There are old paradigms about wealth and money, and then there are the new.  Some are encoded into us by the communications media.  Others come from a simpler, more enduring way of thinking……

Work hard at your job.  Marry a cooperative spouse.  Put your kids to work for the tax advantages. 

Budget your money. Always go for the cheap, skimp wherever possible.  Take what you saved and put it into a mutual fund averaging 12% to 16% return.  Get on that 401k plan.  Make your money work FOR you. 

Always buy second hand autos.  Buy term insurance.  Don’t be “trendy” at the expense of your overall financial plan.  Save, skimp, budget.  In the end you’ll be rewarded with a nice retirement income.  Take it easy and relax, travel the country in your RV. 

However, we are now in a 21st Century paradigm shift.  Old values no longer apply.  Maybe they never did. 

Your job just got shipped over to India.  Increased competition from immigrants, legal and not, driven by the military actions of your own government increases the scarcity of jobs.  The power of your savings shrinks every day with the ravaging effects of inflation.  The so-called profits you are making in the stock market are illusory because of that same price/money inflation.  The Dow Jones average may be up, but that can be deceptive. 

The real rich are extorting more money from the savers and taxpayers through bailouts and bail-ins and choose to gamble with it in the speculative markets instead of lending it to the businesses and the middle class like they said they would.  More profits can be made by using cheap (slave) labor in the third world.  Huge corporations are running the smaller businesses out.  You do have a lot of credit cards at your disposal, however, but using those is like holding ticking time bombs. 

No, real wealth comes from knowledge, skills, and wisdom acquired from creating material assets.  Wealth is counted in the number of your friends, the people you have helped over the years. 

Wealth is being valuable  to other people; how you can help them organize their lives, showing them how to fix their car, or get rid of that problem on their computer.  Having these skills, we can trade them in exchange for cash or other goods.  A skill is an asset just like a bar of gold. 

Find your niche in how you can do something that provides an essential skill in society and which you seem to have a proclivity to.  Don’t aim high; aim to be able to help the broadest number of people.  You will become invaluable to them. 

Give of yourself and make innumerable friends; it is they who come to your aid when you are down.  Give of yourself without end and receive back integrity, honor, and love from your fellow man.  Learn the alchemy of selfless giving, and receive back the world in return.  Find the so-called philosopher’s stone, the source of all things, least of which is gold. 

You want to make a lot of money?  Nothing wrong with that.  I think, however, you will naturally rise to the level of your economic sufficiency so I wouldn’t worry about it.  Sometimes we are karmically decreed as to how much we will be a financial steward of.  Being rich can be a burden.  Sometimes just being rich does not always indicate that we have been good stewards in the past. 

You can always be sure though that the Universe will conspire to supply you with enough.  Some people may be starving in the Sudan right now, but I’m sure that the perfect justice of the Universe will compensate them in the end.  Those who meddled in the free markets of the nations, which resulted in the unjust starvation of the Sudan, will themselves receive their just reward and maybe gain compassion themselves. 

CB