MONEY Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom (88 page)

So what’s the final secret to wealth?
It’s that
giving
in any form builds wealth faster than
getting
ever will.
I don’t care how powerful any of us are as individuals, whether you’re a business titan, political leader, financial mogul, or entertainment icon—the secret to a fulfilled life is not only to do well but also to do good. After all, we all know the story of how society has been transformed by magnificently wealthy individuals who woke up one morning and realized, “Life is about more than just me.”

Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful, that’s what matters to me.

—STEVE JOBS

Before the 19th century, most charity was handled by religious organizations—until steel magnate Andrew Carnegie came along. Kings and nobles and the wealthiest families weren’t interested in giving back to their communities; for the most part, they just wanted to hang on to their money for themselves and their heirs. Many businessmen shared the same belief.
But Carnegie led the other “robber barons” of his era to create philanthropy as we’ve come to know it today.

Carnegie was a ruthless businessman, but he made the steel that built the railroads and skyscrapers that transformed America. He had to add value to be profitable, so society benefitted, and so did he. In his lifetime, he became the richest man in the world. But there came a stage in his life where he had gotten all the things that he wanted and then some. He had so much money that he began to realize that it had very little meaning—unless he used it for something beyond himself. So Carnegie spent the first half of his life accumulating money and the second half giving it away. He described his personal transformation in an essay (and later a book) that’s still worth reading called
The Gospel of Wealth.
My friend, Nobel Prize winner and Yale economics professor Robert Shiller, insists that all of his students read it because he wants them to know that capitalism can be a force for good. Carnegie’s essay changed society, influenced his peers, and even challenged the incomprehensible wealth of his greatest rival, John D. Rockefeller. Inspired by a fierce competitive spirit, Rockefeller began shoveling mountains of money into some of the nation’s greatest foundations. Carnegie created a new standard: a standard of measuring your significance not by what you have but by what you give. His focus was education. In fact, during his lifetime, Carnegie’s contributions doubled the number of libraries in the United States, and provided so much of the intellectual growth and capital of our society before the internet came into being.

Our friend Chuck Feeney became a modern Carnegie, giving away almost all of his $7.5 billion fortune—except
he
chose to keep quiet about it until recently!

By the time I came to meet Chuck, he was 83 and in the final stage of his life. He had difficulty speaking for extended periods of time, but in his presence is found an experience more profound than words. In his presence, you feel the power of a life well lived. You can see it in the joy in his eyes, in the smile that flashes so easily for him, in the kindness that emanates from his heart.

Chuck Feeney, in turn, inspired another generation. Many say Ted Turner was the next to reignite this form of large-scale philanthropy with his $1 billion pledge to the United Nations. Since then, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have joined forces to create the Giving Pledge to inspire the world’s
wealthy to leave at least half of their fortunes to charity. At last count, more than 120 billionaires had signed up, including some of the ultrawealthy individuals in this book, such as Ray Dalio, T. Boone Pickens, Sara Blakely, Carl Icahn, and Paul Tudor Jones. (See the website, at
http://givingpledge.org
, to read some of the moving letters they wrote to accompany their gifts.)

T. Boone Pickens told me he’s gotten a bit carried away with his philanthropy. He’d recently given nearly a half billion dollars to his alma mater, Oklahoma State University, bringing his total charitable gifts to over $1 billion. However, he recently took some losses that lowered his net worth to $950 million—just shy of that billion he gave away! But Boone is not concerned. After all, he’s only 86 years old. “Don’t worry, Tony,” he said. “I’m planning on earning another two billion in the next few years.” He feels no sense of loss, because the joy he’s received in giving is priceless.

In modern times, the richest and the most influential men and women in the world have tackled the world’s big problems. Carnegie took on education. Bill and Melinda Gates take on scholarship and preventable epidemics. Bono’s passion is forgiving the debt that enslaves third world countries. But do you have to be a billionaire or a rock star to solve the world’s greatest problems? Not in today’s interconnected world. If we work together through the use of technology, we can each do a little bit and still have a huge impact.

SWIPEOUT HUNGER, SWIPEOUT DISEASE, SWIPEOUT SLAVERY

I’m not sure what your passion is, but one area I personally feel deep empathy for is children and families in need. You need to have ice in your veins not to feel for a child who is suffering. So let’s take a minute to look at three of the biggest problems affecting children and their families today, and what immediate, concrete steps we could easily take to make a difference.

The first is hunger.
Who do you think goes to bed hungry each night in the richest country in the world? According to the US Census Bureau, as staggering as it sounds, one in four American children under the age of five lives in poverty, and almost one in ten lives in
extreme
poverty (which is defined as an annual income below $11,746, or $32 a day, for a family of four to live on).

Fifty million Americans, including nearly 17 million children, live in
food-insecure homes—or as Joel Berg of New York’s Coalition Against Hunger told Theresa Riley of
Moyers & Company,
homes that “don’t have enough money to regularly obtain the food they need”; that “are rationing food and skipping meals. Where parents are going without food to feed their children.” At the same time,
Congress has cut $8.7 billion of annual SNAP benefits—what used to be called food stamps—eliminating
more than a week’s worth of meals every month
for a half million American families.

I lived in one of those homes; ours was one of those families. That’s where my passion to make a difference in this area comes from. I know those aren’t just statistics; those are human beings who are suffering.

I’ve already shared with you how my life was transformed one Thanksgiving Day when I was 11 years old. Again, it wasn’t just receiving food that changed my life, it was the fact that a stranger cared. That simple act has had an exponential effect. I’ve continued to pay that gift forward by feeding 42 million people over the last 38 years. The key is I didn’t wait until I could handle this huge problem on a large scale. I didn’t wait until I became wealthy. I started to attack the problem where I was, with what little I had.

