Prerequisites To Getting Rich:

Traits & Habits of the Rich. The pursuit of riches throughout the ages has been the driving force in the advancement of man's civilization. Man kind has prospered from these pursuits. The results were achieved by an energy that knows no bounds, by an unyielding human spirit that laid a foundation of prosperity over temporary failures. If you practice the habits of continuous learning, accumulation of skills, and increasing knowledge, coupled with the traits and habits that are practiced by wealthy people, you will have laid down a foundation of true prosperity. Everybody admires the courageous spirit that overcomes difficulties and rises to the occasion.

To succeed you will need to acquire these traits, study, learn, and most of all put them to use as you move down your own road towards wealth. Over the years I have met and talked with many self-made people. I studied these people looking for traits that made them different or that contributed to their success. Each person I talked with had many general attributes that are good or that were specific to their personality that I have not listed here. Rather I have listed here the traits that I have found that self-made, well off individuals all tend to have in common.

The Traits & Habits of Success: Desire: First and foremost is desire. If you truly want to become rich, if you want it so much that it becomes an obsession, nothing will be able to keep you from achieving your goal. You must want it so bad that if you go broke, you will start again. If your spouse is a hindrance, admit that you have chosen the wrong spouse. Desire wealth so much that you will not associate with those who have negative attitudes. It is this obsession that will allow you to build upon your failures, to work long hours, and it's this obsession to be rich that will drive you to pile up one success after another.

Confidence: Self-confidence is that unshakable belief that you are deserving, and that you will succeed in that which you set out to do. There is no defeat except from within.

Perseverance: Steadfastness, persistence - that ability to stay with it until you succeed. To find another way. To overcome any obstacle. There are no insurmountable barriers except weakness of purpose. You must have a firm resolution that you shall over come any hindrances. That you will clear any difficulties from your path. Success does not come uninvited, and must be won with effort. Do not associate with those who see the glass half empty.

Planning: You must formulate a plan and put the plan into action. Plan the work, and work the plan. If you think of all that you have achieved so far in life you will come to realize it was done by plan, maybe not your plan, but someone planned it. In high school the school had a plan by which you would graduate four years hence; it had a time line, a sequence of events, and goals to be achieved as you went along. The plan was flexible, and you could choose some parts of it, and some were pre-chosen for you. All the requirements of a good plan were there. It had a time line (four years), it had a step by step method (you had to take ninth grade classes before tenth grade classes), it had flexibility (if you stumbled you could make it up in the summer) and if you got ahead you could add extra activities or classes. The schools plan was measure-able (remember the test and grades), and you knew when you succeeded (the diploma). To be rich you have to do your own planning, and implementation.

Patience: You must have patience. Get rich quick schemes do not work. Decide what road, or roads, to wealth you will take and allow enough time to get down the road. The next five years will pass whether you start down that road to riches or not. Get started! Starting now will make time your ally. For example; If you choose owning rental income properties as your road to riches it can take years for the mortgages to be paid down, for rents to rise and property values to increase. That spread of time between the mortgage balance and increasing property values can make you rich.

Positive Attitude: Smile - it is the way to start the day. If I had to pick a number two on this list "Optimistic Attitude" would come right after desire. The other day I was talking with a financially well off 80-year old young lady who has had both knees replaced with artificial ones this year. Imagine the pain, the recovery, the physical therapy sessions, and the inconvenience she has been going through. Her comment, "look at the marvelous things that they can do today." "isn't it great!" I can understand how she accumulated her wealth.

Optimistic: The rich tend to have a positive outlook on life. The rich see the glass half full. Dwell on that which you have that will help you get richer and not that which you think is lacking. Rich people tend to look at each situation for an understanding of how it might enhance their wealth or improve their life. Do not associate with those who always take the path of least resistance.

Opportunistic: When someone presents you with a problem, do you search for the positives or do you dwell in the negatives? When the stock market is down, do you see the loss in your portfolios value or due you see an opportunity to buy low? Rich people keep their financial house in order so that when an opportunity comes along they are ready to take action. They find opportunity because they look for it.

