Building Wealth: It's An Inside Job – Part 2

As a follow-up to improving the way we think about wealth and prosperity, there are some effective money management techniques that will further support our prosperity consciousness. Certainly if we use the exercises discussed earlier in Part 1, we’ll start to view money differently, but those principles should be fortified by our actions as well. What we want to accomplish with our money is to generate a steady cash flow into our lives that will elevate our feelings of prosperity over time. The first step toward achieving this end is to simply pay ourselves first. Every time we get paid, we should save a portion of what we’ve earned. It’s recommended that at least 10% of our pay be set aside for savings.

So if you already have a savings account, the big question is what is the purpose of this account? Is it for emergencies or a major purchase? Do you have more than one savings account? If we want to establish a consistent flow of prosperity, we must gradually build prosperity in our bank accounts while at the same time protecting ourselves against life’s financial emergencies and obligations. It’s very demoralizing to save a significant amount of money only to have to spend it on a costly emergency – the worst part is that often times, an event like this will knock us right off the prosperity track entirely. So we should strive to not only protect ourselves financially from these types of events, but more importantly, we must protect ourselves emotionally from these types of events.

The most effective way to handle our savings is to have more than one savings account with each having a different purpose. Although each of us will have different financial goals, it is recommended that everyone have a minimum of three different savings accounts with the following purposes:

1) Emergency Funds – This fund is set aside for those incidents that pop-up unexpectedly. Managing these events is critical to building wealth because they throw us off our budgets and demoralize us mentally. Unfortunately, emergencies are when many of us resort to credit cards, which makes this account even more critical. We MUST manage this aspect of our financial lives, otherwise life’s little emergencies will continue to rob our wealth if we let them.

2) Purchases – This fund is used to save for major purchases such as a piece of furniture or a new car. In addition, we can also use these funds for buying Christmas or birthday gifts. These types of purchases are also occasions where many of us are inclined to use credit. It’s not uncommon for Americans to be loaded with debt right after the Christmas holiday season. Just like the Emergency Fund account, the Purchases account is designed to keep us away from using credit.

3) Wealth Building – This last account is probably the most important if we manage it properly. There is only one rule for this account – the funds must never be spent. Never spent?!? Then what good is this account if it’s never spent, you ask? Two reasons. The first reason is that we want this account to reach a level where we can eventually spend or even live off the interest it earns. Secondly, this account will be our biggest builder of prosperity consciousness. As this account grows in value, we’ll become more and more comfortable with wealth coming into our lives. Have you ever noticed how money just seems to flow naturally to wealthy people? There’s a reason for that – it’s not coincidental, it’s their attitude that attracts the wealth. So as this account grows and grows, so does our comfort with money and our willingness to receive abundance.

These accounts need not be savings accounts with your bank. In fact, most of them shouldn’t be savings accounts. Obviously we want our funds earning as much interest as possible and we all know that savings accounts have probably the poorest yields of all. One approach is to place our more liquid accounts such as Emergency Funds into savings accounts, perhaps keep our Purchases account in short term CD’s since we can plan more easily for purchases, and then place our Wealth Building funds in a Mutual Fund. Again, the arrangement will be different for each of us – the important thing is to start setting them up.

The accounts mentioned here should be in addition to those that may be offered by your employer. Employer sponsored plans such as 401K’s are a great way to supplement wealth building, but we still need to manage our wealth on a daily basis to establish a prosperous mindset. Keep in mind that the accounts mentioned here are a minimum. There are countless ways to use this approach. For instance, we may choose to have a Purchases account and then another account for Gifts. Or we may want to add another account called Vacations. Many money management pundits advise setting back 3-6 months worth of living expenses in the event of emergency unemployment. Perhaps when our emergency account gets big enough, we can place these “Emergency Unemployment” funds into a separate interest bearing account. Again, there are countless variations to using this approach.

Finally, one last note about maintaining the accounts. We mentioned earlier that setting aside 10% of your pay is a good minimum and a great level on which to start. Some of us may be able to save more, others may have to save less – the main thing is that we get started. In addition, a portion of any unexpected windfall should also go into savings. As far as how much of that savings should go into each account is up to each person. The simple approach is to split it equally among all the accounts, but as situations arise, it may be practical to feed one account more than the others at times. This is fine as long as the rules for each account are strictly followed.

Remember – like it or not – our current finances are simply a reflection of our current level of prosperity consciousness. So if more wealth is desired, we must alter the way we’re presently thinking about prosperity. If these Wealth Building principles and techniques are followed and we’re persistent to this cause, it’s guaranteed that real wealth will find its way to our lives over time.