Could Quiet Quitting Actually Lead To More Money?

If you’ve been reading a lot about ‘quiet quitting’ recently, it’s probably occurred to you that this is an age-old concept with a new(ish) name. Quiet quitting simply refers to workers deciding, quite deliberately, that they are no longer going to let work take over their entire life.

There are plenty of traditionalists out there criticizing the quiet quitters and holding them up as just one more example of how nobody wants to work anymore. This is perhaps ironic because the quiet quitters are actually trying to return to more traditional values and work patterns. The work patterns that existed before the internet, where work happened in the office, and life happened at home, in the community, and pretty much everywhere that wasn’t the office.

The quiet quitters are refusing to work weekends, late evenings, and early mornings. They’re refusing to work while they’re on vacation or sick. They’re putting employers in the same situation that they used to be in a generation ago, which was that generally, if it were no longer ‘normal business hours’, then business, quite frankly, would just have to wait.

Bosses aren’t happy, on the whole, with the quiet quitters. Some of them are pointing out that you’ll never get ahead unless you’re prepared to give 110% to your job. There’s a flaw in that logic, however, because while, for many people, doing well career-wise is an important goal, it’s rarely what makes people truly wealthy.

Working your way to wealth is not an easy option. Inheriting wealth, investing your way to wealth, or building a business are far more likely to be the source of any individual’s high net worth than a salaried position. So, in a way, quiet quitting could be an interesting turning point. It could literally be what gives you the time and space to truly build wealth. Here’s what (some of) the quiet quitters are doing with their weekends, evenings, early mornings, and paid time off.

Learning How to Invest

Investing in a matched 401k at your regular job is a good idea, but real wealth is more likely to come from learning exactly how to participate in more active and complex forms of investing. Whether you learn how to day trade, manage a diverse portfolio of long-term investments, play the crypto markets, or invest in real estate, your net worth will likely increase more quickly if you spend your time gaining in-depth knowledge of the market you’re focusing on, than if you’re spending every spare minute chasing the next promotion by doing more than you’re paid for at work.

Building a Side Hustle

Statistically speaking, high-net-worth individuals are more likely to have built a business of some kind than amassed wealth exclusively via a job, which is why most millionaires are self-employed. Depending on the business model you choose, it’s possible to create a digital business that brings in passive or semi-passive income long after the active set-up phase is over.

It’s also possible to build and flip businesses, including digital businesses, relatively easily if, for example, you have specialist skills that allow you to build websites, online stores, or sales funnels that can then be sold on. Building a business, preferably one that creates some level of passive income, is perfectly doable if you’re not spending every spare second checking work emails from your job. Having a profitable exit strategy from that business can be a further route to wealth.

Building Other Types of Wealth

When we think about wealth, we generally think about money, and that’s what we tend to write about here at Wealthtender. But there are, arguably, many different types of wealth. Robin Sharma identifies eight types of wealth, including physical wealth, family and social wealth, and inner wealth, as well as economic wealth. In recent years, many of us have found things like physical and social wealth (that is, our health and our relationships) have been suffering, even as we’ve been managing to build economic wealth. But the push-back is here, and it’s real. Many quiet quitters are simply focusing on other aspects of life that ultimately matter a lot more than money in the bank.

Of course, given the cost of healthcare and professional support to fix both physical and emotional issues and how many personal bankruptcies in the US are due to medical bills, focusing on other forms of wealth can certainly have a knock-on effect when it comes to finances as well.

Quiet quitting isn’t for everyone. There are plenty of people who still live to work, and a significant number who build high net worth through their well-paid job. But if working every minute of the day, for a boss who maybe doesn’t fully appreciate your efforts, is starting to wear you down, it might be a concept it’s time to give some thought to. Especially given the fact that many of us can probably make better, and more profitable, use of our time elsewhere.

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