Risk Takers: Rich people tend to be calculated risk takers. When I am talking with wealthy people about risk, they say that they think of themselves as risk adverse. But when they tell me how they got where they are, it is almost always from having taken the calculated risk. For example: I know a dentist that takes the profits from his practice and purchases discounted secondary real estate loans, (2nd. mortgage notes), that return him 14% to 20% per annum. I know a landlord who retired after working 20 years with an auto parts company and is so conservative that he keeps his cash in bank CD's. He has accumulated 22 rental (trailers) homes over the last 20 years. They bring in $12,000 + per month in rents and he does not consider them risky at all. They both took the risk in areas that they felt comfortable with and they do not consider their ventures risky.

Honesty: The rich people I have met appear to be honest. I have gotten the impression that they feel the best deals are those deals were both parties win. For the most part I find rich people to be good, honest folks. From my own point of view, I find it easier and a far better use of my efforts to be honest and not worry about what dishonest deed might come home to roost when I least expect it. From honesty comes honor.

Educated: Most rich people are educated in the subject areas were they need to be in order to accomplish their goals. A formal education is not a prerequisite to getting rich. Many rich people that I have met lack university degrees. You only need to know where the library is, where the book stores are, and your way around the Internet. There is more information available to you today then there ever has ever been in the history of the world. The point is rich people never stop learning.

Punctuality: Be on time! Being on time is the prelude to confidence. Say what you mean and do what you say. Punctuality is the way to win friends and influence people. Punctuality also applies to returning calls or answering mail. Keeping anyone waiting is a mistake that you will un-knowingly pay for.

Self-Reliance: Do not take too much advice and shun those who are mostly negative. Think for yourself. If the numbers work and the risk-reward tradeoff are acceptable to you, do not let all those timid souls talk you out of it. Surround yourself with like-minded friends with similar goals and ambitions. Only 5% of the population will become rich. Do not listen to the other 95%. Independence will add vitality and inspiration to your labors. If you let fear dominate, it will keep you poor.

Good Credit Risk: You need money to get rich! The good news is, it does not have to be your money. You must have A-1 credit. A good credit rating is your number one asset. Your access to the capital markets increase as you go down the road to wealth. The more assets and cash flow you accumulate, the more access to capital will be made available to you. That is why you see more older rich people than young rich people. If I went broke tomorrow I could rebuild as long as I have my credit rating.

Resilience: Each person of means that I have met can tell me of the failures they have had. It is most interesting to hear them speak of the failures for they do not dwell on the details of the failure, but rather what they learned from them. Then, they almost always tell you how they took the ruins of that failure and turned lemons in to lemonade. Build on your failures; it makes for a strong foundation.

Luck: Rich people are lucky. I once purchased a three-bedroom two bath home for $15,000 and sold it six months later for $37,000. I cannot tell you the number of people that commented to me how lucky I was to find such a sweetheart deal. Not one of those people who said I was lucky asked me how I got that lucky. Actually, I had been passing out business cards that said I buy houses for about a year and had looked at over a hundred homes before I stumbled across this fixer-upper bargain. You make your own luck. Rich people are lucky because they work at it.

Reputation: If you practice all the maxims listed here you will garner an excellent reputation and deals will tend to come your way. It is not what you say, but rather what you do that becomes your mantle.

To summarize, the rich folks I have met all were self-confident, knew they wanted to be successful, trained themselves to recognize opportunity, and acted on those opportunities in their own individual way. If I had to choose one thing that makes successful people more successful, it is that they were prepared to take action on an investment opportunity when it presented itself. The most important things they did was to get started and work at it relentlessly.

Borrow yourself rich.

 

  You can borrow yourself into being rich. It is not for everyone. It requires good analytical ability, lots of discipline and self confidence. If you tend to be a procrastinator this is not for you. Borrowing yourself rich can best be explained as borrowing to purchase income producing assets, properties or an income producing business and using the income thus generated to repay the loans. As the loans are repaid you become a little richer each month.

Buying a Business: You can do this when buying an existing business using the business's cash flow and assets to borrow the needed fund to take over the business. That is how leverage buy outs are done. There are so many ways to finance a business that are specific to the particular deal that I can not give you a step by step how to, you will have to think creatively. The business broker will have suggestions and most sellers know they have to finance part of the deal.

