People plan a vacation. Plan to buy a home. Plan to have a child. But plan to preserve wealth. They would rather listen to fingernails on a chalkboard. Without a plan there is f.a.i.l. Family anger in lawsuits. Without a p.l.a.n. there is f.a.i.l, financial abundance is lost. Without a plan there is f.a.i.l.u.r.e. Family achievement is lacking undermining real enrichment. Having a plan is like having a roadmap. Showing us which sites to see, which obstacles to avoid and bringing us to our destination.
An example of a plan to preserve wealth undoubtedly will include a budget. How much you make and how much you spend. If the spending exceeds the making then you have to cut down on spending. When you make more than you spend you are on your way to wealth preservation.
A plan should also contain 5 other essential parts:
First, is what you set aside in savings. What you do with the savings of course is up to you but I would suggest that savings is for something special like a vacation or new T.V.
Second, is to put money into an investment. There are many types of investments but this money is money you never want to have to touch.
Third, is money you set aside for education. If we are not learning, we are not growing. Learning is a lifelong process and the more learning we have the more we can do in life on the path to wealth preservation.
Fourth, is money you set aside for charity.
I was listening to a tape and the speaker talked about our approach to wealth. Many times when we receive money we begin to close our hands around it. As we keep closing our hand it becomes tighter and tighter until we have it closed so hard it makes a fist and when it makes a fist nothing can get in and nothing can get out. A fist closed so hard no longer has the benefit of being open to new ideas, new possibilities, new opportunities. When we open our hand and we give, we bring into our life the power of the universe which is to say the swirling energy that is in all things around us. When we give we receive in ways we cannot imagine. It’s a simple example, during the holidays of 2013. Our goal was to improve the strategic nature of our relationships with others and to increase the ability of our own staff. Totally unexpected I was given a gift certificate to a tennis shop tennis being my passion and one of our employees brought in a homemade jar of jelly. These simple treats were benefits we received in different ways for our openness.
Fifth is the money we put away to have fun because we all have to reward ourselves.
I remember when I started doing this exercise I was able to put away a little over 100 dollars. I told my wife we could go out and to pick a restaurant. She picked a Chinese restaurant. We went and when I started looking at the prices and how much we had to spend I realized I wasn’t going to be able to spend enough of what we had saved and that include extra glasses of wine. We ended the evening having a great meal and still had money left over. All of this came from a simple exercise in putting a little money away each time we received money.
