Wealth

Wealth is a lot of things. It is much more than just money.

• Merriam-Webster defines 'wealth' as abundance of valuable material possessions or resources.
• The United Nations definition of inclusive wealth is a monetary measure which includes the sum of natural, human, and physical assets. Natural capital includes land, forests, energy resources, and minerals. Human capital is the population's education and skills. Physical capital includes such things as machinery, buildings, and infrastructure.
• Wealth means different things to different people. Wealth has a meaning that varies from person to person as well as family to family.
• Wealth is what you accumulate — not what you make. If you were to stop working tomorrow, how long could you support your current lifestyle? That is what makes you wealthy.
• A community, region or country that possesses an abundance of such possessions or resources to the benefit of the common good is known as wealthy.
• The wealth of households in the world amounts to USD 280 trillion (2017).
• The net worth of a person, household, or nation – is the value of all assets owned net of all liabilities owed at a point in time.
• Wealth is created through using labor and/or capital to make things, or provide/perform services, that other people find valuable. In the modern information economy, computer programmers often create wealth too, so it isn't necessary to create a tangible product in order to create wealth.
• Wealth means being able to be financially free to do the things you love, to live the way you want to live. But it also means being healthy, and to know that your family and the ones you care about are healthy and spiritually whole, and that they’re contributing.
• Wealth provides access to more. While money doesn’t make you happy, it does give you freedom to not worry about those financial stresses
• Having excess income allows you to be more involved with family and community.
• If you’re a healthy person, you are already wealthy. If you have your health, if you have your life, you can accomplish pretty much anything if you get the right mind-set.
• Material aspect of wealth is very important, because everything else is much easier to plan around if you are financially stable.
• For the poor it is always survival mode. The transition from scarce resources to financial security will be a challenge. It’s always about choices.
• Spending and taking care of money is a skill — not everybody has that skill.
• On the business side, wealth creates opportunities. On the personal side, wealth is about having more security and giving more to those you love.
• Wealth means you have the luxury of being able to provide for your family and determine how much work you want to do.

Rich is having abundant financial assets: money, real estate, investments, material possessions, etc. Wealth has four categories of assets:

1. Core Assets: your family, values, faith, health and the individual well-being of each family member;
2. Experience Assets: good and bad experiences, education, reputation, networks, knowledge and the wisdom of each family member;
3. Contribution Assets: contributions made to the well-being of others;
4. Financial Assets: money, real estate, investments, material possessions.

It is expensive to be poor

Most wealthy people believe that poor people today have it 'easy' because they can get government benefits without doing anything in return. This is an infuriatingly obtuse view of what it means to be poor - the soul-rending omnipresence of worry and fear, of weariness and fatigue. This can be the view only of those who have not known or have long forgotten what poverty truly means. 'Easy' is a word not easily spoken among the poor. Things are hard, the times are hard, the work is hard, the way is hard. 'Easy' is for uninformed explanations issued by the willfully callous and the haughtily blind.

• It is extraordinarily expensive to be poor. The less money you have, the more expensive many things are likely to cost. When your income is only just enough to cover your basic living costs, even modest unexpected outgoings can push you into debt. 
• It’s no secret that the poor pay more. The poor pay more by living in food deserts, by having to commute longer distances and stand in longer lines to buy or do just about anything, by not having enough cash on hand to shop when items are on sale, by receiving less efficient. At the same time, prices increase every year, even as wages stagnate. For those who struggle to make ends meet, it means paying for anything takes deeper chunks out of their limited income.
• The more affluent you are, the more likely it is you’ll be able to access credit at low interest rates. Poorest households spend about 25% of their monthly income servicing debts.
• Poor people usually have hard time getting credit. Doorstop lenders and extortionate companies target poorer customers because they are the least likely to have other options. 
• The poor people earnings are more heavily taxed than the earnings of wealthier citizens.
• Minimum-wage jobs are physically demanding, have unpredictable schedules, and pay so meagerly that workers can't save enough to move on.
• Many poor people work, but they just don’t make enough to move out of poverty.
• If you’re earning is just enough to cover rent, food and bills, finding regular extra income can be a struggle.
• Easy credit has been similarly disastrous for households struggling to make ends meet. Government policies have only exacerbated this situation.
• The homelessness and crippling debt are being inflicted deliberately, in an act of sadism.
• The current situation – where people are forced into crippling debt trying to sustain themselves and their families – is a genuine moral catastrophe.
• Low-income households are facing a difficult 2018, with rising prices, frozen benefits and a wage squeeze all putting further pressure on household incomes.
• The poor man's hardships are endless, but the point is: Being poor is anything but easy.