I do know of one deal some years ago where a small manufacture of portable buildings sold his business to another business man with 100% financing. The buyer used a leasing company to fund the production and delivery equipment. The buyer got the seller to co-signed a loan at the bank to pay for the competed inventory, the loan being secured by the inventory with a percentage of the sales proceeds from each portable building sold going to the bank until the loan was paid. The seller then carried the rest of the purchase balance (the blue sky part) with delayed payments until the bank loan was paid off.

Real Estate is a safer bet: With single family homes borrowing yourself rich is fairly easy. I will assume you are in an area where reasonably priced houses are available. How can you tell if your area is priced correctly? Take the going rental rate for homes in the area you are thinking of buying into and multiply the monthly rent by 100, the houses need to sell for that amount or less.

For Example; if the rental rate for houses in your area of choice is $1,100 a month, then the most you will want to pay for a rental house is $110,000 less is better. Include all your cost, to buy the house and get it into rental condition. Let us look at the numbers. I am going to make a few assumptions here to simplify the example, you are financing 100%, you are paying the closing cost out of pocket.

There is a lot of good information on the Towards Wealth web site about using real estate to get rich and some of the tricks of the trade, I will assume you will be reading those articles.

You buy a house in a ready to rent condition for $110,000 you finance the house at 6.5% interest. payments on a thirty year mortgage of $110,000 has a payment of $695.27, add taxes at $225.00 and you have a total payment of $921.00 a month. Rent is $1,100 a month, giving you a positive cash flow of $179.00 a month.
At a 7% mortgage rate your payment is $731.00 a month reducing your cash flow to $143.00 a month. To the positive cash flow you add the principal pay down on the mortgage and your total return is $279.00 a month ($179.00 plus $90.00 principal = $279.00).

This is a realistic example taken from a real life situation. What if you did ten of this type of rental, in five years you would be $161,400 richer not including, the appreciation on the properties, not including any rent increases, plus you will get some income tax savings. Chances are the total would be closer to $250,000 everything considered.

Down payment? or I don't have any:
Not a problem, the rule is: The less money you have, the more of your time will be required, the more money you have, the less time you will need to spend.
Ways to avoid down payment include. Owner financing, buying re-po's direct from banks, pre-foreclosure take overs, using other properties you own as collateral to borrow down payments, taking on partners who will supply the cash, trading other assets in lieu of cash, and lease purchase to name a few.

I know I am simplifying things a bit but the results are real enough. I ask you this! where else can you get a part time job that has the potential to pay you $50,000 a year.

 Want to make even more, read about leasing and sub letting without borrowing, or using mobile homes to create rental income without land and the rest of the real estate series on this site. All the articles on these are on this web site. This is real, and can be done.
Are you bold enough to do it?

 

Cash Flow Rich

Monthly cash flow will allow you to live as if money was of little concern. Most rich people get their money from several sources, their job, investments, real estate holdings, tax savings, and business income. Every rich person I know use a combination of these sources to produce monthly cash flow that allows them to live as if money was of little concern.

This web site is about the motivation you need to start, the information, and the knowledge tools that you will need to be successful, and a bit of inspiration to keep you going on that road towards a financially richer life.

You can gather information, read all the books, study, learn, plan and talk about making money, and you must do all of these things, but taking action, formulating a plan and acting on it, is the only way you can make yourself rich.

You are either moving forward, Towards Wealth, or losing ground. There is no standing still. If you are standing still just working at your current job without gaining the knowledge you need to acquire cash flow generating assets, then you are loosing ground. The cost of living and inflation will eat away at your current assets.

The rich are always moving forward, they or their investments are always at work. That is the real reason why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. You have to give yourself permission to be wealthy and then take action everyday that will lead you Toward Wealth! At the end of each day ask yourself. "Did I do something towards reaching my goals today?"

Building Wealth requires putting information and capital to work, in combination with time and effort. Each method of investing money, each type of business, will have it's own specific rules and requirements, but the general rules of good business apply to all methods of making money.

This web site will give you information and some motivation, It will provide to you the trade secrets, It will reveal to you what works so you do not have to learn the hard way, and It will try to point you in the right direction.

The rest is up to you. No one appoints you to be rich, only you can do that.

How many millionaires are there?

