How to Get Rich

Everyone wants to be rich, but it seems like most people struggle to get there. They fail for various reasons: poor planning, unwilling to make sacrifices, or lack of resources. In order to get rich, you need to do three things: define what being rich means to you, develop a plan for becoming rich and avoiding the pitfalls that prevent people from becoming rich.

Defining rich:

What do you define as being rich? Having a million dollars in liquid assets? Earning one million dollars a year? Having income in the top 10% of households in your area? Having no bills?

When most people think of being rich, they think of lifestyle: houses, vacations, cars, etc.... Some people define it as not having to work or having their home paid off. Others define it in terms of money (either a dollar figure or above a certain percentage of other households). And then some measure it in non-material ways such as relationships, happiness and love.

Everyone has a different definition of wealth which is why no single plan for getting rich works for everyone. So before you can get rich, you need to decide what it means to you. I could be as simple as a certain dollar figure in your bank account or it may be a little more complex where you factor in lifestyle and non-material things. Whatever your definition for being rich is, write it down and be as precise as possible.

Equally as important is setting an exact date for achieving your goal. Having no date for your goal (or a date like "someday") will most likely result in you putting off what needs to be done. Look at people who shop for Christmas presents on Christmas Eve or file their taxes at midnight on April 15^th - they put them off until the last possible minute and would probably never get them done if they didn't have a forced deadline.

Creating a plan:

Once you know what your definition for being rich is, you can create your plan to get there. There are endless ways to get from where you are to where you want to be, which is why so few people achieve their goals. So your plan needs to have a start point and an end point, each which need exact dates. From there, you need to create check points or milestones so that you know early on that you're on track.

So if your goal is to make one million dollars over the course of a year, you'll want to have at least three check points in between. Perhaps your checkpoints are to have $250K after three months, $500K after six months and $750K after nine months. Or, you could gradually build yourself up and do $100K after three months, $300K after six months and $600K after nine months.

The same idea works with debt elimination, or any other goal where you are trying to increase or decrease something. But the take away is that you need a clearly defined end point and clearly defined check points. It's up to your own situation as to whether to choose dates for check points first or to define your check points. You may find yourself doing a little tweaking to make things work in a manner so that you can realistically achieve your results.

Avoiding failure:

People fail at becoming rich for a variety of reasons. The biggest one is that it's not a priority to them - they'd like to be rich and may even whine about not being rich, but do nothing to better themselves. Getting rich requires hard work and sacrifice and means staying up late to finish projects, giving up time with friends and loved ones and putting time that you'd normally waste watching your favorite TV shows to more productive use. If you want to see any goal followed through, it takes true commitment. Not just a want, but a motivated and burning desire to achieve it.

It also involves taking risks. Using savings to invest in marketing materials to promote your product or services or moving beyond your comfort zone by hitting the pavement and talking to people you may not know. You may need to take courses, learn a new skill or meet new people. You may find yourself working nights, weekends and holidays to give yourself an edge. The bottom line, is that you need to be willing to pay the price.

Ways to get rich:

The good news is that there are a lot of ways that you can get rich (which can also result in a sense of overwhelm) and not all of them require you to push yourself to your absolute limits. Here are some tips to help you get there faster:

Use role models. Learn from both the mistakes and successes of others. It's best to avoid people that are trying to "sell" you their success stories in the forms of plans or systems. You're best off finding someone that's willing to mentor you because they remember how it was when they first started out than forking out money to someone who will coach you.

Find residual sources of income. If you make $10 per hour, it'll take you 100,000 hours to earn $1 million (before taxes) no matter what you do - and even if you worked non-stop, it would take you over 11 years to get there. But if you were to earn $10 per item on a sale, you could find ways to sell more than one item per hour and get to your goal within a year. Another way to do this is pay someone $5 to do what you get paid $10 for (this person would be an employee or subcontractor) and you make $5 for every hour they work. When you get enough people under you doing this (as a real business), you can make a lot very quickly.

Stick with things you know. Too many people hear that something is a good way to make money and they plunge half-heartedly into it hoping to make a quick buck and be done with it. This rarely works because you need to be knowledge and passionate about what you do to be a true success. If you don't have the knowledge, you can get it through apprenticeships and research. If you don't have the passion, no amount of knowledge will ever help you succeed.

Be realistic about your goals. Don't set them too high that achieving them causes you stress and anxiety (which leads to depression if you fail). But don't set them too low so that it doesn't become a priority. Commit to dedicating a specified amount of time each day or week for reaching your goals.

Getting rich is difficult - if just wanting to be rich were enough to get there, we'd all be there. But with the right goals, an effective plan and the desire to get there, you increase your odds of success exponentially.