Do you ever feel like you’re doing everything right, but not making as much progress towards your financial goals as you want? Building wealth can be a slow and laborious process, and it’s not uncommon to be doing everything right but feel like you aren’t making any real progress. Is there anything you can do to speed up your wealth-building process?
Check your balances less often
Watching your investments grow is a lot like watching grass grow. If you stand there staring at it, it’s going to seem like it isn’t growing at all, but if you check it every once in a while the growth will seem much faster.
This doesn’t mean you should neglect your investment accounts; everyone should know where they are relative to their financial goals, but it may not be necessary to check your balances every day.
Sometimes all you need is time
If you watch or listen to every episode of our show, consume every piece of personal finance content you can find, and practice good financial habits, sometimes the only ingredient you are missing is time. There is always room for improvement, but you may reach a point where you hit a plateau; you’re saving at a high rate, all your debt ratios are where they should be, and you are on track to meet your financial goals. What’s next?
Next might be patiently waiting, and watching your good habits turn into accomplished goals. At the beginning of your financial journey, there was a lot of hands-on, hard work involved. At a certain point, your financial life becomes automated. Your savings are automatic, payments are automatic, and you may have reached a level of wealth where you now have a financial planner on your team.
Are there any shortcuts?
Unfortunately, there aren’t any cheat codes to building wealth. That doesn’t mean there won’t be people trying to sell you cheat codes; it seems like everyone online now has a passive income strategy they want to sell you, or they might claim to know how to beat the market. As you start building wealth, your investment contributions will be larger than your investment growth. It may be discouraging to not see much growth of your capital in the first several years.
Stick around through that period of slow and steady accumulation in the beginning; don’t go chasing anything that promises unreasonably high returns, or has more risk than you can tolerate. Once you get far enough along on your journey, your capital will start growing faster than you can make contributions.
Don’t be afraid to make changes
While it isn’t a “cheat code,” making changes in life can get you out of a rut and speed up your wealth-building process. Not everything in life is going to go according to plan, and you need to be ready to adjust and make changes accordingly. Maybe you aren’t happy with your job, or have unexpected major life changes. You may not be able to choose everything that happens to you, but you can choose how you react to it, and that will determine what the outcome will be.
Remember why you’re doing what you’re doing
Why do you want to build wealth? And what are you going to do with it once you’ve reached your desired level of success? If you don’t have a specific plan in place, it might feel difficult to work towards financial goals. If your wealth-building goal is to stop working early and lay around at home all day watching television, that might not provide you with enough motivation to accomplish your goals.
Successful people are driven; they have strong goals and aspirations, and they usually know exactly what they want to accomplish. They know what steps they are going to take to achieve their goals, and they recognize it may be a long and difficult process, but they keep pursuing success anyway.
There aren’t any cheat codes to building wealth, but the closest thing there is to a cheat code is building good habits and investing at a young age. Starting early will make your future that much brighter.
Our show this week is “How to Speed Up Your Wealth-Building Process.” Learn about how to take action instead of sitting on the sidelines, plan your future success, and how to adjust and change course when needed.
