The True Nature of Wealth

You'll recall from yesterday that the first secret to getting rich is that you cannot fear poverty. Otherwise, you can't take the chances you need to take if you are to accumulate substantial wealth.

You'll also recall that there are only three important decisions in life: what you do... where you do it... and with whom you do it.

Here, we continue our series with more on... what you do.

Imagine a man who is a great chef. He loves cooking. So he opens a restaurant, and it is an immediate success.

Seeing the possibilities, he takes his recipes, trains other chefs and opens other restaurants. Pretty soon, he has restaurants all over town... and the money is rolling in.

But now he is no longer doing what he likes to do. Instead of cooking, he's running a complicated business; he's become a manager and an administrator. He's figuring out tax strategies, leverage and cost control.

"I've become a damned accountant," he says. "I hate accounting."

The real fun is getting money, not having it. Once you have it, the fun is over.

This is partly because of the nature of wealth. To get it, you have to be expansive, ambitious and optimistic. But once you have it, you have to change your personality to cope with it... protect it... and administer it.

Instead of being an entrepreneur... and a builder of wealth... you must become a custodian... and a conservator.

You can no longer be the same person you were. You have to assume that the worst will happen... because it probably will.

Now you have to be cautious, careful, distrustful, cynical... and pessimistic. You're no longer expanding your wealth. Now, it shrinks as you do all you can to try to stop nature from running her course.

In short, you are no longer a young man full of energy and promise; you are now an old man trying to stop the clock.

Time Wasting

And then, when you are no longer building a fortune, you have to do something else.

But what?

You look for things to do... ways to pass the time... things you can convince yourself are meaningful or fun. But they are usually just big time wasters – art... charities... sports... entertainments.

Often, the positions a rich person puts himself in are not only dull, but also they are fraudulent.

He has made a lot of money in one business, so he thinks he will be competent and successful in others. Remarkably, others think so too! So he could end up as chairman of a local hospital board or maybe the head of its investment committee.

But nothing in his career prepares him for the petty politics of a charity board of directors... or the deceptive nuances of the investment world.

He is not only miserable because he feels he is wasting his time, his projects also end in failure.

The hospital board gets into a nasty internal feud... and he cuts the hospital fund – and his own fortune – in half, mistakenly believing that he knows what he is doing.

We did not make that mistake. We have not retired. Still, we have suffered from wealth.

Tune in tomorrow to find out how...

Bill

Further Reading: The US is heading down a difficult path. As Bill says, "It already lives on borrowed money... and borrowed time." If you want to learn how this has happened and what you can do to overcome the financial challenges that will arise as the situation deteriorates, you simply MUST read Bill's book The New Empire of Debt, which he co-wrote with Addison Wiggin.

It reveals, in often shocking detail, the financial realities the US faces and what the ultimate outcome may be. Claim your FREE hardcover copy of Bill and Addison's book here. All we ask is that you cover the shipping cost.