There are 3,800,000 Households in the US with a
net worth over $1,000,000

I think this government estimated number is low by at least a factor of three. There are 292,230,821 people living in the U.S. based on the 2000 census. If there are only 3.8 million households with a net worth over one million dollars that would be only 1.3% of the population. I think 3% would be a more realistic number. I think the number is low because most people are not telling the government what they own in the way of assets, if indeed, they even know what their net worth is. If people do not know what their assets are worth, that begs the question, are those assets being used to there fullest potential? Probably not! It has been my experience that getting ahead in business, jobs, or at getting rich is not as difficult as people think. The reason more people do not get ahead and get rich is because there are so few people trying.

All this means is that there is not a lot of competition to prevent you from getting rich. The toughest competition against you, is yourself. You will have to overcome procrastination and fear of success. For those of you who have been trying "get rich quick" schemes or are spending your life working hard at your job making someone else rich, then it's time to focus your energies into a plan that works. Millions of us have already done so, you can do be rich too.

Top 10%

If you earn $92,000 per year you are in the top 10% of tax payers in the US. That is an interesting statistic, 90% of the people filing tax returns make less then $92k per year. By using the information provided to you on this Towards Wealth web site, you will be on your way towards being in the top 5%, the rich in America.

Average net worth $199,0000

At age 65 in the US the average persons' net worth is only $199,000. With social security and a little pension they will probably be able to retire and get by just fine. I personally would rather have a million dollars or more by age 65 and my home paid for so that I can live in a little more comfort then just getting by.

How about you? are you going to end up with the average amount at age 65? Or are you going to join me and the other wealth builders and be a millionaire? If you haven't joined us do so now, If you have joined us on that road Towards Wealth then visit here often to stay motivated, re-read the articles until you know them well, so you can act fast, with the knowledge that you know what you are doing when opportunity knocks.

What makes successful people different, is how they spend their days.

Making a living

We all have to make a living, and it is difficult to borrow money without a verifiable source of income. But times have changed, and for the most part working for one company for 30 years until you retire is not a realistic goal (unless you are working in a government job).

You can work for yourself and control your future, or you can work for a corporation and hope that the job, and your 401K are there when you need them. As you must work to make a living, I will suggest another way of looking at your working career, one that I have used for the last 30 plus years.

Instead of working for a living, try working only where the experience will help you reach your long-term goals. Think of your place of employment as if it were a University. When you are no longer learning new things, you move on. You no longer care about pay raises or vacation time.

You are working for the experience, and to be the best you can possibly be at the job. You are working for you, not for the employer. If you do this diligently, you will see a change in your attitude and your interaction with all the people you work with will be greatly enhanced. Your employers and your fellow employees attitude towards you will change. After a few months of implementing this new outlook, your big problem will be, turning down the pay raises and promotions, because they do not fit in to your long term plan.

Formulate a financial plan of where you want to be in the next five to ten years. What path Towards Wealth have you chosen? Do you want to be a Landlord? Importer? Internet retailer? Corporate executive? A manufacturer? Put the plan in a written format with a lot of detail. For example: If you love to cook and would like to own an Italian restaurant in Dallas, Texas. Plan this venture down to the decor. The details you write down will tell you what you need to know in order to achieve the goal.

Your plan will tell you what you need to do. In the case of the Italian restaurant, you need to become a chef or a very good Italian cook (or learn how to hire a good one). You will need to know restaurant bookkeeping, and have business management skills. You will need to learn how to decorate the restaurant to attract the type of customers you wish to serve. You will need to learn the best way to layout the floor plan of your restaurant in order to maximize revenue. Since you wish to start the business in Dallas, Texas then Dallas, Texas is where you should be living. So get a job in the nicest Italian restaurant in Dallas, and work in all the different related job areas that you can. Do anything you can from washing dishes to managing the restaurant. Anytime the business people you are working for have you stuck in a job you have mastered and you feel trapped, quit and move to another establishment. Be the best employee they ever had because you are really working for you, and you deserve it. If you do this diligently, within two or three years you will be managing any place you go to work for. If you are not, why are you still there? In your spare time take business classes at the local College and read as many books as you can about the restaurant business.

While you are working in these restaurants you will meet suppliers, cooks, waitresses, bankers, investors etc. lots of contacts that will help you when the time comes for you to strike out on your own.

