The Key to Building Wealth
Copyright 2006 Timothy Rohrer
Many people today believe in order to become wealthy they either
have to be born into wealth or have a lot of money to make
money. The fact is this just isn't true. Building wealth is a
mechanical process and because it's so simple it's quite boring,
therefore many people do not follow through with the formula.
The Problem
Too many people fall into a financial rut and it usually starts
when we begin moving money from one credit card to another. Sure
this works for a short while, but eventually it catches up with
you and before you know it you have $5000 maxed out on your VISA
card and $3000 maxed out on your Discover card.
The next genius move I consider was debt consolidation. While
this does work and the phone calls will stop, it's not a
solution for the problem at hand. Your monthly payments become
lower and this provides the temptation to go out and accumulate
even more debt, eventually taking you back to square one. Not to
mention having a history with debt consolidation leads to higher
rates on things that count later in life.
Back at square one, the next step I considered was debt
counseling and the idea sounded great, they even promised to
lower my monthly payments by $300. I managed to avoid this one
all together and now that I look back I am glad that I did. What
I later found out is that debt counseling is viewed as
bankruptcy.
By this time I decided to refinance my home with an equity
line/2nd Mortgage loan on my home to get out of debt and it
worked perfectly. However, let me tell you a little secret. When
you take out a 120k loan on a home that is only worth 90k and
the neighborhood starts going downhill like ours did, you cannot
sell your home for what its worth. Again, we were stuck in rut
where we had to borrow money from family to sell our home. Other
home owners in the area were not as fortunate.
At this point in time I was seriously considering bankruptcy. If
you think that after seven years nobody will know about your
bankruptcy, you are mistaken. In some cases jobs won't even
higher you if you ever had a bankruptcy. Most loan applications
ask if you have ever filed for bankruptcy and they do take that
into account even if it has been 10 years since you filed for
bankruptcy. This is when I became desperate and finally cracked
the money making formula.
The Solution
In 2005 I made a new years resolution to stop spending money on
things that required me to make a monthly payment. Instead, I
would take my paycheck and spend it on assets, or things that
put money into my pocket month after month. I like to call these
assets investment vehicles. It does not matter which types of
investments you choose, just as long as they are all leading to
the same place financially.