By Daniel C. Felsted
Money in motion is an asset. The more assets you have the sooner you can become financially independent—Free.
Conventional education gives a fuzzy definition of an asset. The banker says, “Your home is an asset.” Your accountant says, “Your car, your boat and your timeshare are assets.” Your grandmother says, “Your savings account is an asset.”
Under the above fuzzy definitions, “your home” is an asset to the bank if it isn’t paid off. “Your car, your boat and your timeshare” are assets to those who hold the notes and are getting interest from your payments each month. And the money sitting in “Your savings account” is an asset to the bank because they can lend it out 10X for every dollar you deposit.
All of these are assets, but to people other than you.
Is your money making you money?
You must learn how to use your money to make you money. This is the true definition of an asset—something that makes you money.
To be clear, there are several steps you need to accomplish before you can most effectively take advantage of this step.
- You must change your bad habits: money losing habits
- You must pay off your debt
- You must build an emergency fund
- You must continually increase your financial IQ
So that you can take advantage of the “power and potency” that money in motion can create.
With only 8-9% of Americans claiming millionaire status,* we know that there is room for the remaining 91-92% to increase their financial education so that they too can become financially independent.
The most exciting thing about increasing your financial education is learning how to go to the next level from what you have learned. And you never know where that knowledge will come from. It may be from a book or a seminar. It may come from a conversation with a friend or neighbor or your advisor or an expert you found online. You never know until you go looking for knowledge.
Putting your money in motion is a life changing opportunity. Money in motion makes money. Money in motion is an asset. And the more true assets you have the more opportunities you will have for your future.
We must continually educate ourselves. Not for learning alone, but for what it makes us think, what it allows us to do, and how we can help others improve their lives as well.
We live in a time where the trials of “affluence and ease, the trials of prosperity and pride”** have spoiled us. “Slow growth cautions a man or nation, but sudden wealth is a spoiler.”***
Remember, “Man only rises to the level of his preparation and knowledge,”**** so level the playing field. Learn how to change your assumptions. Learn how to alter your actions. Change your basic beliefs about money and finances. Change your emotional certainties by asking questions.
Questioning can make your dreams come true. The masses are always slow to adopt. The question that remains to be asked is, are you going to go down with the sinking ship or jump into the new educational model?
If you want to be what you are not, wealthy, you must do that which you have not done before: something! Don’t wait for a crisis to change. Change now. Read a financial book. Take a seminar. Talk to a financial expert and make your dreams come true.
PS: A great resource to start with is Money Mastery: 10 Principles That Will Change Your Financial Life Forever by Alan M. Williams, Peter R. Jeppson and Stanford C. Botkin
* CNBC, 2/21
** David A. Bednar, On the Lord’s Side
*** Louis L’Amour, Fair Blows the Wind
**** Dave Ramsey
The Internet Dark Ages 