Building Wealth

Why Elephant’s Paycheck?

Is it about help­ing peo­ple save for their future? For retire­ment?

Helping peo­ple to invest?

Something else?

Actually, yes. It is some­thing else.

It’s about build­ing wealth.

If you think of our rela­tion­ship with mon­ey, I bet you’d come up with the fol­low­ing list of things to do.

1. Get a job.
2. Manage to a bud­get.
3. Save for the future (chil­drens’ edu­ca­tion, a home), for emer­gen­cies, and for fun stuff like vaca­tions.

Here’s the thing… The list above requires move­ment to bring improve­ments in your eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion. As long as you are employed and as long as you have an income that ris­es faster than infla­tion you’re fine. There are two big prob­lems with those “require­ments”. Employment & stag­nant wages.

More sim­ply, that list above is about income on one side of your finan­cial equa­tion and spend­ing on the oth­er.

It’s Not About Income

Well, it’s not. I’m always amazed at peo­ple who make (what appears to be) a lot of mon­ey, but when some­thing unex­pect­ed hap­pens they strug­gle to cov­er the expense. It’s because peo­ple focus on pay­ing their bills, or on the lifestyle they can afford, rather than build­ing wealth.

It’s like that thing about teach­ing some­one to fish. If you focus on pay­ing your bills, even respon­si­bly sav­ing for the future, it’s always going to be about earn­ing & spend­ing. But if you focus on build­ing wealth, you can eat fish every day. Or some­thing like that.

Building wealth is what sep­a­rates rich peo­ple, from the rest of us. It’s why the rich get rich­er, and the rest of us have to work hard­er just to keep up.

The Elephant’s Paycheck is designed to help you build wealth. Starting with retire­ment for a num­ber of triv­ial rea­sons, the Elephant’s Paycheck Blueprint will help you under­stand how to man­age “your assets” like they’re a side busi­ness. You will have wealth, even if on a mod­est scale, that will take some of the edge of wor­ry­ing about keep­ing up with the long term finan­cial demands that life brings.

Getting Out of Debt

By the way, if you’re just get­ting start­ed think­ing about your rela­tion­ship to mon­ey, sav­ing, and invest­ing but don’t yet have a bud­get, you absolute­ly should check out YNAB.

YNAB, short for You Need A Budget, is a won­der­ful sys­tem for get­ting out of (and stay­ing out of) debt. It’s also a great com­pa­ny. They’re very sup­port­ive to peo­ple work­ing through their sys­tem, they have a lot of free edu­ca­tion, and their soft­ware is amaz­ing.

They real­ly are on a mis­sion to get every­one out of debt. And, their hearts are in the right place. Have a look. This link will give you a $6 dis­count on the soft­ware should you decide to pur­chase it.