net Income?
gross