From Publishers Weekly

Wealth: those who have it want to keep it, but what’s the best way to ensure it doesn’t run dry? Lucas is ideally suited to answer the question. A Harvard Business School graduate who’s worked at wealth management firms, and a fourth-generation heir of E.A. Stuart, the founder of the Carnation Company, Lucas counsels readers who have, or are planning to have, at least a few hundred thousand dollars in the bank. His book teaches them to manage their wealth s (more…)

The dictionary defines wealth as:

1. – the state of being rich and affluent

2. – an abundance of material possessions and resources

3. – property that has economic utility: a monetary value or an exchange value

4. – the quality of profuse abundance

None of those definitions sound too bad, right? The quality of profuse abundance - I like that definition!

However, wealth as it is defined in the dictionary is only a small aspect of such a grand and often controversial word.

The definition of wealth can be quite divisive. Ask your family and friends how they define wealth and then sit back and enjoy the conversation! Ask any political candidate how they define wealth and you’ll get vastly different answers.

There is of course the capitalist definition of wealth which states that all wealth is earned, not distributed.

Conversely, socialism states that there is a more equitable distribution of wealth and wealth is better shared.

That being said, all political theories and ideologies aside, we know deep down at our core that there is more to ‘wealth’ than dollars in the bank.

Consider the following quotes:

“Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.”
-Henry David Thoreau

“Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.”
-Oscar Wilde

“Being rich is having money; being wealthy is having time”
-Margaret Bonnano

So wealth is:
- Having time
- Having health
- Having quality of life
- Possessing freedom
- Finding inspiration
- Having peace of mind
- Wealth is having compassion
- Being loved
- Loving

- And of course money in the bank – how much money in the bank is defined by you.

And so on and so on.

I’d argue that wealth, true wealth, may be a combination of all of these things.

Wealth, when it is defined as more than simply dollars in the bank, when it is defined as quality of life, health, peace of mind and all of those things that do often come with financial security is a fine and wonderful thing. However, each attribute of wealth i.e. peace of mind, time, passion and dollars in the bank can be at risk if one focuses one attribute to the exclusion of all others.

For example if you live solely to have more money, you’ll inevitably lose time, quality of life, and quite frequently your health.

It’s a fine tightrope to walk.

Do you focus on earning money to support a better quality of life, to have more time and so on?

Or

Do you focus on quality of life and have faith that the money will follow?

It’s the whole success before meaning or meaning before success question.

Success before meaning.

There’s a well established school of thought which dictates that you work hard, you earn a good living, build a good life and then reap the rewards of your hard work. There are various scenarios this may entail.

For many it may entail spending 20 years working a 9-5 desk job, living frugally and saving as much money as possible. The reward is then quitting or retiring and living the life you’ve always wanted to live. Whether that means traveling, spending your days in your garden or workshop or starting that small business you’ve always wanted to start.

This is the place that many people come from. They spend their lives focused on the goal of achieving financial success and freedom.

While setting and achieving goals is a great thing, the problem with this mindset is:

1. One forgets to enjoy life while it’s happening and waits to enjoy it at some future date.

2. That date may never come

Meaning before success.

Another school of thought follows the path of doing what they love and hoping or trusting that wealth will follow.

Those who follow this school of thought believe that the goal to success starts with finding a business or trade you’re passionate about. Passion and desire breed wealth.

While it’s true that passion for your business or trade will bring about day to day quality of life, satisfaction and contentment – financial wealth isn’t a given. In fact there are many people who are barely getting by who absolutely love what they do.

Another option?

I propose that there is actually a third approach to obtaining wealth without sacrificing quality of life.

Starting an internet based business, yes even in today’s economy, can provide the kind of lifestyle and complete wealth you’re seeking.

Starting an internet based business, while it takes a bit of time at the outset to get a business up and running, once it’s established and you’ve automated as much as you can humanly automate and delegated the rest – the profits are in your pocket and you’ve as much free time as you can humanly stand. Time to live the life you’re dreaming of but instead of dreaming it, you’re actually living it.

