TO BUILD ENDURING WEALTH, YOU MUST IMBIBE THE HABITS OF WEALTHY PEOPLE

WEALTH CAPSULE 7

(SESSION 7)

I focused on developing the habit of being as generous as possible. In just three weeks, I retrained my brain and heart to allow generosity to take full effect in my life. Jayson Linford

For countless people, New Year’s Eve is the re-start of many old habits. Millions of people will voice New Year’s resolutions in one night, and within the week, over 75% will have broken them. Sumner M. Davenport

It takes time and patience, but if you develop the habit of using forceful, positive Self-Talk rebuttals to your negative Mind Chatter, you will soon see a shift in your Mind Chatter, how you feel and what you do. Mark Snyder

Good habits can be developed through repetition. By incorporating behaviours, tasks and attitudes into the regular routines, they usually become a habit, thus becoming natural and virtually effortless. Kellie Sullivan

As usual, I was at my Billionaire Friend’s place at the appointed time. I was ushered into his garden, his version of Eden, where animals and trees are in perfect harmony. Amazingly, I was not aware my Friend had walked in.

“My boss, how are you? What could have made you so engrossed that you did not even know when I walked into the garden?’

“I was just observing the scenery of the garden. It’s nothing to worry about. Why can’t human coexistence be this beautiful?”

“Well, there is so much to learn in nature if we observe well. Remember, the Bible asks us to study the ants, and we would be wise. That is true, but we hardly study nature and behaviours, which is why we make terrible mistakes at times.”

“By the way, I want to suggest that we have covered more than enough grounds to lay a solid foundation for building lasting wealth, and we should ordinarily proceed to the next stage. But I want us to quickly deal with another fundamental issue that can hinder wealth-building if we don’t address it. I want us to talk about how to build enduring wealth by copying the positive habits of wealthy people while eliminating the disempowering habits that can sabotage our wealth building endeavours. “

We quickly agreed on the subject for the week:

TO BUILD ENDURING WEALTH, YOU MUST IMPLEMENT THE HABITS OF WEALTHY PEOPLE

We also agreed that because of the weight of the subject matter, we should deal with the issue in two or three sessions, and we shall be good to proceed to the next phase of the wealth-building stage. So we shall run the first part this week and possibly conclude in the next session.

When I first started going to my Billionaire’s Friend’s place, I used to wonder quietly how he acquired so much wealth. I used to think that my Friend and other wealthy people carry different DNAs that make them generate wealth so easily. One evening, I uttered my thoughts and asked him: do you people (wealthy people) know some things that other people don’t know?
His reply surprised me: “My boss, it would surprise you if I disclosed that wealthy people do the same things ordinary people do but just that they do them differently. For instance, while ordinary people spend on impulse, wealthy people spend their expenses on the last penny and discipline themselves not to spend outside the budget”.

‘Truly so. In the past seven years, I have embarked on a project involving interviewing successful people asking them the same questions: what do they do that ordinary people do not do? I have done over 40 such interviews. Their answers surprised me but corroborated what my Billionaire Friend shared with me during our last session. Here is a summary of my observations:

One, successful people load their days with value-added activities.

They ensure that their to-do lists contain one thing they must achieve that day concerning their visions and their assignments on earth, and they do this when they are at the peak of their energy, usually in the early part of the day. They don’t just come with to-do lists. They ensure they use the lists to advance what God has called them to do daily.

Two, they reduce their timeslot to naira and kobo. This gives them a sense of value for time. Here is how to do it. Take your annual income and divide it by the number of hours in the year. That is how much you are worth per hour. You will then determine who is worthy of your attention. A better way of doing it is to use your estimated future income.

During our session, my Billionaire Friend shared ten habits that wealthy people cultivate that anyone aspiring to build wealth should also cultivate. He proceeded with the discussion this way:

“Habits are those human, regular and settled behavioural patterns, which are most often difficult to give up. They become one’s recurrent behavioural patterns, which are predictable referential. On being studied, they can greatly help improve the lives of others.

“Our topic this week is about building enduring wealth, from using the habits of wealthy people. Generally, there are some habitual traits in wealthy people, which can be implemented for the building and sustenance of wealth on the close study.
We shall be looking at a few of them in this edition”.

1. INFORMED WEALTH BUILDERS BUILD WEALTH BY SAVINGS FROM ACTIVE INCOMES INTO PASSIVE INVESTMENTS.

“While journeying through life and climbing corporate ladders, one can begin to build wealth by deploying one’s active incomes into multiple passive investments and, in so doing, progressively build wealth by regularly focusing on using one’s savings from active incomes into building passive incomes”.

“This habit is generally recommended to employees to build wealth through committed regular and consistent savings from their active incomes in their life employment journeys. This calls for setting aside and regularly adhering to some predetermined percentages of active employment incomes for regular savings into building wealth. I consistently decided to use 20% of my active employment income to grow my wealth. This is different from the generally recommended percentage of 10% of active incomes and as contained in the ” Richest Man in Babylon of George Clarkson, who planted this habit in me from 19 years of age”.

