Everybody is mad about money, well not literarily everybody, but most of us do want to be wealthy and extremely wealthy, to sum it up. We ogle at the rich list, dream about their opulent lifestyles and admire their lives thinking that all there is to a good life is lots and lots of money. But what is wealth? Wealth is the number of months or years you can sustain your desired lifestyle if you stop working now. If you lost your job now how long would you survive without going broke? The word wealth comes from the Old English words “weal” (well-being) and “th” (condition) which taken together means “the condition of well-being”? Another view goes that wealth is the ability to make your money work for you. In other words, you are not wealthy just because you earn a lot of money. You are only wealthy when your money works for you. To become wealthy, your main job is to acquire money and then put it to work making more money for you.These two views define wealth not on the amount of money one has which is the wrong assumption many of us make and makes money more of a ‘function’ of wealth. Therefore, wealth is less about ‘how much’ and more about ‘what you do with what you have’ or ‘how long you can live unaffected if you loose your main source of active income.’Also, wealth is not useful if one cannot use it. Benjamin Franklin believed that Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it. Wealth is that which comes faster the hard work of accumulating, which gives you space to spend without fear of thinking it will all disappear. Wealth, according to Michael G. R, is a measure of your ability to do what you would like to do, when you would like to do it - a measure of your breadth of immediately available choice. Therefore your wealth is determined by the resources you presently own, as everything requires resources, which do not necessarily have to be cash or real estate or tangible resources. Napoleon Hill, the supreme teacher of financial freedom, knows how you can become wealthy without necessarily having money like many Africans would like to say, as their excuse for poverty. All the breaks you need in life wait within your imagination. Imagination is the workshop of your mind, capable of turning mind energy into accomplishment and wealth. Back to the beginning, how long can you live off your savings and passive income sources at your current standard of living before you go broke? The first step towards this is making sure you get rid of your debts. Secondly, build emergency savings equivalent to three to six months of your monthly expenses. These emergency fund will come in handy when you lose your job unexpectedly and will give you time to put your house in order or find another job. Three, begin to build savings for a house, a car, investments and develop sources of passive income. After this you are assured of you three to six months and after that income from your investments. These three things may appear repetitive and boring, when you begin to try, they will give you a new financial confidence that you would have never thought possible. kelviod@yahoo.com