Time to pursue your passions. Yes, this third option means the business you start doesn’t have to be something you’re passionate about. You can make your business your passion, however it’s not mandatory. You can in fact sell t-shirts online, make a mint, and not give a hoot about t-shirts.

Timothy Ferriss talks at length on this in his book “The 4-Hour Workweek”.

The concept is defined as the new rich or NR as he calls them. It’s the idea that it doesn’t have to be success versus meaning or wealth versus poverty or freedom versus being chained to a desk 9-5. Life, and wealth, can be defined by you.

Starting an internet based business isn’t as simple as setting up a website and watching the profits roll in. There’s a process. There’s a science behind profiting online. It begins with specialized knowledge.

THERE are two kinds of knowledge. One is general, the other is specialized. General knowledge, no matter how great in quantity or variety it may be, is of but little use in the accumulation of money.
-Napoleon Hill

Mr. Hill also goes on to say in Chapter Five of Think and Grow Rich, KNOWLEDGE will not attract money, unless it is organized, and intelligently directed, through practical PLANS OF ACTION, to the DEFINITE END of accumulation of money.

Now specialized knowledge is something you can possess, like knowing how to take apart and put back together a 1964 Ford Mustang blindfolded. It is also something you can purchase or acquire.

You can obtain specialized knowledge by:

- Participating in a mastermind group, hiring a coach, or finding a mentor.

- Going to school or getting specialized training

- Reading everything ever published on the topic including participating in forums and chat rooms on your chosen topic.

As we move through life and make our choices it’s nice to know that there are options. You can choose to live your life pursuing financial wealth at the expense of the other gems life has to offer, you can choose to pursue health, art and happiness at the expense of financial wealth or you can decide that you deserve both. You can decide that the world and its abundance are available to you.

The internet makes it easier than ever before. It gives you access to specialized knowledge and wonderful tools which enable you to automate almost every process and system required to run a successful and profitable business.

Jeremy Gislason is the creator of Mindmap To Riches, an amazing audio that reveals the secrets to having the correct mindset in business, so you can create a new life of success, wealth and happiness. Find out how to get it for free at http://www.mindmaptoriches.com/

The Wealth Formula succinctly depicts the components that are necessary for you to create real wealth. The Wealth Formula is shown below:

M+K+P+A=W

It identifies four essential wealth creation stages and the relationship between them. These are:

Wealth Mindset
Wealth Knowledge
Wealth Planning
Wealth Action

It links each of these four component through the plus sign, +, which signifies that each of the four components are necessary for you to create wealth. In other words, missing one or more of the four wealth components will dramatically impact your ability to generate wealth.

For example, you could mentally prepare yourself, learn everything you need to make enormous wealth and create the most detailed plan to achieve your desired level of wealth, but if you don’t action it then all that preparation is worthless.

Similarly, if you mentally prepare yourself, learn everything you need to make enormous wealth and run off actioning your newfound mindset and knowledge but fail to make a plan it is like setting off in your car to go somewhere you’ve never been without taking a map. What’s your wealth destination? How will you know if you’ve achieved what you wanted to achieve? How do you know your using the right investment vehicle? How do you know if you’re on track or not to reach your target? Are you surpassing or underachieving against realistic milestones? All of these questions would be easily answered with proper planning.

So let’s look at each of the four wealth creation categories in turn.

Wealth mindset:

Wealth Mindset is the first of the four wealth creation categories and examines the importance of the correct mindset to creating wealth and financial freedom. Wealth mindset covers the interaction between you and your environment and the process of adjusting your thought process to think like the wealthy.

For example, the poor and middle class generally think that money is scarce and hard to come by. Saying such as “Money doesn’t grow on trees” and “I can’t afford that” spring to mind. The wealthy see a world of opportunity and abundance. They see money as little more than a concept and simply the by-product of providing value to others. They also know that offering value to others is only limited by their imagination and thus money must too only be limited by their imagination. The wealthiest people of the planet simply understand this and have incredible imaginations that create amazing value to others.

