Look in the Mirror: <p>
For the middle-class, the power of money all too often controls them. Each day, members of the middle-class get up, work hard and fail to ask if what they do makes sense. Controlled by the power of money, the middle-class follows the crowd. What questions you should be asking to escape the rat race?</p>
Thursday, 18 October 2012
Thursday, 28 June 2012
4 Tips on Budgeting to Become Rich
4 Tips on Budgeting to Become Rich: <p>
When it comes to budgeting, there are two different mindsets. One makes you rich and the other makes you poor. Which mindset do you have?</p>
When it comes to budgeting, there are two different mindsets. One makes you rich and the other makes you poor. Which mindset do you have?</p>
Thursday, 10 May 2012
The Blame Game
The Blame Game: <p>
What makes someone successful? Knowing a problem and complaining about it? Or knowing a problem and creating a solution? One is the blame game. The other is the solutions game. One requires no financial education. The other requires a high financial education. Which game do you play?</p>
What makes someone successful? Knowing a problem and complaining about it? Or knowing a problem and creating a solution? One is the blame game. The other is the solutions game. One requires no financial education. The other requires a high financial education. Which game do you play?</p>
Thursday, 5 April 2012
5 Things to Do Instead of College
5 Things to Do Instead of College: <p>New numbers are out showing the debt burden of students soaring while the returns dwindle. Given the dire jobs market for college grads, how can young people get a leg up in today’s economy? Robert Kiyosaki offers five ways.</p>
Tuesday, 10 January 2012
The medium of exchange
Money Is Not Wealth
If you want to create wealth, it will help to understand what it is. Wealth is not the same thing as money. Wealth is as old as human history. Far older, in fact; ants have wealth. Money is a comparatively recent invention.
Wealth is the fundamental thing. Wealth is stuff we want: food, clothes, houses, cars, gadgets, travel to interesting places, and so on. You can have wealth without having money. If you had a magic machine that could on command make you a car or cook you dinner or do your laundry, or do anything else you wanted, you wouldn't need money. Whereas if you were in the middle of Antarctica, where there is nothing to buy, it wouldn't matter how much money you had.
Wealth is what you want, not money. But if wealth is the important thing, why does everyone talk about making money? It is a kind of shorthand: money is a way of moving wealth, and in practice they are usually interchangeable. But they are not the same thing, and unless you plan to get rich by counterfeiting, talking about making money can make it harder to understand how to make money.
Money is a side effect of specialization. In a specialized society, most of the things you need, you can't make for yourself. If you want a potato or a pencil or a place to live, you have to get it from someone else.
How do you get the person who grows the potatoes to give you some? By giving him something he wants in return. But you can't get very far by trading things directly with the people who need them. If you make violins, and none of the local farmers wants one, how will you eat?
The solution societies find, as they get more specialized, is to make the trade into a two-step process. Instead of trading violins directly for potatoes, you trade violins for, say, silver, which you can then trade again for anything else you need. The intermediate stuff-- the medium of exchange-- can be anything that's rare and portable. Historically metals have been the most common, but recently we've been using a medium of exchange, called the dollar, that doesn't physically exist. It works as a medium of exchange, however, because its rarity is guaranteed by the U.S. Government.
The advantage of a medium of exchange is that it makes trade work. The disadvantage is that it tends to obscure what trade really means. People think that what a business does is make money. But money is just the intermediate stage-- just a shorthand-- for whatever people want. What most businesses really do is make wealth. They do something people want.
(This essay was originally published in Hackers & Painters.)
If you want to create wealth, it will help to understand what it is. Wealth is not the same thing as money. Wealth is as old as human history. Far older, in fact; ants have wealth. Money is a comparatively recent invention.
Wealth is the fundamental thing. Wealth is stuff we want: food, clothes, houses, cars, gadgets, travel to interesting places, and so on. You can have wealth without having money. If you had a magic machine that could on command make you a car or cook you dinner or do your laundry, or do anything else you wanted, you wouldn't need money. Whereas if you were in the middle of Antarctica, where there is nothing to buy, it wouldn't matter how much money you had.
Wealth is what you want, not money. But if wealth is the important thing, why does everyone talk about making money? It is a kind of shorthand: money is a way of moving wealth, and in practice they are usually interchangeable. But they are not the same thing, and unless you plan to get rich by counterfeiting, talking about making money can make it harder to understand how to make money.
Money is a side effect of specialization. In a specialized society, most of the things you need, you can't make for yourself. If you want a potato or a pencil or a place to live, you have to get it from someone else.
How do you get the person who grows the potatoes to give you some? By giving him something he wants in return. But you can't get very far by trading things directly with the people who need them. If you make violins, and none of the local farmers wants one, how will you eat?
The solution societies find, as they get more specialized, is to make the trade into a two-step process. Instead of trading violins directly for potatoes, you trade violins for, say, silver, which you can then trade again for anything else you need. The intermediate stuff-- the medium of exchange-- can be anything that's rare and portable. Historically metals have been the most common, but recently we've been using a medium of exchange, called the dollar, that doesn't physically exist. It works as a medium of exchange, however, because its rarity is guaranteed by the U.S. Government.
The advantage of a medium of exchange is that it makes trade work. The disadvantage is that it tends to obscure what trade really means. People think that what a business does is make money. But money is just the intermediate stage-- just a shorthand-- for whatever people want. What most businesses really do is make wealth. They do something people want.
(This essay was originally published in Hackers & Painters.)
Monday, 9 January 2012
Essential Qualities of an Entrepreneur: Paying Attention to Details
Essential Qualities of an Entrepreneur: Paying Attention to Details: <p>The most successful entrepreneurs in the world are those that know how to pay attention to the little details.</p>
<p>I'm not talking about the little details in your business, such as the expenses, who is excelling as an employee (and who's not), trends in sales, and more.</p>
<p>I'm not talking about the little details in your business, such as the expenses, who is excelling as an employee (and who's not), trends in sales, and more.</p>
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