Commentary on THE WEALTH FILES Part Two

Busy, busy, busy. A week between entries is too much, sorry folks.

"Rich people play the game of money to win.
Poor people play the game of money not to lose."

So what's the lesson here? If your goal is simply to be comfortable, then since you will not have much more than necessary to live at your chosen level you will always be vulnerable to some bad fortune or poor decision. You will not have a reserve. If you want to be comfortable, odds are you never will be. Think how many times a team has lost a game in which they had a big lead, simply because they stopped playing to win and started playing not to lose: you see it all the time.

But if your goal is to be rich, whether or not you ever get there, you have a much better chance of winding up comfortable. Once you have achieved a certain level of comfort, you will not be satisfied but will, instead, keep working for more, building a reserve, so that if disaster does strike you will not be wipe out. And if disaster does not strike, then you can live your life doing exactly what you please.

So how do you become rich? By working for someone else? Not usually. I suppose there are those people at the top of the corporate pyramid whom we could call rich,but 99% of the company's employees would not be. So, if you're the CEO of a huge multi-national corporation, you don't need to read this blog, because you already know what I'm saying. For the other 99%, though, slogging up the corporate pyramid and hoping you don't get fired before you get where you want to go, and good luck with that, they have to choose a different path. And that path is being your own boss. But that scares off a lot of people because, you see, that requires investment. Not only money, but emotional, too. You have to invest in yourself.

How many times have I seen people shy away from spending a small amount of money to start their own business because they are scared. And let's be clear: they aren't scared of the amount of money...usually they have spent more than that on their cell phone, or a video game system. No, the money isn't the issue, they are the issue. By spending money to start a business they will actually have to invest in themselves, and for many people, maybe most people, that is simply too frightening to consider.

How many people have gotten rich working for someone else? Not many. How many people a truly comfortable working for someone else? These days, not many. The only way to achieve either goal is to work for yourself.

Or win the lottery.