Key Idea: Save up enough money so that you can live for three months without working. That nest egg will give you the freedom to quit any job anytime you need to. Once you begin to look at a job as a means towards accomplishing your goals and you have the freedom, (because of your savings) to quit a job at anytime it is not helping you reach your goal, you will find that a new way of looking at your job will take over and work will become more enjoyable.

This plan will work no matter what field you wish to enter, unless the field you choose has a college degree requirement.

Whenever it is possible, work for a monthly salary or on commission. If you are a person who likes getting paid by the hour, STOP! You are not rich material. I do not want or care to hear all the reasons you like being paid by the hour. They are all self-defeating. If being rich is your passion, Ask yourself this? Of all the people you know personally, or publicly, that are very well off (rich), or even well known people, how many get paid by the hour? I bet the answer is NONE!

There is nothing wrong with being an employee. If being an employee is your desire, just get the best job you can with the most benefits that suits your lifestyle and save every penny you can in a 401K. Cross your fingers and hope that nothing goes wrong. Tens of millions of people are doing this every day and most will do just fine.

Saving Yoursefl Rich?

 

You can save yourself rich. Given enough time you can accumulate a million dollars or more by savings. If you make an investment of $10,000 at 12% interest it will double every 6 years. At 10% it will double every 10.2 years, and at 6% it will double every 12 years. I used 12% for my example as that is the historic long term stock market return. That $10,000 will grow to $640,000 in 40 years exclusive of income taxes and investment fees. So find a 12% return in a tax free investment and you are good to go, well at least when you are forty years older.

I do not save money in the traditional sense of having a savings account for retirement or some other savings account type. Yes, you can save yourself rich. If that is your choice, my only suggestion is, start early, and look for any method that will increase those savings rates.

Instead of having savings (I was never very good at saving), I have developed enough monthly cash flow to do those things my family truly wants to do without worrying much about where the money will come from. Besides if I had $3,000 laying around in a savings account I would buy a rent house with it. My brother-in-law has three quarters of a million dollars in his company savings account accumulated over thirty years from monthly payroll deductions and his employer's stock purchase program.

One day some years ago he asked me how I lived better than he did when he knew he made more money than I did? I told him that we spent all of our paychecks and we have no appreciable savings while he saved some of his paycheck every month. My brother in law uses his money (paychecks) to live on and is saving for retirement, which takes part of his paycheck each month. I spend my paychecks plus some of the positive cash flow from my investments giving me a higher standard of living while I get slowly rich as my tenants pay down my mortgages.

My brother in law may well save himself rich with the help of his employer's stock plan. I let my renters and businesses make me rich. Same goal - different methods My brother in law has his money in a company sponsored savings account earning low interest rates.

I have my money working for me in investments and businesses. My money earns much higher returns than my brother in laws savings accounts, and my money provides me with monthly cash flow that allows me to do what I want, when I want. That difference in concepts can make a big difference in your standard of living. In all my conversations with wealthy people savings is not discussed.

The employee who would not work overtime.

In the 1970's I was the software manager, (software back then meant clothing), for a discount retailer called Globe (like a K-Mart or Target today).

We had a very good hard working employee in the men's wear department whom I wanted to promote to department manager at a nice increase in pay. Every time I asked him to work overtime or work an extra day, he turned me down. Each time I asked him to consider the department managers job he said no. Finally I asked him to have lunch with me and quizzed him as to why he was turning down the extra work, and promotion.

I was informed that his job was an end to his means. He needed the Job because it allowed him to show an income when applying for loans to buy houses and, if he worked more hours, he would not have enough time to fix up the houses before the next payment would be due and the lost rental income would cost him more than the overtime pay. He had seven houses then and, when he got the number up to twelve houses, he was planning to quit his job at the store in order to work on his rental business full time. I never forgot that lunch.

That was then, then Is now.

I am a history buff. I like to study history of the 19th century. What I have learned from business books of that era is that not much has changed in the business world. The skills and traits it took during the last century to get ahead are still needed today.

This advice is from a business book copyright 1886: Gain knowledge, maintain your honesty, be a hard worker, gain capital, have confidence, protect your integrity, practice perseverance, attend to your duty, be economical, avoid litigation, be polite and affable, be slow to anger, hone your skills, and be alert to opportunity.

