Grow Your Wealth – Mindset & Wealth
Do you want to grow your wealth?
Becoming rich?
I’m here to reassure you that it’s not only feasible but that it’s the best shot you’ve got to make a lot of money. We wish we didn’t have to make so many tough choices because our funds can’t support the lives we want to live.
If that sounds familiar to you, you need to make a change. And as with all things, that change starts with you and your thinking. If you want to grow your wealth, then what are you doing about it? And is there any possibility that you might potentially be going the wrong way?
Grow Your Wealth and Your Career
Ask the average person on the street what they’re supposed to do to get richer, and 99 percent of them will tell you the same thing: get a better job. All right, fair enough. They’re not wrong to say that. In reality, getting a better career won’t hurt their earnings. In fact, they would probably mean they’re getting at least a little wealthier.
But in fact, this isn’t the whole story. And what’s more, this isn’t even the biggest part of the story. Wealth and salaries are not inextricably linked. They’re probably related, but only to a small degree. If you wanted to see the equation telling you how to grow your wealth, it would look like this:
Wealth= Income–Outgoings
So, let’s say that your income is determined solely by the amount of money you make at work. Even in that scenario, you still have another, equally important factor. These are the outgoings. If you’re earning a cool million dollars a month, but you’re also wasting a million dollars a month of lavish holidays and nights out and clothes, you’re not going to be very well off in the end. Instead, you’re likely to lose money.
But if you’re making a regular $2,500 a month, but you’re only paying $500 a month, then you’re investing $2,000 a month. You’re able to save $24,000 over 12 months. That’s a good home down payment! So now you’ve got two choices.
How to Spend Less
When I was at university, my summer job was at the yacht club. Specifically, I was a waiter in one of the restaurants that were paid for and operated by the club’s clientele. The club is situated in Sandbanks, England–a region that is sometimes referred to as the’ millionaire’s line’ because it is one of the most expensive properties on the seafront in the country.
Yeah, these are people who own yachts and who belong to a club based in one of the wealthiest parts of the world. They haven’t been scrambling for money. And of course, a lot of people might point out to me is that this is likely to result in some pretty big tips!
Except that’s not exactly what happened. In reality, I’ve gotten some of the worst tips I’ve got in any career. I had a lady call me over to secretly give me 20p (about 30cents) for my hard work. She told me to buy something good for me. And this has to be borne in mind that it is standard practice in England to tip 10%. Meals usually cost about $150.
I asked my mom this, and her reaction was: how do you think they’re getting wealthy, sweetheart?
Hey, I’m not here to advise you that you’re going to be stingy. But what I’m showing you is that the wealthiest people know that every little bit adds up and makes a massive difference in the long run. Your goal right now is not to fritter. The $3 coffee you’ve received every morning on your way to work is now $15 a week, $60 a month, and $720 in the year.
That’s a small amount, and that’s before we even thought about all the other things you’re likely to pay for that you don’t need. Perhaps your Spotify, Hulu, 100 + TV channels, car fuel for all those journeys you don’t need to make. It just adds up. Worse are all those larger purchases that we make on the impulse.
These are things like clothes that we think are going to make us look smart, game consoles, PCs, overly advanced phones. How much did the phone cost you? If you’re on a lease, you’re going to be charged $700 or more for it. Now, ask yourself how much more the phone does than something for $300. Do you need the best machine for you? Given that even an old phone will play anything in the app store?
Do you need a 30-megapixel camera? Or a 4 K camera, huh? Can you see the gap between 4 K and 1080p? The real issue here is advertising, the internet, and other men. Unfortunately, we have been able to combine these things of effectiveness and consider them highly desirable. We’re trying to get the latest phone, car, or computer just because it looks so sexy in those ads. But the reality is that these things don’t make us happy.
Similarly, we’re advised that we need to buy a big home, go on a luxurious vacation. Is that really for us? Or is it to make us look good to others? I don’t want you to cut back on all the things that make you happy here. There’s no point in having money if you’re not going to enjoy it and have a better quality of life for you and your friends.
All I’m asking you is to make sure you know what makes you happy. And that often involves determining what you don’t need and what you should consider. Have you always dreamed of a lovely big house? So why don’t you stop going on those big holidays for a while? Why don’t you stop buying a widescreen TV? And how about thinking about getting that huge, beautiful house in a less expensive area?
There are areas in Spain where you can stay in a five-bedroom home with a swimming pool and a rooftop pool, and it’ll cost you $200,000. You could almost purchase it in cash and dream about how much money you’d start making when there was no loan!
Conversely, if all you want is to travel around the world, you might change your lodging to something less luxurious. How about going to a quiet neighborhood and living in a spare bedroom for a while? Your costs are going to be low, so you can enjoy going on more holidays and still save money. Know what you’re trying to do with that capital. Know what wealth means to you, and then you can grow your wealth more efficiently.
