Making money is an activity that requires investment of your resources. Most people trying to achieve wealth, however, believe that you should be able to acquire money only after a large investment.
A typical example is in the franchise business. A lot of people don’t want to develop a new business, instead they prefer to buy a business model from somebody else and just do the hard work on implementing it. That is why large corporations such as McDonalds can charge a lot of money and still have people interested in spending money to open a new store.
What happens, however, is that a lot of money is invested without the certainty of return. A large number of investors in franchise business end up broke because they had to spend so much money for something that is essentially a new job. They work for themselves, but they need to work so hard that it doesn’t make sense anymore.
Invest in the Stock Market or in Your Education?
A similar situation occurs in the stock market. To make money with stocks you need to have a large sum invested. If you have less than $1 million it is hard to make consistent profits in the stock market, because you need to pay so much on commissions every time a trade is made. In this case again, a large investment of money is necessary to generate money.
What many people fail to understand, however, is that money is not the only thing that you can invest to achieve wealth. Another important currency in the wealth generating game is time. In fact, time is even more powerful than money, in the sense that time can get you money. The opposite, however, is not true: money can’t buy you more time. Therefore, time has to be used wisely, preferably with activities that have high value for you (not only monetary, but also personal values).
Finding High Value Activities
The trick of investing time to generate money is to apply your time to high-yield activities. For example, if you use your time to watch TV, you are not doing useful with it. If you spend the whole day watching TV you will end up broke and sick, that is the reality. On the other hand, you can use your time is several high yield activities: getting an education, learning about a new business, creating products, contacting clients.
All of these activities are able to generate wealth because they create something of value for others. If you create a product, you will be able to satisfy customer’s needs. If you create a web site, you will be providing something for readers. Every activity that generate something of value can become a source of wealth for you.
When you decide how to invest your time, always think: is this activity creating wealth or not? If it isn’t, you probably need to refocus your time investment.
Investing in the right activities may be difficult a the beginning, but after you learn to prioritize your time, you will be able to do this almost automatically. The lack of priorities comes from a lack of understanding of the value of your time. When you realize the value of investing time in an activity you will be able to carefully schedule activities that will make you rich, instead of robbing you of both time and money.
As you see, creating wealth depends not only on investing money. The most important investment is your time, and it is also something that anyone can do. If you learn this lesson there is no reason why you can’t become a millionaire.