The only real difference today is that the speed of change has greatly increased and it has gotten easier.

Getting rich requires capital, information and skill.

It is actually easier today to get started. When I wanted to buy my first rental house I had to first save up the down payment. I needed a good credit rating and I had to prove to the banker that I could make the payments without relying on the rental income.

The access to capital is much easier today. My 19-year-old daughter has credit cards that would allow her to raise more then $10,000 and she is still in college with only a part time job.

In the past, the competitive advantage that the rich had over you was their access to information and capital. Today that access to information via the Internet is at your fingertips and access to capital is readily available to people with good credit.

Today all the barriers are down. There is no excuse left. True, it is easer to make money if you have money to work with, but if you have a good credit rating, you have access to capital and if you have an Internet connection, you have access to information. Getting rich requires capital, information, skill and knowledge. You must provide the skill in your use of the available capital and information. As you move down that road Towards Wealth and begin to accumulate money making assets, your access to larger pools of capital will increase, usually in proportion to your skill level.

We are living in exciting times.

Two types of people in this world.

When I was twelve years old, my family was working field crops (migrant workers). We would start in Arizona chopping the weeds out of the cotton fields and move on to the valleys of California to pick raisin grapes, then lettuce and so on. One year we were outside of Fresno, California pick raisin grapes. You pick a large dish pan full of grapes and spread them out on craft paper (a tray) to dry in the sun. The pay was seven cents per tray. It was hot dirty work complicated by spiders, snakes, and lizards.

At lunch one day I was eating my sandwich while sitting near the foreman who was clean, neat, and rested. I asked this foreman what his job entailed. He said he hired the workers, arranged for transportation and water, paid the workers for the farmers, and made a percentage off the workers. I asked the foreman how one could get his job and he told me what to do (with a chuckle). That was the day, I decided that there were two kinds of people in this world, workers, and bosses, and the boss was the one who made the most money. I quit the next day and started my first business, picking grapes on contract.

From then on I have always tried to be the boss. It was actually easier than one would think as so few people were trying, or wanted, the responsibility. The same is true about making money. Everyone talks about it but so few actually get out there and do it.

What are you afraid of?

When I ask people why they haven't started working towards getting rich? They typically have no answer. If I persist with the question the answer comes up , I do not know how, or fear of failure. When I try to get them to be more specific, they can not. So the problem is they just do not know why. Here's is my theory.

I think the problem is that we are not even sure where to start. Investing seems so complicated and overwhelming. We all are afraid of the unknown. Most people fail to get rich because they never learned how. No one taught us about getting rich, not our high schools, not our colleges, not the universities. Rich people learned how to get rich from their parents or were self taught. If they are lucky they had a mentor. Most of us hesitate when we are dealing with an emergency situation such as during a medical emergency, we look for help, we call in a doctor or paramedic.

The difference between you and your doctor is that the doctor learned what was needed to treat patients and went through an extensive on the job, supervised training (internship) to be able to treat the patient and handle the situation with confidence. I think we can agree that with the same training and education you could be a doctor. Making money is the same way, if you knew what to do and when to do it, you would then have the self-confidence to use your resources to become rich. Treating patients and making life and death decisions has got to be scarier than investing for your future.

Plan To Be Rich

You Need A Get Rich Plan:

Only 5% of the people in industrialized countries will get rich and fewer then that in non-industrialized countries. (Currently 1.3% of the US population is considered rich.) That begs the question, why is it that more people are not getting rich?

The Answer is simple and complicated. The simple answer is that most people who want to be rich (that is almost everyone) do not have a plan and would not implement the plan if they did have one. Most of us are unsure of ourselves and our abilities and we do not give ourselves credit for being smart enough. We thus have fears of uncertainty and fear of ridicule and failure. Because of this fear, people never take the needed actions to make them selves rich.

Educating yourself will help overcome the lack of knowledge of what to do, but the fear factor never entirely goes away no matter how many times you do something, so you must find the strength to over come the fear to take action. When I purchased my first rental property I could hardly sleep at night, then years later and when I purchased a half a million dollar office building and I started to worry, I dug out my notes, reviewed my math for reassurance that I had made the right decision and when back to sleep. The difference was that I had learned how to evaluate a deal and thus learned to trust my abilities. With knowledge and experience we can overcome fear.

