Had a chat with my sons. I thought at their age of 20 and 18 (soon) it is about time for some real adult talk.
So I asked them whether they’d prefer wisdom or gold.
The unanimous answer was gold.
They shot out the answer so fast that it might have been their emotional heart speaking and not their rational brain.
Granted, I daresay that most of us have the wish to be guests at the Banquet of Good Things and that many believe that with money/gold, this can be achieved.
So, let’s say that you manage to find a genie in a bottle and he grants you a free wish. What would you wish for? Would you wish for wisdom? Or would you wish for gold?
Have you heard of the “Five Laws of Gold”? (“The Richest Man in Babylon” by George S. Clason)
- Money comes to those who save.
- Money multiplies for those who invest it.
- Money stays with the person who entrusts it to wise people.
- Money is lost when invested in things with which you are not familiar.
- Money is lost at a fast rate by pursuing get-rich-quick schemes.
Could it be that “without wisdom, gold is quickly lost by those who have it, but with wisdom, gold can be secured by those who have it not”?
Knowledge on financial basics, like the above five laws, not only help you build wealth, but (if you follow them) they also protect you from losing what you have built.
Often, the difference between rich and poor comes down to whether a person makes the effort to develop some financial intelligence.
Moreover, you would not be in the position like one of those chaps who had a windfall in the lottery, but who was not able to sustain it because of his lack of financial education.
In addition to financial knowledge, a strong awareness of abundance is also necessary if you are to accrue wealth in a satisfying and sustainable way.
I assure you that once you have made the decision to take more responsibility for your finances, money would stop being a source of frustration and would begin to flow more freely into your life. You just have to become serious about money before it can become serious about you.
Do not, however, become one of those who pay lip service to financial principles but, as yet, have not benefited from those principles because they have not taken any action.
Also, do not spend so much time educating yourself that you totally forget “Taking Care Of Your Own Business”; instead, put your knowledge into practice and start building your nest egg without further delay.
An easy approach is called “Pay yourself first”:
Put aside (at least) 20% of your earnings and mark it as “Not For Expenditure”.
Do this habitually and over time, this amount would increase and would start earning money for you, without you having to do any work.
It does not matter how much you start with, as long as you observe the rule of paying yourself first, from whatever you earn. And you would soon not even notice the absence of this small amount.
Incidentally, does putting 20% of your earnings aside sound like a large amount?
In reality, based on an average working day, this works out to only 1.5 hours per day working for your retirement. Is that fair? And is that enough? Only you can be the judge of that.
And where should you put this money into?
No, not into those complex constructions recommended by your bankers and not into your savings account either, but into broad-based ETFs.
Go on now. Just do it …
“Diligence and Frugality build character as they create wealth.” — Benjamin Franklin
“Don’t wait until conditions are perfect before starting something. They never will be. Act now.” — David J. Schwartz, author of The Magic of Thinking Big
“Do not save what is left after spending, but spend what is left after saving.” — Warren Buffett