Let’s start off with the famous quote from Rocketfeller, “The secret to success is to own nothing, but control everything.“

What does that actually mean and how does that apply in today’s society?

First off, the disclaimer, we are not a law firm and we do not provide any legal advice. What we blog is about the various life lessons or real estate lessons that we pick up along our ways, and freely share the experience with the readers.

Back to the story… Traditionally, we like to “own” things as a way to accumulate wealth and gauge our richness. With an American Dream, we work hard to save enough for a payment to buy our dream house, work hard again to buy our dream car, so we can work even harder to make money to support our dream spouse, raise our dream kids, and even feed our dream dog! We keep working hard to “own” (or “buy”) more things. That is indeed the American Dream.

That is, until one day, someone walks on the lawn of our dream house and tripped, decided it is the owner’s fault, and exercise his or her legal right to sue you. Your American Dream suddenly turns into American Nightmare! If you end up losing in the lawsuit, whatever you own may not be yours anymore. If this is something that you concern or keep you up at night, you definitely should consult a lawyer around the topic of asset protection. But since we are not lawyers, we will simply leave this is our point to illustrate the potential issue with “owning.”

Now what about “controlling?” It may be a better alternative to “owning” thing. Here is an illustration: Let’s say you have a business and you need to have 1 million of cash accessible by you at any time. In the traditional “owning” sense, you need to save up 1 million in your bank, you “own” that 1 million and therefore you can use it any time you want for your business. Alternatively, if you can apply for 1 million line of credit from your bank, you essentially are “controlling” 1 million and to the same extent you can use it any time you want for your business.

As you can see, the end result is the same, as in “you have 1 million to use any time you want.” But in the American Nightmare situation, you may end up losing your 1 million hard-earned cash if you “own” them, while you lose nothing against the 1 million line of credit if you “control” them.

If you are interested to obtain a business line of credit, you should follow this link.

Like all things in life, it is not exactly a “this is the absolute right thing to do it” option. Asset protection can be achieved by having adequate insurance in place, for example. But what we really want to convey in this post is the concept of “owning” vs. “controlling.”