For example, Jeff Bezos realised that bookstores were severely limited in the amount of books they could offer their customers due to geographic and physical constraints. In other words bookstores could only service customers that lived near them and could only offer a limited amount of books, which fit in their store. He saw an amazing opportunity to solve these two problems by giving access to anyone anywhere via the Internet and offering a catalogue that is 40 times the size of a large bookstore. Jeff founded the multi-billion dollar company Amazon!

Wealth Knowledge:

Wealth knowledge is the second of the four wealth creation categories and examines the financial knowledge that is essential to create wealth and financial freedom. It is essential for wealth creation that you are knowledgeable about your own personal finances, the economy, the psychology of markets, compound interest and the asset classes and investment products available to you. Further, you need to understand how to interpret financial statements, investment strategies and risk management all from the wealth creation perspective.

Wealth Planning:

Wealth planning is the third of the four wealth creation categories and examines the essential component of planning to create wealth and financial freedom. Wealth planning is absolutely essential, yet on 3% of the population has clearly written goals and plans. A Harvard Business School study found that this 3% earned 10 times the average of the other 97% and they accumulated 98% of the wealth.

Wealth Action:

Wealth Action is the forth and final wealth creation category and examines the element of action in your wealth journey to create wealth and financial freedom. The importance of action to achieving wealth is obvious. Nothing can be achieved without action.

By using the wealth formula you can easily learn where your wealth creation strengths and weaknesses are and where you need to concentrate your efforts at improving.

Emlyn Scott is the founder of Rich1Percent, investor and wealth creation author. He is a wealth creation and finance expert with 4 post graduate qualifications and has amassed a multi-million dollar investment portfolio.

Can you really build wealth automatically?
The answer is yes…you just need to acquire a new wealth building habit.
You are going to love this habit because you do not even have to remember it….a banking computer remembers the habit for you! How is that possible? Read on and you will soon see.
Here is how the automatic wealth building habit works. It is based on the miracle of compounding interest and the amazing banking technology that is available to virtually all of us today.
Step 1
If you do not have a bank account with “Bill Pay” go to a bank that has it and open a new account. Ask them how many checks can be sent per month, can it be managed via the internet, what are the costs. Many banks now offer this service for free as a promotion to get more customers.
Step 2
Decide who it is that you want to help build wealth. Yourself, your child, a grandchild, or even a friend. This habit also works for building spiritual wealth…more on that later.
Step 3
After you open the account you now have the ability to select any amount of money that you want sent to any person or organization and at almost any time interval. Some banks even offer an unlimited amount of bills that can be sent. The banks will then mail checks at regular intervals to the people or organizations you have designated…you do not have to do anything.
The real power of this habit is that you are not going to be sending bills in most cases…you will be sending wealth building payments….automatically!
OK, before we get to step 4 let’s look at the amazing power of compounding interest to see how much wealth can be built over time with this habit.
Here is an example of how much wealth you could build by having your billpay send just $50 per month into an account (mutual fund, IRA, etc) that has a 5% yield.
1 Year = $615
5 Years = $3,400
10 Years = $7,764
25 years = $29,775
You can learn more about compounding interest by doing a Google search on the internet. Obviously the amount of wealth you can build varies with the amounts and frequency of bill payments sent to your wealth building accounts and your rate of interest.
This is where research can help you, it is beyond the scope of this article to show you all the amazing possibilities that exist.
The beauty of the bill pay system is that it is very easy to adjust your recurring amounts up or down based on your current financial situation. As an example, you could set up your bill pay to send $12.50 each week into an account (Equals $50 per month) or change it to $15 per week for a few weeks and then back down to $12.50 at a later time. You decide exactly who gets the money, how much, and how often….you have complete control at all times. It is amazing wealth building power.
Step 4
Now it is time to set up your automatic wealth building habit using your banks billpay system. Get the address of the person or organization you want the money sent to including the account number. Go online and set up a new account with this information. Set frequency and amounts. Note: I have been doing this since 1992 and have multiple accounts (Charities, IRA’s etc) that have received money from me every month for 14 years and I have never written or signed a single check! I know from personal experience that the system works and I have never had any problems.
You can get very creative with how you build wealth and who you help build wealth.
* Set up an automatic bill pay to fund a child’s college education. There are many states that have plans that start with low monthly fees when the child is born or still young.
* Set up an automatic bill pay to fund a child’s savings account, just have the money be sent to the child’s bank with their account number listed on the check memo “Deposit to account ######”
* Set up an automatic bill pay to send a charity a payment every week. Remember that I said earlier that this habit can help you build spiritual wealth? If your church receives an automatic charity payment every week you are helping to support your church every week, even when you miss a Sunday service.
* Set up an automatic bill pay to send money to someone in need.
* Set up your bill pay to actually pay bills that you have paid late in the past….you may be able to save enough in prevented late fees to fund your wealth building payments!
The possibilities are endless…..you just need to take action and make it happen!