Financial Modeling
This will also help you set up a budget and/or a schedule. When you realize how much you’ve paid in and how much you’d like to do a month, save a month, and spend a month on things that make you feel rich, then you can build a plan that will help you reach the goal within a specific timeframe. This is where you can glance at the little stuff you should take out to save time.
If you have a spreadsheet that includes all your income and all your outputs per month, then you can see what kind of coffee-cutting impact your routine would have. You’ll be left with a total profit at the end of each month, and you can decide how much you want to save and how much you’re going to spend on other things.
You can even set up standing orders in your banks to immediately transfer money deposited to your savings account. With such a spreadsheet, you can average your investments by any number of months and see what your expenses are going to be at some times in the future. Do you need more money for the next expense?
Then think at something else you can do to slash your expenditures. This is called’ economic modeling’ and is a powerful tool for creating your assets rather than just letting it happen without your guidance or feedback.
Couple More Ways to Grow Your Wealth
And what if you’ve run out of things you should slash in order to save money? What if you survive on as little as you can? Some other choices involve switching the service suppliers, selling old things, or even transferring money between accounts to receive bonuses. A friend of mine does this religiously and even takes out a 0 percent APR credit card, just so that he can put all that money into the ISA and make a profit on it.
If he gets a cash incentive to sign up for anything, he’ll sign up! And he never buys a new piece of technology, or even clothing, without bringing one of the old things to offer and thus offsetting the price. If you have a vision of a prosperous future, you might need to’ be content’ with living a little more simply for a while to get there.
You need to get work done today, to earn rewards in the future. And this is hard because it often means forgetting the conventional signals of wealth and success. Once again, you’ve got to do this for you, and don’t care about what others might say. For instance, if you want to have a lovely home, one of the best things you can do is to live with your parents if they let you.
Although it’s not glamorous and not fun, you’re going to be able to save so much a month. That is going to help you get on the property ladder a lot faster. You could buy a smaller home in a less attractive area, and with the budget to flip the property and make a big profit.
You might also need to learn to stop trying to prove your assets and happiness to your family. Have you ever met a friend and eaten in a cafe that you can’t afford because you want to see them and because it’s humiliating to say you eat cheaper? As you can guess, this isn’t something conducive to grow your wealth fast! Again, you need to be willing to tell them that you can’t afford to go anywhere else.
How about you suggest they meet you at your house?
Setting Up Revenue Streams
First comes the revenue streams. We’ve seen how you can potentially get wealthier without leaving your career, just by investing less. The other tactic is to grow your wealth by getting more than one revenue stream. Also, your paycheck doesn’t decide your assets! So, what does this mean? An easy option is to take on a different job, such as a weekend job.
If you’re happy to work on a Saturday, you’re going to have $150 extra to spend every week. That’s $600 a month, or $7,200 a year! Save that, and in a couple of years, you can live in a nice home–or you can use it right now to feel that bit richer to wear the fancy dress. This is a great sacrifice, though it has been given. Therefore, what would be easier for most people would be to make money online, for instance.
Tim Ferriss describes the creation of a’ museum’ in his book The Four Hour Workweek, a small online business that generates passive income. This can be as simple as finding an associated brand (a product you market on commission) and creating a basic webpage promoting it, and then sending people to it with advertisements. This is very low maintenance, but it can potentially make a fair amount of money.
Alternatively, you could try matched betting (a form of betting that ensures you can’t lose–it only uses the free bonus amounts that you’re given to sign up for), or you might be looking for a simple online job. How about selling online photography? Will you work as an author or web designer? And, like a friend of mine, would you try to comment on sports on websites?
You can also make money from the arts and crafts, of course, and market some of the items you produce on the hand, or you can buy and sell products in bulk on eBay! There are also other solutions that operate offline: such as renting rooms to classes, such as mowing a neighbor’s yard, cutting hair, performing an instrument, etc.
All of these choices will help you make a return that will be in addition to your current income.
Not only does this earn you a better overall, of course, but it will also help make you more’ resilient’ so that if anything happens to your main job, you’ll still have some money coming in. Another suggestion, huh? The more you make, the more you’re going to make. Try looking for investment opportunities, whether that implies buying a second house and renting it out to someone else, or whether it means moving to a place that you think is up and coming.
The board games are a curious thing to think of here. If you’ve ever played Monopoly or any other game where you have to amass some kind of asset, you might have considered it worth investing wisely early. To get a card that’s going to pay out just a little every round, or that’s going to prevent you from losing a little every round.
These seem like small changes in the short term. Ultimately they put you in a position of great power over the course of the game and help you win decisively! It’s the same thing in real life. Make the right choices that will build up over time. Avoid the temptation to splurge upon short-term pleasure. That’s how you could grow your wealth with the correct mindset!