Personal wealth building is more about how you handle the financial challenges in your life than about how you handle prosperity. If you look at the people who became wealthy after the Great Depression, you’ll find that all of them leveraged the sudden boost in the economy which came after the depression. These were the same people who continued to work and to plan with the understanding that prosperity WOULD return.
In fact, during the years of the Depression JD Rockefeller said: “Prosperity will return, it always has and it always will.” This is a far cry from the mindset of the average person who thinks: “I’ve just got to make it through this.” or worse, the fear as to whether things are even going to get better at all. It’s this distinction which makes the difference in whether someone becomes wealth off of a recession or merely survives it.
The Value of a Recession
A season of economic scarcity is a time to sow and to continue to invest in your plans for creating wealth. You know what happens when you’re sowing seeds? Try it someone time, plant a seed in the ground, water it every day and check on your progress. What you’ll find is that for many days, you’ll see NO results at all….so why not just give up?
Because you have an understanding that if you continue to take care of that seed that it WILL break ground and that it will grow. However, even after it does, it will take a whole lot more care before it bears fruit. This means weeks of pruning, watering, fertilizing and waiting. However, if you don’t give up and if you continue to invest effort and patience, the harvest will come.
What Does This Mean for Your Personal Wealth Building?
Do you have a plan for managing your cashflow (even when it’s just a trickle) and for investing in your personal wealth building? If not, then you’re not planting any seeds. You’re simply relying on prosperity to return again and praying that it does soon. However, a written plan gives you something to tend to and to invest in when it really matters: when things are tough.
Think about this: the time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining, but you do need a blueprint. This is why the four bucket system is one of the most important parts of your plan for increasing personal wealth and for achieving financial security. It gives you a simple blueprint for keeping committed to your wealth building plans. When you have this, even the toughest economic times become an opportunity to grow your success.
19 MarPersonal Wealth Building – How the Rich Become That Way
25 MayAchieving Prosperity – Make a Complicated Personal Life Endeavor Easier
Is investment language intimidating? Do financial goals of security, or pursuing a dream or being worry-free of debt seem out of reach? Building a level of personally defined wealth is within a person’s control with investment understanding, sound principles and discipline.
Lipscomb honed his personal investment strategies over two decades. His claim is that he became a millionaire before the age of 40. As an employee in a worldwide computer component manufacturer, the perspective of successful wealth building strategies start and end with this book; unless there he authors another book. Lipscomb’s career is not as a financial planner. Instead, on faith that his ethics are sound as stated, his ideas presented are from personal experience and research. His style makes otherwise a jargon heavy field, understandable and at times entertaining.
Lipscomb focuses on stock investments because it is what knows best and offers rich, plain, anecdotal examples of what to do and what not to do. Adding credence to his own success with stock investing, his book has examples of both hard copy and internet based information sources for improving awareness of the why and how of stocks. The best read to self-educate is the Wall Street Journal and with a “put this book down and call or go online right now,” command, how can this be any stronger stated? Lipscomb refers to investor journals or websites to both read and study as well as to avoid. He does the latter by only emphasizing the sources to select.
Understanding risk and reward in investing is foundational, but what is it really? First, he gives, with several pages of discussion, a dry, dictionary definition of, “risk is the degree of probability of losing various amounts of money during a specified length of time.” Halfway into this level of explanation, he offers the same amount of explanation that most can more easily relate. Risk then becomes more metaphorical. “Like seatbelts and airbags reduced the risk of injury during accidents, dividends reduce the risk of loss while owning stocks.”
Lipscomb’s second to last chapter, specifically titled, “Be Ethical, Be Vocal,” spotlights investor’s ethics. He talks about high profile cases including Martha Stewart’s illegal gain from insider trading. The aim of the chapter encourages stockholder participation in company votes, board meetings and conversations with executives. Well rounded involvement encourages all stakeholders to do the right thing. Lipscomb’s own ethics appear through every chapter as he cites examples like this one that he faces in his investing. Achieving Prosperity makes an otherwise complicated personal life endeavor for many, easy and down to earth. It’s an encouragement and motivator for anyone wanting to control his or her financial future.
-ForeWord Clarion Reviews by Patricia Weber
Achieving Prosperity: A Realistic, Ethical Guide to Building Wealth by Todd Lipscomb; AuthorHouse; Publication date, 2006; Page Count: 145 pages; ISBN: 1-4259-4513-9