On Being Wealthy 3

The road to financial stability and success

I am sure that no one knows the exact perfect formula to becoming wealthy beyond your dreams.  Some people are fortunate to get a jump start financially when their parents had family money to begin with.  In life I have encountered more scams than I care to remember, about how to get rich quick.  The big test as usual is if it sounds too good to be true it probably is.  One big scam was where this wealthy Real Estate person would sell you a starter Kit, and you would go on to extreme wealth yourself by buying and selling real estate.  The scam artist would have an infomercial on television, and he would explain how he had become wealthy doing what he was now going to teach how to do.  Most often these individuals were exposed to actually have achieved some level of wealth from selling materials on the infomercials, but not from buying selling properties

When it comes to parting with my money I do what is called “Due Diligence.”  Do the homework, verify their claims, verify their financial standings if necessary.  In the first place I’ve never been interested in becoming rich over night without earning it.  For that attitude I blame my mother.  She raised me believing that you don’t get something for nothing.  I still believe that you have to give something of value in exchange, whether it is intellectual property, product, service, investment, or something else.  The bottom line is you don’t get something for nothing.  If you do get something without exchange, start packing or minimally keep an eye over your shoulder, because someone will catch on sooner or later.

Early on in my adult years, I held as many as three jobs at one time while attending college or working my way up in management (in other words putting in the hours of a manager without the pay).  I did it all from pumping gas (full service), to translation of news articles for a radio station (English to Spanish) to performing On Air duties as a radio personality (be warned lest you get hooked and stray from your real calling in life stay away from any type of stage or media jobs).  The only thing I walked away with from this concentrated effort is the knowledge that it is a survival move.  It will keep the wolf away from the door, it will allow you to fulfill your main goals and/or agenda, but you will not prosper, and it will ruin your family life.  Compare this to being stranded in the middle of the ocean, and the second and third part time jobs are a life saver.  You will stay afloat, but you won’t reach the shore with it.

As soon as I found myself on solid footing (great job) but needing to prosper beyond survival, rather than look for a second job, I started a business, that would get my family, combined with my job more than just our needs met but some actual wants (many in fact).  Starting a business is a calculated risk, certain skills are required that you are not born with.  In other words these skills can be acquired, and then sharpened.

I once had a distant family member come to me for advise; he said there’s an ad in the paper that for $49 dollars they will guarantee me that I will be issued a Visa credit card.  He wanted to know if I would recommend that he send the money.  I told him to tell them that if they are so sure you will get the credit card to charge it to the account.  In other words don’t send the money in advance.  He assured me he wouldn’t, but he did any way.  He later told me he lost the $49 dollars and never got the credit card.  Does the saying, there’s a sucker born every minute sound familiar.

I merely want to point out that you need to have basic common sense skills to go into private sector and swim with the sharks.  Talk about the proverbial food chain, the little fish is used for dental floss. Next, I will post about the 2^nd direction I chose for financial stability.  The best is yet to come…