THERE is no single path to financial success. But there are consistent commonalities we can identify and utilise. Should we? Most of us would rather be rich than poor. That's natural and understandable; yet in reality many people are unwilling to pay the steep price of economic success.
Too many of us have grown comfortable with a relatively light 40-hour workweek. So comfortable that we look on in horror, or at least disbelief, at those with enough fire in their bellies and steel in their spines to flagrantly defy the norms of 21st century living by passionately and proactively toiling 60 to 80 hours a week to build a customised money-generating machine — a viable business.
The late poet, publisher and philanthropist Felix Dennis died of throat cancer in 2014. A year before his premature death, the UK's Guardian newspaper estimated Dennis's net worth at £500 million.
He founded Maxim magazine and helmed a UK and US publishing empire through his company Dennis Publishing. In 2006, Dennis wrote an iconoclastic book entitled How To Get Rich — One Of The World's Greatest Entrepreneurs Shares His Secrets.
In his edgy style, he described the aspirations many of us harbour about becoming "rich enough" to do many things. Such as? Here's a sample of what Dennis wrote 15 years ago, eight years before his premature demise, and long before our current Covid-19 restrictions:
"Rich enough to smile sweetly or sneer at bank managers, depending on what you had for breakfast that morning…
"Rich enough to live where you want, to go where you want, to do what you want, to meet who you want. Rich enough to buy the only two things apart from health and love worth fussing about in life. Time. And the option of not having to be in any particular place on any particular day doing any particular thing in order to pay the rent or the mortgage."
LAYING THE FOUNDATION
As a Malaysian licensed financial planner, I have some clients who live that way. Without exception, their stratospheric levels of financial bounty were reached after decades of hard and even smarter work.
They were willing to risk failure by starting a business, and then impressively overcame the 90 per cent business start-up failure rate. In succeeding, not only can they retire well, but they have also laid the foundation for multi-generational wealth.
Then there is a larger merely "well-to-do" segment of my client base that has not started their own businesses, but consistently puts in 50- to 70-hour work weeks at their jobs.
Such diligence has caused them to rise in their careers as white- and gold-collar employees or professionals. They aren't as magnificently wealthy as successful business owners, but are still on track to retire well, which leaves two other groups:
1. Those who tried to start a business but failed, which is the norm because getting a business to succeed is hard; and
2. Most of the others who are deeply — perhaps excessively — cautious.
Note: Dennis once asserted: "You'll never get rich by working for your boss."
Frankly, that's OK, too. Money is, as you well know, NOT the most important thing in life. Yet, we all need at least some money because having it sweetens and enhances our lives by enabling us to experience many facets of a multi-nuanced earthly journey.
For the majority who will never — and probably should never — risk failure by starting a business, a safer path to attaining, say, middle class or even upper middle-class comfort is to work hard for a salary, curb expenses to generate consistent cash flow surpluses, and to then cautiously save and invest in a diversified prudently structured portfolio.
COURAGEOUS AND CAUTIOUS
In the sixth chapter of George S. Clason's book, The Richest Man In Babylon, we come across a candid conversation set in ancient Mesopotamia between wealthy gold lender Mathon and his friend Rodan, a skilled spearmaker who has just received 50 pieces of gold from his king for an inventive design for spear points. In the context of that era, millennia ago, that's enough wealth to alter Rodan's life.
Let's eavesdrop as Mathon tells Rodan:
"If thou dost safely preserve thy treasure, it will produce liberal earnings for thee and be a rich source of pleasure and profit during all thy days. But if thou dost let it escape from thee, it will be a source of constant sorrow and regret as long as thy memory doth last."
Mathon then asks Rodan what he wants to do with his newfound wealth. Rodan's answer is useful to all who prefer to err on the side of financial caution:
1. To keep it safe; and
2. To make it grow, or as Rodan puts it: "That it (should) earn more gold."
Financial success can be achieved both by the courageous and the cautious. We just need to make sure we know ourselves well enough to figure out which side of that Great Divide we belong.
Once our decision is made, the three common criteria for massive or modest financial success are diligence, self-awareness and delayed gratification. Do you possess those attributes? If you do, will you harness them wisely to reach and ambitiously surpass your lofty long-term goals?
© 2021 Rajen Devadason
Rajen Devadason, CFP, is a Licensed Financial Planner, professional speaker and author. Read his free articles at www.FreeCoolArticles.com; he may be connected with on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/rajendevadason, or via [email protected]. You may also follow him on Twitter @Rajen Devadason and on YouTube (Rajen Devadason).
