One of the rules of the rich is that if you wish to stay wealthy, you need to either buy or create assets that produce value. In other words, you start a company that provides a good or service that people believe they need and are willing to purchase from you because they feel that the value of your product, service, information, or whatever is equal to or exceeds the price paid. This is generation of income. If the amount of income generated by your assets exceeds the amount of your costs, then you have made a profit. An entrepreneur is someone who solves people’s problems on a profit margin.
The key is to select attractive assets that can produce
income or appreciate. An asset can either produce current income, appreciate
(and depreciate), or both. The choice of which is a decision that is personal
in nature, but a good way to establish a baseline is to ask yourself if you
were to stop working, would your assets continue to put food on the table and
pay your monthly obligations? Having your investments not only sustain you but
produce more than you need is one way in which wealth was created for hundreds
of years before Wall Street got so sophisticated and abstract that financial
games came into the picture.
If you want to make real money, then the first thing I
suggest is that you get educated. Making money is an intrinsic activity of all
of humanity, and mankind has developed countless ways to do it. There is
nothing inherently evil in the process of making money, and the notion is
illogical, but that is one of the underlying tenets in our present education
system. We are taught from an early age that making money is hard and that
those who make lots of money are morally suspect. American culture studies
programs at some of the nation’s leading universities have even gone so far as
to teach the absurd and illogical notion that the rich became rich because they
enjoy privilege earned on the backs of African slaves. Minority millionaires
like entrepreneur Herman Cain, Earl Graves, Sr., and Reginald F. Lewis prove
the utter nonsense of this notion, yet this is the illogical Progressive
philosophy that has permeated our education system.
The truth is that it is not difficult to make money
once you understand that money is a tool and that it can be used, through
various processes known collectively as finance to create real, tangible
wealth. The most difficult thing about our relationship with money is giving up
the idea of what that income is or should be and where it will come from. For
example, most people would argue that they are on a fixed income and there is
only so much money they receive each month. Others say their monthly paycheck
is XYZ dollars and they don’t want to get a second job.
In the first example above, the person has defined the
boundaries of his income and he does not allow the space for other income to
flow. In the second example, the person has defined a limited channel of how
and where the money is to appear.
I believe that to create real wealth one must be
willing to abandon one’s limited thinking, remove the boundaries around our
abundance, and stop outlining how it is to appear in our lives. Remember not
to create boundaries and remember not to define the outcome. Most
importantly, stop letting people who are motivated by jealousy and envy dictate
what your limitations are. Maybe they think that wealth is evil and that rich
people are heartless, but they never can answer the one basic fundamental
question: if you, Miss Liberal, take away the money from those who make it to
give it to those who only choose to take from society, how are you going to
force the wealth creators to continue creating what you so freely take? When
the wealth creators go away, Mr. Progressive, who is going to pay your bills?
After you’ve created a level playing field and enforced economic equality and
social justice on everyone, Comrade Communist, how are you going to provide basic
goods, like food, and basic services, like electricity and clean water? If
everyone is equal and everyone is entitled, what is the incentive for anyone to
initiate any activity? The ultimate answer for your utopian dream is slavery
and dictatorial tyranny. History has shown time and time again that there is no
such thing as all things being equal. That is why Jefferson wrote that our
inalienable rights were life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Nothing is guaranteed in life, especially happiness.
Your thoughts?
Ziad K.
Abdelnour is President & CEO of Blackhawk Partners, Inc. , http://blackhawkpartners.com/ , Founder & President of the
Financial Policy Council http://www.financialpolicycouncil.org/ and Author of Economic Warfare:
Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Economic-Warfare-Creating-Regulation/dp/1118150120/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1311437307&sr=8-2
First and foremost, outlining ideas around wealth with such simplicity rarely happens. Next, the number of truly financially successful individuals willing to write to those searching is very small. I love that this man is one of them. While we cannot, perhaps, pal around with the wealthy on a daily basis, the "level playing field" we've searched for, as a society, DOES exist. It used to be hidden behind library doors and locked away in books - now it's at our fingertips on the internet. The learning is THERE and it is FREE. I loved this article, really. The limits are 99% SELF imposed, and that is an every day tragedy. I believe they are imposed by subconscious cultural and familial rules passed down to us from early childhood. We MUST discover our rules and our limits if we are to do more and encourage our own children (literally and figuratively) to do MORE with life itself. Poverty is NOT a virtue, it is a fraking albatross.
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