The Plan:

You need a get rich plan, I like written plans as they force you to conceptualize and clarify your thoughts. A Rich plan is made up of parts, a statement of the goal, a list of prerequisites you need to take care of, and a list of what you need to do and by what dates. I will get to an example in a bit.

If you are married and your spouses is not supportive it will be more difficult to implement your plan but not impossible.

Money:

Let us get money out of the way right now. I will repeat here a statement from Pre-requisites to getting rich.

“Having money is not a pre-requisite to getting Rich; having money to work with is nice, money makes it easier, but not a pre-requisite. A desire to be rich, and a willingness to learn, combined with a calculated action plan of how you intend to get there and a commitment to implement that plan, are far more important.”

I know many rich folks who started with no money (including me) and no family connections. No more excuses, if you do not get rich in the next ten years it is your fault.

Doubts:

As you have been reading through this your mind is flinging in doubts, I don’t have any money, I don’t know where to start, I have bad credit, my spouse won’t help, I can’t tell so and so they will think I am nuts, I don't have the time and so on. Yep! You are normal all right.

Sadly we are surrounding by negativity, that’s not all bad as caution keeps you safe.
But if being rich is paramount then you will need to overcome negative thinking, and avoid negative people. You need to make thinking positively a habit. It is not easy to retrain your brain to think positive you will need to work at it. You might read an old 1960’s book, “Think and grow rich” and I will write an essay of the subject of thinking positively and include it on this (Towards Wealth) web site. In the meantime try this.

Make three post-it-note signs that say “I will think positive today”, put the signs next to the other one you have that says “Think rich” one on your bathroom mirror, one in your car (my car note is over my tachometer, no one uses it anyway) and one on your computer screen at work, or home, or both. Then every time you say a negative thing, or catch your self thinking a negative thought, put a dollar bill in your get rich savings account.

I started years ago by putting a quarter in my left pocket every time I thought negatively and at the end of the day I put the money in a jar at home. The first month I had to skip lunch a few times I had transferred all my money before noon to the left pocket. This exercise teaches discipline, keeps you thinking about getting rich and slowly changes your way of thinking. Now stop reading a few minutes and make the notes out, no better time then now (you remember "take action" that is the second part).

Time:

The next obstacle to you making yourself rich is managing your time. Sorry! but getting rich takes time.

Time to plan, time to educate yourself, time to implement your plan and time to make the plan work. Time will pass everyday weather you take action or not. Do you manage your time or does the day slip away? How much time is wasted on the phone with nonsensical calls when you could have been implementing your plan, or learning, researching, or thinking of getting rich? Take control of your time, it is a valuable asset, invest it wisely.

The difference between the self-made millionaires and you is how they invest their time and use their mind. Every thing else you can think of to list as a difference between you and the rich person is simply an obstacle to overcome, or an excuse for not implementing your own get rich plan. If you have a thinking and reasoning mind and you take control of your time, then the only thing standing between you and riches is you.

Example One:

Single mother, early forties, mother of four, all ages, Some experience managing a small business, understands accounting and time management. Burning desire to get ahead and willing to work at it, Time and money scarce.

Her Plan

Path to Riches; first start an E-business then invest in real estate. On line retail fits in with my low budget start up needs and the up side potential means I can make a good income after a few years.

I plan to research starting a on-line retail sales company over the next sixty days.
I will decide what to sell by the end of the research period.
I will order a name (Ural) for the business with in sixty days.

My goal is to start the business with in two months and and launch the web site in six months from today. I will re-wright this plan as the research is being done so I can create a step by step plan with a time line.

My goal is to be selling $50,000 per month with-in 18 months at which time I will go full time in my new business.

Implementation:

In our example (it is a real life example) She has made a decision as to what she will do and a commitment as to when. Her biggest obstacle will be time, as any one with four kids knows, spare time is a rare commodity. She will be up many a long night after the kids are put to bed working on her new store.

Example Two:

Middle class couple mid fifties, The wife is being down sized out of her job this fall and will have a severance package, they do not save much as the income runs out before the month is over. She is not worried about finding a job and could take early retirement. The husband has no pension and will only have social security at retirement.

