Wealth = Success???

[Still Growing]

Andrew,
As you said there are various forms of wealth such as health, family and freedom to do what you love which would be time. You asked "But if you really want to become a millionaire just to do it, how much money will you make before you stop being greedy, always wanting more?

I agree that people should not judge your success by your wealth but you should not condem greed so quickly.

Financial wealth is really a storing of time. You could grow your own food if you had the time but you exchange your money (stored time) for this food for example.

I commend you following your passion but if you are happy about not creating wealth you probably wouldn't feel the need to post about it. I suspect you secretly would like to have both. And you can if you first educate yourself on how to build wealth.

Most people think that financial wealth is something that happens to you. People think of "Finding" the right product instead of "Creating" it. They think of the lottery, etc. But when they speak of family then understand that you have to work on your relationships. When we speak of health you can't possibly be in the best health without learning what to eat and what exercises to do and then put your energy towards it.

But why is it about "making millions". To become financially wealthy you do not usually jump to millions, you start with thousands and build up. You also mentioned that you are concerned about materialism if you built financial wealth but materialism is not equal to financial independence. This mentality that you must be greedy to be wealthy is false. You also do not need to be materialistic to be wealthy.

What is financial indepence????????? My measurement is how long you can live with your current lifestyle without having to work. Think about it. If you were able to live reasonably and secure your basics then you would be able to dedicate your life to whatever you choose.

Lets not forget that most flashy people are not very wealthy. Many of them are but even more are not.

Many of my friends are very financially wealthy but you would never know it by the cars they drove.

Being financially wealthy does not mean that you would become a better or worse person. It really does not have anything to do with you as an individual and your character.

Aside from people who inherit, win the lotter or come up with something like Google, there are a lot of people out there who are just fianancially savvy. They live below their means, they read a lot about self improvement and they generally try to just be the best at what they do. They therefore, store time (money) for some future use or leverage.

If you do what you love you may not make much money but if you are the best at what you do you will most likely make money. But even if you make good money it does not mean you will be financially wealthy.

Most financially wealthy people, I have found, tend to study gaining wealth as a hobby. They read about investments, talk to friends about ideas, go into businesses with new products or people and are continuously growing their financial muscles. This isn't for everyone.

If you had the knowledge of a financial genious and acted upon that knowledge you would become wealthy. The same with emotional knowledge. or health knowledge. If you know a lot about fitness, talk to others about fitness and act upon it you will most likely become pretty fit.

I would say 90% of people reading this are not financially fit. The majority of people are not interested in how financial wealth works they are more interested in the things it can buy. This would be like wanting a great body so you could attract more dates but not really having any interest in learning about training. Makes no since right?

I would suggest that you learn to be content with less money and do not care how others judge you. Or you make a decision that you will learn to build wealth while doing what you love. You may not explode with millions in one to five years but you'll set yourself on a path of financial independence when you retire. If you chose the prior don't let those judging you get you down. Money is not the judge of a good or happy person and most people who will look down on you are just faking. Most are in debt up to their eyeballs and are just keeping up a front to make themselves look wealthier than they are.

[PMcDonald]

Originally Posted by trekr5

There is absolutely nothing wrong or evil in having money. If you pursue your purpose and add value to people's lives then inevitably you will be rewarded. What is wrong with that? I fail to comprehend this sackcloth attitude of people towards money. I find it very strange.

Money is not evil. A lot of good can be done with it. Peoples lives have been changed because of it. It's only a tool. You have more choices and freedom when you have wealth and that is not a bad thing. If you are conflicted about wealth, then perhaps you should opt out of the Western society and go and join Hare Krishna or become a Buddhist monk and live in a monastary somewhere because the world ain't gonna change anytime soon.

The big reason many people have a negative opinion of being wealthy is because more often than not, we have been conditioned from birth to believe it. The majority of us were born into a middle class family and grew up with our parents telling us things like "Money can't buy happiness" or "I might not be rich but I'm honest". The connotation in that last one says it all.