“This might appear difficult to achieve, but what it takes is determination and living frugally, as of habit, towards building wealth. The wealthy also employs this habit to sustain their wealth and not necessarily, only for wealth builders. Towards this end, wealth-builders must closely watch their spending habits regularly, control and keep track of their daily/monthly expenditures. They must regularly keep adjusting their budgets to eliminate wasteful and consumptive expenditures, monitor and pay attention to inflationary pressures and minimise ego-driven lifestyles. Once such wealth builders notice that their expenditures are becoming unsustainable, vis-à-vis their incomes, they must promptly adjust to ensure that spending as of habit is kept in check and 20% below the incomes earned, as with me. In doing this, wealth-builders must regularly lookup and uncover bad spending habits. Again, they must choose their friends to ensure the elimination of negative peer group pressures, whose lifestyles could hinder their wealth-building goal. Their spending, savings, and investment behaviours must be properly planned to ensure their goal. This is because nobody ever earns enough to satisfy his needs appetite. Indeed this is a basic maxim in economics, which provides that “man’s needs are unlimited, while means are limited”.

“Bearing this in mind, wealth-builders must ensure that their spending is kept minimal and as practicable possible by limiting their tastes, lifestyles and needs to only those things that are necessary. This is a very common habit with successful wealth-builders and that of the wealthy. A living legend of this habit is Warren Buffet. This 90-year old very wealthy man is still in the same house he built in 1967, and drives himself in his old but refurbished car while continuing to enjoy sustaining his wealth, having committed 99% of his wealth to charity.”

2. INFORMED WEALTH BUILDERS MUST, AS OF HABIT, ORGANISE THEIR FINANCES. “Generally, wealth building requires proper financial budgeting, planning and organisation. Systematically creating wealth requires regular financial planning and monitoring of possible deviations from set personal budgets, placements and investment returns. This is absolutely necessary. Hence, financial maps must regularly be drawn to ensure that expenditures and savings are kept in line with the goal of building wealth. Financial maps must be regularly drawn to guide spending habits from deviations away from set financial and budgetary plans at building wealth. As of habit, my set wealth-building goals are mapped, ahead of every year, towards guiding me and keeping my eyes on the ball during the year. This is important for wealth builders to keep them in check from budgetary and financial deviations. It has greatly worked for me”.
3. WEALTH BUILDERS WEIGH EVERY INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY THAT COMES THEIR WAY BEFORE PLUNGING IN.

“It is necessary to always weigh the opportunity cost of every investment decision. For wealth builders, this ensures that costs are properly weighed in terms of expected possible returns and their associated costs vis a vis other available investments.
Opportunity costs must be weighed with every wealth-building decision for minimising investment losses arising from poor investment decisions in the continuous utilisation of every savings made from active incomes into building wealth”.

4. WEALTH BUILDERS PLACE GREAT VALUE ON THEIR TIME. “It is commonly stated that “time waits for no one”. For wealth building, time is of the essence since wealth-builders are mere mortals, who would eventually die, no matter how long it may take. Hence, wealth-builders must optimise their time management to avoid unnecessary time-wasting activities. Time wasting activities should be curbed for the habit of gathering knowledge, reading, learning and relating with mentors to assist them in building wealth. Wealth builders need to form the habit of placing premium value on their time management because the same finite time is available to everybody but gives the best results to those who optimally utilise the value of time. As of habit, it is those who use their time wisely that from its use”.
5. WEALTH BUILDERS AUGMENT FAILURES IN THEIR INVESTMENTS WITH CUTS IN EXPENDITURES.

“We all fail many times with some of our decisions. No human is perfect. However, wealth-builders must regularly augment their investment failures with sacrifices of cuts in their expenditures. Investment failures would occur, but wealth builders must adjust to regularly augment such accrued losses with discovering spending that would augment such losses and use such discoveries to cover for the investment losses. It is also important for wealth builders to always prepare against the worst with their investments. Wealth builders must identify possible problems/failures that may arise and plan ahead against such failures. In doing this, wealth-builders must take up insurance policies to cover such possible losses/failures. This is very vital. They must anticipate the worst when building wealth. Towards this end, wealth-builders must obtain insurance covers for their health, property accidents, fire, etc. Appropriate insurance covers must be taken regularly to protect wealth builders against the worst that could happen and which usually happen. They must organise their finances regularly to provide insurance that will protect them against foreseeable failures. All possible mishaps must be identified and anticipated, with preparations made against them, by taking up insurance policies, putting in place many required protections and making necessary decisions to protect their accumulating and build wealth. While in paid employment, I started with fire insurance cover, over even the contents of my rented accommodation but have since graduated my insurance cover over many necessary others”.

“Let us stop here today, and we shall continue our next session”.

My Billionaire Friend suggested we review the feedback from those who responded to the prompts we inserted in the last edition of the conversation. We both agreed that the articles were hitting the targets, but we also decided to go ahead and implement the suggestions made by a few of those who responded to our request for feedback.

After we had sipped our cups of freshly squeezed orange juice, we parted ways.

I am eager to catch up with you next week.

Yours Moneywisely

ayo.arowolo@thisdaylive.com
Tel: 08086447494