"The skills to make money are very different than the skills to manage money & the skills to grow money" JOHAN HAMID
And that is the main reason that many people are not wealthy.
They simply do not realise this basic distinction and therefore do not know where to start in their Personal Finance Education.
It is by observing many people and friends, some broke, some breaking even and some very wealthy that I came to realise that quite a number of people DO have the skills of either making money, or the skill to manage money, but seldom both and much less common are people with those 3 skills.
ALL the people that I know that have these 3 skills are irremediably wealthy, with NO exceptions.
For years I have had the chance to meet numerous people that were good at making money and were good at managing money. They have a tendency to have a lot of common sense, and they always live below their means. They also all have savings, and ALL are generous with their money. Much more generous than the average person.
1. The skill to make money
You might not believe this but this is the most common skill of all. In fact most people have a job that pays them; not always well but still that does pay. Where they fail is with the next skill.
2. The skill to manage your money
This is the skill that will invariably separate broke people from the rest. Don't get me wrong: I know a lot of people that are not earning great money, but yet they are managing their income very well and always never go into bad debts , rarely borrow from friends and when they do, they always repay. They live within their means and tend to not have cluttered homes. They tend to be happy and generous, because they know that money will almost never be a bit issue for them.
The simple rule is: Spend less than you earn. This is commons sense, but common sense is not so common anymore...
3. the skill to grow your money
This is the rarest of the skills, as this require either some financial education or some experience in investing money. And experience of investing money always comes some disappointment that comes from some failure. The key is to avoid deadly failures that wipes all your savings. (I can tell you this from personal experience...)
This is the must have skill if you want to become wealthy, because you will very RARELY become wealthy by working. Creating wealth requires that you stop exchanging time for money. You need to leverage money and sometimes leverage other people 's work. You mainly do that by focusing on what you are good at, focusing on your added value, and delegating task of lesser value to other people.
It is true that this task (investing) can be delegated to other people as well, but the issue is that many people do not have your best interest in mind. Especially Banksters.
Tony Robbins explains in details in his book "Money" how the vast majority of funds and funds managers do not share the profit nicely, that they actually seldom outperform the market and that you are better off taking things in your own hands. I was quite shocked by many things that he uncovered during his research. The book is very big and not for everybody. But the main idea is that you are the most concerned person with your money. Delegate this task with upmost diligence. Reading this book confirmed my idea that 95% of bankers are Banksters.
Conclusions
As mentioned in various posts, Learning About Money is for most people the easiest task of the money triad.
Knowing where is your forte and where is your weakness, in terms of Making, Managing and Investing your money will hep you align yourself so that you get to keep and grow money that flows in your hands.
Again: "If you do not know the problem, you can't solve it" Henry Ford
So identify your money weakness and continue study here how to manage your money and how to invest.
Remember this part of the Wealth Triangle is the EASIEST, (easy to understand, easy to identify the issues, easy to learn and easy to apply!)
DO the Homeworks and stop winning about the fact that you don't have enough money!
Inspired by GM
Homework
Take the Wealth Mini Test to find out which area needs to be improved and start learning now.