Unfortunately, these are all limiting beliefs that were pounded into our heads and so we never really were afforded the opportunity to make up our own minds about money and happiness. True, money in and of itself does not make someone happy. However, it is important to understand that money is energy and it is what we exchange the money for that brings us happiness. And I am not implying that material things bring happiness, but let's face it - having a ton of money is a heck of a lot nicer than not having any. Anyone who tells you otherwise is simply unable to look past their own limiting beliefs.

[hollowman]

I dun think it's accurate for people like Songwriter or PMcDonald to state that this wealth thing is a Western or USA thing. It happens here in the East too. The Chinese (in general) for example put in great effort to pursue wealth. Lets not stereoptype desire for wealth is of the West.

PMcDonald is definitely right about money is not evil. It's the people who are evil in how they put wealth in use. Similarly, drugs are not evil. Only when people misuse drugs that drugs cause adverse effects. Otherwise drugs are very much beneficial in medicine.

Andrew says something about 'wealth vs passion'. In this area, i am very blessed that i am now in a career that i am so passionate about and at the same time i am making decent livelihood.

Perhaps u guys out there can check out alex article in emotional maturity as he talks about 'hating rich folks'.

[Sam988]

Financial wealth is only bad if the person doesn't know how to handle it. Otherwise it's a great thing.


A guy here in brazil (René Sena - Wikipédia) won the lottery and received R$52 Million (our currency), which is more than US$25 Million. He was paraplegic, around 50 y.o., but still "managed" to marry a beautiful women of about 25 y.o.
He bought a big farm, built a big house, hired a lot of security guys. After some years, he is assassined in a local bar by 2 guys in a motorcycle. Turns out that after some investigations the police found out that these guys were hired by his wife to kill him so she would take all his money.



This shows well that wealth can be a bad thing if you're not a good "life and money manager".

[jbsmith]

It's not so much does wealth = success as it is what ELSE = success and how can money help you to get there.

So - for instance...

1. Giving your kids the best possible education - wealth can certainly help, but not if it means working so much you never get to provide the love, caring and knowledge YOU have to offer

2. Giving a significant amount of money to charity is a personal goal and wealth will help - but there is no reason to not begin right now by giving a percentage of what you earn

3. Saving for a rainy day is a viable goal - often as much for your family and friends as yourself and wealth helps with this goal - but again only if you put a preference on forming and keeping these relationships in the first place.

In my own set of priorities things like health and relationships come first, money is a goal closely tied with those first goals and so is a major motivator but NOT at the expense of the first two...that's where I think people run into trouble.

Jeff

[Ponce]

Money does not buy happines, I as as happy living in the back of my truck and broke as I am now in a nice home.

Decide what you want the money for and then go after it, but don't get greedy and go over your head.

I retired at the age of 58 when I meet my goal and retired, while I am not happy 100% I am secured for what will be.

I have all that I need so that I have all the money that I want.

[Honeywith4bees]

I remember reading in college about a famous psychologist named Abraham Maslow. He had created something that he called the Hierarchy of Human Needs. According to him, people would not have the opportunity to become "self-actualized" if they were too busy worrying about pure survival.

When I was completly tied up in worrying how to feed my kids, I never felt the freedom to spend time purusing a forum like this or contemplating spiritual growth. Having some wealth has really freed up some options for me, including the option of donating money to the local battered woman's shelter.

[CaptainStubbs]

I used to think that money wasn't that important, but after living for a while I've realized that its more important than people say...

It buys freedom, it buys time with your family (potentially), it buys travel and experiencing the world... it buys peace of mind... and lets you start a "2nd career" that is more inline with your passion.

Those are all pretty great things, and completely unrelated to a big house or a big screen TV.

[Sam988]

Originally Posted by CaptainStubbs

I used to think that money wasn't that important, but after living for a while I've realized that its more important than people say...

It buys freedom, it buys time with your family (potentially), it buys travel and experiencing the world... it buys peace of mind... and lets you start a "2nd career" that is more inline with your passion.