The goal to get out of the debt, and then make investments that will bring in extra monthly income so that in ten or fifteen years they can retire without worries.

We plan to have in-place in the next thirty days a plan to get out of debt, and to create an investment plan that will eventually bring in $2,000 to $3,000 per month in extra spendable income. We know we need a budget, we know we need to learn about investing for ourself and not rely on others. We know we need a get rich plan and a implementation or action plan.

We will put together a household budget in the next week.
We will make personal a financial statement this week.
We will put together a plan this month to deal with all the debt after annualizing all our options.
We will put together a savings plan that starts after the debt is paid.
We will set aside the expected severance pay for starting our monthly income investment plan.
We will study up on rental real estate investing as a way to leverage the limited money available and study other investment method. We have four months to get ready to start our investment plan.

In conclusion:

As you can see a "Get Rich Plan" is not hard to write. It is really a get started plan. You are setting out where you are today, where you want to be in the near future and a place to get started with a time control line. The goal is to get started and form the habit of working at getting rich on a regular basis. The get rich plans are vague on purpose, as you do your research and preparations you will take notes and a more detailed plan will emerge.

As you accomplish the things in your plan your confidence grows, the next plan you write is more detailed and the numbers grow. The next year your personal financial statement looks better. You begin to have money left at the end of the month. The extra money coming into your home starts getting saved. The next thing you know you are comparing making a major household purchase to investing the money instead. When that day comes you will have crossed the line, because you will have developed the habit of thinking rich, go and celebrate.

The other day I was looking at getting a new truck because the one I have is older and the gas is expensive. With $8,000 down I could afford the payments with ease, then I thought of what else I could do with the $8,000. I could drive the old truck another three years and use the $8K for a down payment on a rent house, guess what I did.

The old truck cost $0.40 per mile in fuel cost, the IRS lets me take a $0.54 per mile tax deduction for managing rental properties, I like my old (paid for) truck.

Don't Eat Your Children!

Interesting head line; Don't eat your children it comes from a report or white paper that I read some thirty years ago. As I remember the report it amounted to re-investing some of what comes your way to make more.

The report told a story of two farmers who planted grain. One farmer harvested his grain and sold all of it that he did not consume. The other Farmer did the same except he saved a few pounds as seed for the following year. When it came time to plant the next year the first farmer had nether the money to buy seed or any seed to plant. The second farmer planted his seed on time. He did not Eat His Children

The first farmer may get a loan and get his seed planted, but the extra time, cost and problems could have been avoided. The moral of the story is to set aside something for the future. For you and I, Don't Eat Your Children" means to always be ready to take advantage of opportunity when it comes your way.

Something magical happens when you do this. If you are financially ready to take advantage of profitable opportunities. If you have kept up to date with information concerning your area of interest, then more opportunities present themselves.

So how do you make yourself ready?

• Save the extra money that comes into your household so that you are ready for any opportunities that come along.
• Set aside 20% or more of the profits made on any deal you make as seed money for the next deal.
• Maintain an excellent credit rating so that you always have access to money at low rates when needed.
• Stay abreast of what ever area of interest you have so that you know a good deal when it is presented to you.
• Read the newspapers and journals that are applicable for your area of interest, be they about stocks, bonds, real estate, development, REIT.s or any of the hundreds of ways of putting money to work.
• Get started, do a small deal to get your feet wet and learn as you go.

The key is to be ready both financially and mentally to act when a profitable opportunity comes your way.

These five things are your children, the extra money that so easily slips away, the profits from the last deal you did, the credit rating that allows you to multiply your monetary assets, the knowledge that gives you the edge if you posses it, and the stalwart attitude to act when you are presented with opportunity so as not to be numbered with the poor and timid souls who can only state "if only I had, back when".

Once upon a time deep in the jungle lived a cannibal tribe. In years when the wild game was scarce the families would eat the young children in order to survive. As the years past they reached a time when the game stayed scarce for a prolonged period and as it happened they soon found themselves with no children left to eat. The wild lions returned and as all were now old and with no young men to protect them the lions ate them all.

Don't eat your children and you will be ready when opportunity strikes.