Many years ago, my father got me a clerical position in his working place. The company dealt in gold and jewelery. It was open knowledge the place belonged to Mr. Foong, one of the wealthiest man in my hometown. But, every once in a month, a shabbily dressed old man in slippers will come to my workplace and look through the monthly accounts. I was initially quite amused to find everyone in the office showed such reverence to this old gentleman. People always called him Mr X. Now, my father is an impatient man. It’s amusing seeing my old man going over the reports patiently with Mr X. Patience has never been my father’s virtue. I’m the first to know.

Finally, I asked my old man who is Mr X. My father told me he is the biggest share holder of the company. I almost dropped dead. That is not possible. Could an old man driving a beat-up Toyota and dressed in an old shirt which probably faded at least 3 shades its original colour owned this company?

It took me many years to realize, the richest people around might not be the ones constantly in the news, drives a Benz or BMW, wears the latest branded clothes and carry the newest handphones. They don’t live in Mansions or travel to Paris for a vacation. They may live next door to you and you may never even know their name. Many times, their kind of wealth is invisible.

The money test is simply how much wealth can one keep. Just because someone makes alot of money doesn’t mean they are wealthy. If their expenses equal or exceeds their income, they don’t qualify as wealthy. Company owners who owes the bank lots of money and lease everything they have is not wealthy.

Of course not everyone will get rich, but then the first step one has to take is to get rid of certain misconceptions :-

• If I had just a little more money, I’d be happy;
• If I were wealthy I could buy anything I wanted;
• I wish I were wealthy so I don’t have to worry about money anymore;
• I’m young, there’s still plenty of time. I’ll save later;
• I’m too old to start saving;
• I wish I’d saved more when I was younger;
• The only way to get rich is by inheritance, winning the lottery and owning commercial real estate;
• If I were wealthy, I wouldn’t care how much I paid in taxes.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 25th, 2007 at 3:38 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.