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You Must Take Action

by Stuart Goldsmith

Self-made millionaires achieved this status because they were willing to pay the price.

There is a price to pay for getting rich, just as there is a price to pay for everything you attain in your life.

Many chatter about being willing to pay the price, but few will actually do so.

If you are serious about becoming a wealthy man or woman, you need to be prepared to pay the considerable price tag associated with that blissful state. It doesn't come free.

So let's talk honestly, frankly and openly about exactly what is involved if you are to make your fortune. You will not read what I am about to tell you in any 'feel good' book.

To make a lot of money, you're going to have to give up many things. Often you won't even know what the price is when you start out. Nevertheless, you must resolve to pay it. This is the factor which stops most people from getting rich. They want it for nothing and are not willing to sacrifice anything at all to get it. This is a fantasy.

I think my strength is in smashing illusions, fantasies, and myths. Most people sign up for a great many of these fantasies which they believe to be 'the truth' and this has a huge impact on their wealth creating efforts. Often it even threatens survival.

Most people barely survive financially. Worse still, lacking an iron-grip control on even the basics of their lives, they mumble the incantations of success, expecting magical results. That is, results which do not exact a price or penalty.

Let us be brutally honest here, this is the state of people in the United States today:

1. 2% are wealthy.

2. 5% are comfortable. They live in a decent house with a small or zero mortgage, they drive a new car, they take one or two holidays each year. They have enough money for most of the things they need, but they are not wealthy. I would describe them as being in the high end of their comfort zone.

3. 53% are scraping along day-to-day, month to month. They are just about paying their way, but there is never any money left over for luxuries. Also, they live in constant fear of the large unexpected bill, tax demand, or medical expense. They are hanging on to the tricky business of life by the fingernails—barely surviving; lurching from crisis to crisis.

4. 40% are days away from drowning and are coming up for air for the third time. Their past mistakes and failures have created a crippling burden of debt which they have not the slightest hope of paying back through working at a normal job. The crushing weight of their errors and the cumulative effect of years of laziness, inaction and lack of discipline have created a terminal situation. Each month they sign up again for inaction and myopia. Each month their load becomes a little heavier. Without urgent and immediate action, the outcome is inevitable—total financial collapse.

As an aside, I would like you to reread the above paragraph and notice how I place the blame for this situation squarely on the shoulders of the person experiencing it. This is where it belongs of course but it is unfashionable to say so.

In a society which seeks to crush individualism and make each one of us a worker in the state collective, how can an individual possibly be to blame for his own misfortune? He cannot. This would give the individual some personal power, and that cannot be right!

No. It must be society, greedy capitalists, manipulative industry, bad luck, his upbringing, peer pressure, his race, lack of education, his age, lack of opportunity, or any one of a hundred other factors all of which are out of his control. In short, he is not to blame, according to modern thinking.

If you doubt this, read the following and see if it has a familiar ring:

"Yes, I admit it. I'm flat broke and I owe tens of thousands of dollars to other people which, to be honest, I don't have a prayer of paying back. But it's not my fault. I was made redundant from my job and thrown on the scrap heap at 40.

"Those greedy bosses call it downsizing, but I don't notice any downsizing in their fat wallets. Twenty years I've worked there, and that's all the thanks I get. I'm a heavy-motor electrical engineer, and there just aren't that many jobs around for someone of my abilities. I've applied for a few but they always want younger men.

"I guess losing my job made me kinda depressed and my wife couldn't take it. She wants a divorce and the bitch is taking me for every penny. I don't have any savings, and the money I get from the state is a joke. Sure I'm broke, but as you can see it's not my fault."

An aspiring millionaire never blames anything or anyone but themself for the circumstances of their life.

Until next time...

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