Building Wealth is as much a mental exercise as it is a physical process. There is no doubt that goals and objectives play a role in success. We need to know where we are going in order to arrive at our destination. If we want to be wealthy, what does that mean to us? Is that $100k in the bank, $1 million in the bank or $10 million in the bank? That’s for you to decide.
An important realization is the delicate balance between small goals and big life objectives. Small goals and objectives help us get to medium term goals and objectives which help us get to long term goals and objectives. You can’t get to $1 million if you can’t get to $500k. You can’t get to $500k if you can’t get to $250k. And you’ll never get to $250k if you can’t get to $100k in investments. The realization occurs when you discover that building wealth is a lifelong process built upon principles.
The finish line isn’t really a finish line in the literal sense. You may actually have a goal of getting to $1 million or $3 million and believe, “When I get there I am done!” You may be done with a lot of the heavy lifting. You may be done with a lot of the hard work. You may be done with the uncertainty of knowing whether or not you can reach that level. But you can’t quit the principles that got you there in the first place. If you do, you’ll go backwards mighty fast and lose all the benefits of your lifetime achievement.
If we start spending more than we make, we go backwards. If we start taking on debt, we go backwards. If we use up our liquidity we go backwards. When we go backwards on things, happiness is impacted.
Financial happiness occurs when we have the peace of mind that tomorrow will be better than today and that everything is going to be ok.
The best way to insure against going backwards is to stick to the fundamental principles that delivered you to the promised land in the first place.
All of this is a funny way of saying, you can’t really quit on your principles ever. Here’s the good part though. You won’t want to. You will have evolved as a successful person because you didn’t quit along the way. You didn’t give up. You kept making forward progress bit by bit, dollar by dollar, month after month and year after year. You didn’t get to $500k and then go on a major shopping spree buying cars and a new home because if you did, you would have never made it to the next level that was part of your definition of wealth success. You would have let yourself down. You would have failed yourself.
Quitters never achieve their goals unless their goal was to be a top quitter. That’s not a satisfying goal. You’ll never feel good about yourself if you quit on yourself and failed to reach something that was within yourself that you determined was important to you. Winning is the daily progress that you make in living your own journey. Winning is knowing that you are on the right path towards your goals, making strides, developing skills, advancing your game, reaching the higher levels along the way. You get to win each day, each week, each month and each year that you make the forward progress that keeps you on your own path towards your financial goals.
You’ll learn that someone will always be going faster than you. You’ll also learn that someone is always going slower than you too (even if they are working hard in a positive direction). You’ll learn that someone always has a nicer house and a newer car. The minute you drive your new car off the lot there is a person signing papers behind you that is about to own even a newer car than you with zero miles on it.
Some people might say, “You mean I can never quit building wealth? That’s so deflating.” Those are the same people that will never get there anyway. Those are the people that don’t want to change, to evolve, to move up in life. Those are the people that don’t want to grow their knowledge.
That doesn’t mean that we aren’t entitled to enjoy the fruits of our labor. Far from it. The juice is worth the squeeze if you do it right on your own terms and for the right reasons. You’ll know if you are doing things right if you are happy along the way. Happiness isn’t about never feeling like you want something. We all want things and you can be happy while wanting things. Wanting things means we are growing and striving for something that is appealing to us. Maybe we want a new boat, or a new watch, or a vacation. Maybe we want to spend more time with grandchildren or exercising or on a hobby. The happiness will come when we know that we are wanting something meaningful and we are making progress towards that goal.
But we can’t quit building wealth.