5-Step Plan To Be Wealthy By Design

It is true that there are many random events in the financial marketplace.
But your approach to building your wealth cannot be random. It must be carefully considered, meticulously planned, backed by solid commitments and regularly assessed.

When these steps are followed – and when you and your advisor can maintain flexibility in challenging times – you will have put in place the strategy that will empower you to meet your goals and live your dreams. You will achieve wealth, but not as the result of random events, lucky breaks, or ‘timing the market.’ Instead, you will become wealthy by design.
I outline the following five-step plan to strategically achieve financial independence in my new book, Wealthy By Design.

Step 1: Discovering And Setting Your Goals

Identify your needs – family obligations, debt, and lifestyle requirements. Connect with your desires – know the difference between a need and a desire. Know where you want to go – relate your life goals to short-, mid-, and long-term financial goals. Evaluate when it is time to review or revise your investment goals.

Step 2: Planning Your Investments

Learn the fundamentals of investing. Examine your current asset allocation. Explore how to diversify your portfolio. Do not try to time the markets. Come to grips with the level of risk that you can tolerate.

Step 3: Committing To Your Plan

Enact a plan. Commit to it. Identify the challenges to your commitment.

Step 4: Assessing How Well Your Plan Is Working

Identify which indicators to look at to determine how well your plan is working. Reassess if your asset allocation is properly balanced.

Step 5: Keeping Your Plan Flexible

Keep up with a changing market. Know when to take action. Know when to expand on your investment.

I cannot stress enough the benefits of a well-conceived and disciplined strategy. Some people have the idea that such a focused design is restricting or that it causes you to miss opportunities that less-structured investors might capture.

But it really works in the opposite way when you are following a plan; you aren’t being distracted by the ‘noise’ that so easily sidetracks other investors. That means you can actually pay closer attention to the real opportunities – the ones supported by careful research and sound investment principles.

Disciplined investors stay invested, stay the course, and reap the benefits; undisciplined investors jump in and out of investments in a vain attempt to capture the latest hot stock or value play, and they invariably achieve inferior returns. The research backs this up, time and time again. That’s why I tell my clients: ‘Stay diversified, and stay the course.’

The Power of Gratitude

Be grateful!
We hear it all the time, at least in a community of fellow seekers who want to grow their financial success building as much as their spiritual peace.

Life has its highs and lows, but the one thing that’s the same no matter where we are on the wheel is that there are always many things to be grateful for.
It’s easy to be grateful when it doesn’t really require a ton of effort, like saying “please” or “thank you.” It’s easy to be grateful when things are going great. But what about when things aren’t going quite as planned?

Everyone’s been there. The mind starts going into “what’s wrong,” or what’s not enough, what’s too much to deal with, too much to do in order to overcome an obstacle and reach a goal. In some ways it’s natural, but when it becomes a habit then the pity party is simply a safer choice.

The truth is it takes much more courage to appreciate what we’ve got—no matter how little it may seem—than it is to surrender to the scarcity model and let ourselves off the hook for taking action because something isn’t enough.

Our egos will tell us that if we spend too much time being grateful for what we have, we won’t try to get more, and we’ll become stuck with being “content” instead of happy.
Wanting what we currently have has nothing to do with somehow tricking ourselves into “settling.”

Just because you’re buying an economy car now that’s practical but not so hot-looking doesn’t mean you won’t want a Ferrari three years from now when you’re rich. It’s not hard to be grateful for that fact that you have four wheels to drive that gets you where you need to go. There are plenty of people in this world that don’t have that, with consequences we couldn’t imagine.

It’s the lack-based protective mind that continuously hungers for more, like a squirrel hoarding nuts for winter. The scarcity model, constantly looking around, overlooks and discounts what’s right in front of us. We have to consistently remind ourselves to look for “what’s right” in our lives instead of “what’s wrong.”

Then we’ll be less likely not to forget to show our appreciation to the people who are closest to us; our family, friends, loved ones, co-workers, employees. Then there are teachers, postal workers—all the people that make our daily lives more convenient and enrich our larger communities. And let’s not forget to say “thank you” to the Universe for our many blessings.

Gratitude particularly holds true when it comes to finances. To have abundance, be grateful for and properly manage whatever wealth you have now, even if you don’t think it’s much. Why? If you’re not appreciating what you already have, that means you’re not maximizing what’s available right now. If you can’t do that, why should the Universe believe you can handle more?