At first it was a financial stretch to feed just two families, but then I became inspired and I doubled my goal—to feed four. The next year it was eight, then 16. As my companies and influence grew, it became a million a year, then 2 million. Just like investments compound, so do investments in giving—and they provide an even greater reward. The privilege of being in a place where today I am able to donate 50 million meals, and in partnership with you and others, provide more than 100 million meals, is beyond description. I was the guy who had to
be
fed, and now through grace and commitment, it’s my honor to feed others and to multiply the good that was done for me and my family.

There’s nothing like the power of the human soul on fire.
Along the way, caring touched me, and so did books. They transported me from a world of limitation to a life of possibility as I entered the minds of authors who had already transformed their lives. In that tradition, I approached my publisher, Simon & Schuster, and let them know that I wanted to feed not just bodies but also minds. They have joined me in this mission by donating my simple change-your-life book called
Notes from a Friend,
which I wrote to help someone in a tough place to turn his or her life around with practical advice,
strategies, and inspirational stories. To match the investment you’ve made in buying
this
book, my publisher has pledged to provide a copy of
Notes from a Friend
to a person in need through my partners at Feeding America. They are the nation’s largest network of food banks and considered to be the most effective charity in the United States for feeding the homeless.

But now I’d like to ask you to consider partnering with me in a way that would continue to do these good works for years to come. It’s a simple strategy that can provide 100 million meals not only this year but also every year for those hungry families in need. It doesn’t require a substantial donation.
The plan I’m proposing offers you the opportunity to change and save lives by effortlessly giving away your spare change.
How? Join me in the campaign to SwipeOut hunger, SwipeOut disease, and SwipeOut slavery!

USE YOUR SPARE CHANGE TO CHANGE THE WORLD

So I have an offer for you. My goal in this book was to help you understand the distinctions, insights, skills—and give you a plan—that can truly empower you to create lasting financial security, independence, or freedom for you and your family. I’m obsessed with finding ways to add more value to your life than you could ever imagine with one book (although a big one, I must admit). I want it to inspire you to get beyond scarcity and become a wealthy man or woman right now! And that occurs the day that you start giving with joy in your heart—
wherever you are financially
—
not because you have to, not out of guilt or demand, but because it excites some part of you.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the US Department of Labor, there are 124 million households in the US that spend an average of $2,604 per year on entertainment—that’s more than $320 billion a year just on entertainment. Imagine if just some of this money went to solving previously intractable problems like hunger, human trafficking, and access to clean water? In the US, it takes one dollar to provide ten meals to needy individuals. Imagine helping to provide 100,000,000 meals a year! That’s only a little over $10 million—just .0034% of what we spend on entertainment! It’s pennies on the dollar—America’s pocket change! So I partnered with some great minds in business and marketing, including Bob Caruso (social capitalist and former managing partner and COO of one of the top 100
hedge funds in the world, Highbridge Capital Management) and my dear friend Marc Benioff (philanthropist, founder, and CEO of
Salesforce.com
) to build the technology that allows you to easily and painlessly put those pennies to work to save lives.

In less than a minute, you can go online and opt in to SwipeOut
(
www.swipeout.com
),
so that every time you use your credit cards anywhere in the world, the price of your purchase will automatically round up to the nearest dollar.
²⁸
That amount will go directly to an approved and effective charity that will report back to you with stories of the lives you have touched. Here’s how it works: if you paid $3.75 for your Starbucks, $0.25 would be routed to preselected charities. For an average consumer, this change adds up to just under $20 a month. You can put a limit on what you give, but we do ask that you keep it at a minimum of $10.

Want to know what your impact would be? For about $20 a month:

• 
you could provide 200 meals for hungry Americans (that’s 2,400 meals per year!); or

• 
you could provide a clean, sustainable source of water for ten children in India each month—that’s 120 children per year that you personally protect from a waterborne illness; or

• 
you could make a down payment on rescuing and rehabilitating a young Cambodian girl trafficked into slavery.

These are the three big issues facing children and families. In America, it’s hunger. Which is why our focus is on swiping out hunger with our partner Feeding America.

But the biggest challenge for children in the world is disease. Did you know that disease caused by contaminated water is the world’s leading killer, accounting for 3.4 million deaths per year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO)?
In fact, every 20 seconds, another child dies from a waterborne disease—and more have perished than the total number of people who’ve died in all the armed conflicts since World War II.

This is why the second commitment of SwipeOut is to swipe out
waterborne disease and provide clean water for as many children as possible worldwide. There are a variety of organizations with sustainable solutions out there, and some require as little as $2 a person to provide these children and their families with a reliable supply of clean water.

WHAT’S THE PRICE OF FREEDOM?

Throughout this book, we’ve been working to make sure that you can achieve financial freedom. What about investing a tiny fraction of what you spend each month to help secure freedom for one of the 8.4 million children in the world trapped in slavery? In 2008 ABC News correspondent Dan Harris went undercover to see how long and how much it would take to buy a child slave. He left New York and ten hours later was in Haiti negotiating to buy a child for $150. As he said, in the modern world, it costs less to buy a child than an iPod.

It’s unimaginable to even consider this happening to our own children or anyone we love.
But try to imagine the impact of your actions freeing a human life, a soul that has been enslaved for years.
There are no words. And once again, you can know that as you sleep, your contribution is empowering those who are winning this fight every day.