We all want to make money fast and we all want to be wealthy however, most people don’t achieve serious wealth.

The reason is, they make simple mistakes that prevent them reaching their goal of building serious wealth and the fact is there easy avoid, so let’s look at them.

1. Someone else can make you rich

It’s tempting to believe this, but of course the reality of building wealth is:

You need to do it for yourself and not rely on anyone else.

Let’s face it, the people who say you can get rich with them charge you.

If they could do it for themselves they wouldn’t need you, they could shut up and do it for themselves, most will appeal to your greed, take their fees and you will end up disappointed.

2. You can build serious wealth overnight

We have all read stories of people who made huge sums overnight, but let’s be realistic:

Their minority and a small one at that!

That’s not to say you can’t build serious wealth quickly, however you need to be realistic and have a 5 – 10 year plan.

Many investors have turned $30 – $50,000 into a $1,000,000 or more in this sort of time frame by using the power of compound growth and a high return low risk investment to do it.

Would you be happy with that?

If you are, there is a way of building wealth this way (which we will return to later) but lets look at some other essential points first.

3. You have to work hard or be innovative to build wealth

No you don’t.

You need to work smart, NOT hard.

The vast majority of people work hard but not many of them build wealth.

People think building wealth is all about hard graft, making some new discovery, but this actually prevents them from making money – You don’t need to do this to build wealth.

Building wealth is all about compounding your money and making it work hard for you and there are lots of simple ways to do this.

4. If you want to build wealth play defence well

Any football team will tell you everything is based on defence.

If you can’t defend you won’t win, no matter how good your attack is and it’s the same in building wealth.

You want to make your money build steadily, watch compound growth kick in and accelerate your gains.

If you lose money, it’s a case of making up lost ground and catch up which takes time.

When you are trying to build wealth make sure you pick the best reward for the lowest risk you can get.

For example, would you prefer an investment that made you 300% annually with the chance of losing all your money, or the chance to make 100% with 10% loss potential?

Exactly – Now you see the point.

Now your wondering what is a good way to make money, that’s simple, you can understand it, its cheap, easy to do and can make a tidy sum with low risk?

The secret of the worlds wealthiest families

We don’t have time to cover it in this article but Howard Hughes made billions, Donald Trump still does, even comedian Bob Hope made millions and so do most of the richest investors in the world.

You may have never considered it before but it’s buying land.

A simple way to build wealth open to all

You don’t need to be rich (it’s far cheaper than property) and all you need is the right location and you can turn in triple digit annual gains in many locations with low risk.

There is no better way for Mr Average to build wealth quickly with such low risk.

If you have never considered this then take a look and you will surprised at the profits that can be made with such low risk.