Discover the Wealth Within You: A Financial Plan For Creating a Rich and Fulfilling Life
400
Discover the Wealth Within You: A Financial Plan For Creating a Rich and Fulfilling Life
400eBook
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Overview
Have your goals and dreams gotten lost in your daily struggle to earn and provide for your family?
If so, join Ric Edelman on a journey to self-discovery and personal fulfillment. In Discover the Wealth Within You, he shows you how to choose fun, enriching ... and rewarding goals and gives you a simple, straightforward plan for achieving them.
You'll discover how easy it is to create wealth, once you're headed in the right direction. After using Ric's work sheets to help you get started, you'll embark on a detailed exploration of personal investing and discover Ric's formula for creating a plan to achieve your goals, build your financial future ... and finance your dream.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780062013361 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 07/13/2010 |
| Sold by: | HARPERCOLLINS |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 400 |
| Sales rank: | 786,115 |
| File size: | 9 MB |
About the Author
Ric Edelman is Barron's #1 independent financial advisor, the bestselling author of seven books on personal finance, and host of The Ric Edelman Show, heard on radio stations nationwide. Ric's firm, Edelman Financial Services, manages $5 billion in assets and has been helping people achieve financial success for twenty-five years.
Read an Excerpt
Discover The Wealth Within
Have you ever gotten into a cab but refused to tell the driver where you want to go? Of course not. The whole point of hailing a cab is to have the driver help you get to your destination. You tell him your goal, and the cabbie both develops the plan for getting you there and implements it for you.
Financial planning operates the same way. Thus, if you don't have goals, the planning effort is as pointless as asking a cabbie to drive you around town, with no destination in mind.
I bet you can tell me what surveys reveal are the top three reasons people save money. They are:
- To buy a home
- To pay for college
- To afford a comfortable retirement
If you were to expand this list, you could add:
- wedding costs
- capital expenses, such as a car
- celebrations, such as a couple's 50th anniversary
- vacations
- major medical expenses
- elder care costs
- and, ultimately, leaving your money to your kids and/or other heirs.
Each of the above is a common reason why people save and invest. Each requires or constitutes a set of goals. And when combined, each fits into an overall financial plan.
But one thing bothers me about this entire list. And I imagine it bothers you, too. You know what the problem is?
Simple: The entire list is boring.
I mean, really boring. Yeah, I'll grow up. Buy a car. Get married. Have kids. Pay for college. Maybe foot the bill for a wedding or two. Retire. Wither away in some old-age home. Die.
And to make this even more fun, I'm supposed to pay some financial planner to tell me I can't afford it.
There's more to life than this, isn't there? Tell me there is! Please! Yes, there is much more to life than obligation and responsibility. There is also personal fulfillment and happiness. In fact, it's partly why our nation was founded.
In the Declaration of Independence, the founders of our nation recognized our right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
The pursuit of happiness.
The document doesn't say anything about financial planning.
This is what makes the United States of America the greatest nation on earth. If anyone ever disputed that notion, no one has dared do so since September 11, 2001. On that day, our lives changed forever. At some point -- was it days? weeks? I can't remember -- I began wondering if this book's message would still be valid. So, I reread my manuscript, and discovered that you still need the message this book offers you, and that perhaps you need to hear this message even more so than before that horrible day.
That's because this book is all about setting and achieving goals. More than ever, you need to focus on your future. But as you read, you'll see that my emphasis on goal-setting is of a personal, and in many cases, materialistic nature. And in the aftermath of September 11, I suspect that many of us will have replaced many such goals with different, more fundamental ones. Where in the past goals might have pertained to beach houses, fancy cars and exotic vacations, people increasingly are considering goals that involve their communities, charities and families. All of this is healthy, and as you'll see as you read on, it is entirely consistent with my message.
Life is about the future. And our future is bright, thanks to the incredible foresight of our nation's founders. So, let's return to our nation's roots -- and begin our journey, a journey in the pursuit of happiness.
Interviews
An Interview with Ric Edelman
Q: Are you born with moneymaking ability, or can it be learned? Do some people really have the "Midas touch"?
A: Nobody is born with the ability to make money. Instead, it's something we learn. And thank goodness for that, because this means that anyone can do it. You simply have to be shown what works and what doesn't work. Once you understand these simple concepts, you too can make money and become wealthy. Unfortunately, too many people who want to become rich don't know this, and so they try wacky get-rich-quick schemes that never work.
Q: Once you define your financial goals, how do you go about achieving them?
A: Financial success begins with setting goals and by that I mean tangible, life-changing goals. Merely saying, "I want to be rich" is not a goal. "I want to own and live in $200,000 home within five years" is a goal: It is specific, it is tangible, it is attainable, and most important, it has a date. A goal is not a goal until you assign a date to it and write it down. The key is to stay focused on your goal and not become distracted. By focusing on what you really want, you won't notice that you've given up things that really weren't all that important to you, but which were interfering with your ability to achieve your goal.
Q: What is the biggest mistake people make in trying to achieve financial freedom? How can these mistakes be avoided?
A: The biggest mistake people make is procrastination. People simply delay getting started. They figure they have plenty of time, or they hope they'll have more money later to make it easier getting started. What many people fail to understand is that time is the biggest weapon they have in their fight to become rich, and that giving away time is the main reason people stay poor. And then, when people finally understand this point, they often get frustrated that they haven't started sooner, and they can begin to feel that it's too late. Such attitudes merely keep poor people poor. Instead, you've got to realize that you have the rest of your life ahead of you. Forget the past, focus on the future, and get started now!
Q: Why is the subject of money so emotionally charged?
A: Money is laced with your feelings of self-worth, your emotional stability, and it plays into the power in your relationships. Our society equates success with financial reward, often to the exclusion of family, health and spirit. One of the best ways to help yourself become wealthy is to first understand that financial success is only one part of success; those who focus solely on money rarely attain all that they seek, and the few who do quickly discover that money does not buy happiness.