In a not so known earlier adventures of Indiana Jones, he once sought and found the lost book of richest ancient empire of Babylon. The secret of its wealth resided in “The Book of Wealth“. After braving many dangers, booby traps, Nazis and all the special effects the movie director can throw at him, he finally found the much sought after treasure.
As he traveled in the safety of his truck sending him home, he opened and read the ancient book in 4 seconds. Subsequently, he tossed the book out of the truck thinking that even if the Nazis were to find this book, they would do the same.
As we now know, Indiana Jones did not take the advise in the book as he had to subsequently come out of retirement just to make more movies to earn more money to sustain his lavish lifestyle. Poor guy…
Was he really loosing his nuts to have tossed that valuable ancient book? We can decide for ourselves. Shortly after, this book was discovered and found to contain only 4 pages. It was publicly examined, but “experts” found so much common sense in them (though uncommonly applied) that it was not deemed worthy of a place in any museum!
Here are the FULL contents of the 4 pages in big bold letters:
- Earn More
- Spend Less
- Grow Savings
- Protect Savings
Would you have done the same as Indiana Jones and suffer the same fate?
Let us examine each point accordingly:
- Earn More – Every rich person has good earning capacity. They earn the money and riches they have. So if you are lazy, and not even bothering to earn your riches, you can never be rich or wealthy. You would be very lucky not to be poor at all! What about those who inherited their fortunes? Well, unless they learn their earning skills from their parents of benefactors fast, they too will loose their wealth just as fast!
- Spend Less – Accumulation of wealth simply means earning more than you spend. Notice that it refers to everyone, and not just to the rich. So that means that even when you are earning a modest salary, you too can begin accumulating wealth just be spending less than you earn! The general rule of thumb is to have the discipline to save 10% of your earnings every time. nothing more, nothing less. This applies even in debt, which I will talk about in another time.
- Grow Savings – When you have saved enough money, it would mean that you should use this sum of money to grow it rather than letting it stay dormant. So use money to earn more money! So the rich do get richer!
- Protect Savings – Set aside 6 months of your salary savings in cash. This is an emergency fund that should always be protected and never touched. All excess cash should be invested wisely to bring about accelerated returns. The key word is “wisely” so as to never lose money in all investments. Hence we need to always be cautious and careful. More of that topic later.
There is true wisdom in uncommonly applied common sense…
