Getting rich is a choice, believes Warren Buffett, the second richest man on Earth. All you have to do is start on time. He himself started a business as a teenager. But it was not commerce that brought him immeasurable wealth, but the idea that time is your best friend.
In the 1980s, my parents had a friend who had joined the Baghwan movement. She had gone to Poona in India for six months to meet her spiritual leader in person. When she came back, she came to visit my parents. My grandmother asked with interest what she had done in India. “I have become very rich,” said the friend. My grandmother asked with interest how she had done that. Because who wouldn't want to get rich? The friend looked at my grandmother with a smile and said, "rich in spirit." I will never forget the disappointment on my grandmother's face. But also not the happy expression of the friend who had just spent half a year full of meditation and friendship.
Wealth and the pursuit of it is as old as man. It is precisely because of this desire for more and better that the best discoveries have been made. Wealth is not an objective concept. Psychologists asked people what they preferred:a hundred thousand dollars and knowing that everyone around you had half of that, or two hundred thousand dollars and living among the millionaires. Most respondents chose the former. Relative wealth is the feeling that you are richer than the people around you.
Wealth According to all kinds of studies, it does not make you happier. Countless lottery and jackpot winners have shown that wealth gets used and – in the worst case – can disappear altogether. Even spiritual wealth gets used. It is inherent in the human mind that we eventually get used to any circumstance.
So the question then why would you want to get rich if you are already happy? Because people fear poverty, says Napoleon Hill , the long-dead author of the everseller Think and Grow Rich , also translated in Dutch. According to Hill, the desire for wealth is present in most people, but most also think that it is not for them. That's why they try their luck every month in the Staatsloterij – where everyone knows that the chance of winning the top prize there is almost as great as being struck by lightning on a sunny day. But if you really want to get rich, you must really want to get rich, according to Hill. You must have a burning desire – desire – to build wealth. And you should never let yourself get discouraged when things don't go your way. Or as Hill says:“If you do not see great riches in your imagination, you will never see them in your bank balance.”
Most people who have amassed a great deal of wealth started out dreaming about wealth, hoping, and then planning how to do it. Nothing is impossible for those who have a strong will and full confidence that it will succeed.
In another bestseller about wealth Rich Dad, Poor Dad , by the American Robert Kiyosaki, the author explains that most people never get rich because they don't know the difference between what costs you money (unnecessary stuff) and what you get in return (stocks, savings account with interest, renting). Some things will always cost money (maintenance of a boat or keeping a horse or tinkering with an old-timer for example), other things yield money or save you money (a vegetable garden, buying second-hand).
An example:suppose you buy a sailboat. Then you imagine yourself rich because you have a nice boat. But in fact you do nothing but throw your money into the water for years. Maintenance and storage cost money and after ten years your boat will probably have sunk too. The more people earn, the more stuff they buy, Kiyosaki says. While if they invested some of that money in fixed-value stocks, buying something that generates money – such as a holiday home that you can rent out – you would eventually have more money instead of less.
One of the richest people in the world, Warren Buffett , may have even simpler advice for those looking to get rich. Time is your friend, Buffett says. Due to the system of interest on interest, every investment grows exponentially over time. Anyone who would inherit a hundred thousand euros could easily use it within one or two years. But who would invest thirty years in equities that are worth more, after thirty years has almost a million (at a yield of 8%). And the best time to start raising capital is as early as possible.
And get rich in a hundred days? That is also possible. But only if you decide to look at your money and assets differently. As long as you continue to measure yourself against others, who always have more, you will never feel rich. But if you realize that life, love, friendships are the most precious commodity, then you will be rich in one fell swoop. If you try to express wealth not in money and things, but in the people (and animals) around you.
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Text:Manon Sikkel, Image:Getty Images