Those are all pretty great things, and completely unrelated to a big house or a big screen TV.

Exactly. Money is in direct correlation with freedom. The more money you have, the more freedom you have, to do and buy whatever comes to your mind. Only a fool would think it is a bad thing (and maybe make it be a bad thing).

[Ponce]

Guys? there is a differnce between having a nice home, car and so on and wanting a 120 feet boat, a Masserati, a private jet plane, 5 houses all over the world and so on.

Know what your limit is and meet it ......and then........ go for the rest of the cream, in other words make first a secured base from where you can operate.

When I came up with my business back in 92 I gave myself 10-12 years to make X ammount of money in order to retired.......I made it in only 6 and retired in 98, I am very happy.

[valis]

wealth does not equal success. In this society (america) we've got a serious problem with dual income families. They want all the materialistic possesions (48" color lcd tv, Escalade, house too big for them, etc) and debt up to their eyeballs.

Success is measured by personal happiness. I am lucky enough to be blessed with a wife who loves me dearly, and a little monkey boy who is, albeit extremely precocious, an all around good kid for being 3. To me, that is success. House overhead, food in tummy, two car garage with two paid for cars in it, vacations when possible, but materialistically I fail to see the use for a 40k SUV that gets 15 mpg and never sees the dirt. To me, that smacks of a status symbol, and that is in turned followed by the fact that people want them to notice how succesful they are. Insecurity, in my book.

Success is rated by how your kids turn out. By being able to spend quality time with the wife and kid, not by what your peers think of you. The only people whose respect I need to have are all located under the same roof as me, and we do just fine.

So no, I don't think that wealth == success, or vice versa. To me, that is a dangerously materialistic view, one that shamou and I have gone round and round on, eventually settling on the fact that we agree to disagree.

Of course, he's already got the success by all the other definitions I've made, so he is more than welcome to pursue the latest Ronco Splattermatic Salad Shooter. He's set to go.

[LuckyBuffie]

I didnt have time to read all the posts, but this is something I think about often.. I have been in a loving relationship for a very long time. We feel that love success outweighs money success tremendously. Everyone is different, but the way I see it is that life is made of problems and solutions. If there were no problems, we would be bored. The biggest problems people face are probably about love and money. I am not wealthy but, if I were (and not in love) I would give it up in SECOND for "love success". Plus, people think my husband and i are successful in the financial state b/c of our home, cars , posessions, etc. but we are in debt up to our ears. They have no idea, of course we dont go around. telling people, but my point is how many people "look" like they are successful financially and are fooling people? Seriously though I am so over caring about what anyone thinks, I just wanna be happy.

[valis]

Originally Posted by LuckyBuffie

I didnt have time to read all the posts, but this is something I think about often.. I have been in a loving relationship for a very long time. We feel that love success outweighs money success tremendously. Everyone is different, but the way I see it is that life is made of problems and solutions. If there were no problems, we would be bored. The biggest problems people face are probably about love and money. I am not wealthy but, if I were (and not in love) I would give it up in SECOND for "love success". Plus, people think my husband and i are successful in the financial state b/c of our home, cars , posessions, etc. but we are in debt up to our ears. They have no idea, of course we dont go around. telling people, but my point is how many people "look" like they are successful financially and are fooling people? Seriously though I am so over caring about what anyone thinks, I just wanna be happy.

excellent point. Where I live I see Cadillac Escalades, loaded, parked in apartment complexes. That makes zero sense to me. I drive a 10 year old car that gets 33-35 mpg, and live in a nice house.

I guess people's priorities are different. Some think short term, others long, and still others are convinced that they need to worry about what others think of them. If I had to worry about what others thought of me, I'd never get anything done. I'm just me; I try to be the best father and husband I can, and do the best I can at whatever endeavour I may attempt. At least that way I know I gave it my best, and if it worked, fantastic. If not, there's nothing to be ashamed of.

Unless the 'not' part involves parachuting.