The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. 

How much is enough?

• "How much is enough?" is a good question. Anyone involved in capitalism and markets will find this question uncomfortable. It is a qualitative question and is about how money makes us feel about spending, saving and giving and values we stand for.
• Enough is the quality of having everything you need and want but nothing in excess and nothing that burdens you. 
• Income to meet the expenses of frugal living, a home, a car, insurance for health & life, provision for children education and their well being, provision for health shocks, leisure, passions and retirement - is what is enough. 
• The best thing one can do to children is to give roots & wings. And the worst thing is to give them a mountain of wealth under which they will get buried never knowing what they are and what they wanted to be in life.
• Our culture is geared towards endless consumption and upgrades. Reasonable wealth is comfort. Meaningful testament to a life is well spent.
• While personal debt is bad, public debt is necessary not only for prosperity but to avoid economic disasters. A good economy must serve the needs of many instead of the few.
• A great economist told students that the capitalist system was capable of delivering such a sustained and steady increase in output that workers would eventually have all the material goods they could possibly want. They would need to toil for only 15 hours a week and could then spend the rest of the time enjoying themselves. Capitalism was a means, a rather distasteful means, to this end.
• Capitalist economies are efficient, but workers were unsatiated by any material possessions, and devote any of their time to their pleasures. The new servant class which emerged and served the needs of neo rich were paid little more than subsistence wages.
• Modern world is characterised by insatiability, an inability to say enough is enough, and the desire for more and more money. Economics, a narrowly focused discipline in which there is no distinction between wants and needs, has driven to the end of a cul-de-sac. 
• The short-term need to get the economy moving again should not deflect policy-makers from reforms that will lay the foundations of a saner, more stable world.
• Progress should be measured not by the traditional yardsticks of growth or per capita incomes but by the seven elements of the good life: health; security; respect; personality; harmony with nature; friendship; and leisure. 
• Job security is much weaker and the pressure on the environment has increased.
• There is more to life than gross domestic product. Growth at all costs has become enshrined as the goal of economic policy. We live in a country divided into workaholics who have more money than they know what to do with and millions of unemployed and under-employed citizens struggling to make ends meet on the proceeds of work in the informal economy.
• In the middle, there are the debt slaves worried about the mortgage and often one pay packet away from penury. We ought to be able to do better than this. They favour a society with liberalism, social democracy and the good society is within reach.

A little house well filled, little wife well willed and 
little land well tilled are the greatest riches ... Shakespeare 

Money has no utility to me beyond a certain point ... Bill Gates

The fortunate man is he who, born poor, or nobody, works gradually up to 
wealth and consideration, and, having got them, dies before he finds 
they were not worth so much trouble ... Charles Reade

Earnings beyond certain point usually result in gaudy life style - excessive spending, amassing wealth, paying excess amounts for services without much substance. These activities contributes to increase in consumption and wastage, emissions and abuse of nature. Every luxury looses its vigor after 20 uses. You begin to own many things and eventually things will own you. Display of wealth or possessions is not only vulgar but also reflects low self esteem, make others feel jealous, lose real friends and win false acquaintances. They become more and more insensitive and end up knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing. 

Warren Buffet believes that setting up his heirs with a lifetime supply of food stamps just because they came out of the right womb can be harmful for them and is an antisocial act. The perfect amount to leave children is "enough money so that they would feel they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing." Bill and Melinda Gates are giving a $10 million only for each of their three children with a remark "It will mean they have to find their own way in life". 

Income grows, when you grow

• Income is materialistic and quantitative representation of your success.
• As you earn more, you succeed. But without success there is no monetary benefit.
• To be rich, to earn more and to make the income grow, one needs to grow & succeed. 
• Success comes to those who grow rapidly both as a person and as an employee as well.
• It’s all about the mindset and the personality you develop. So your developments, your prosperity is in your hand. The faster you develop those skills, personalities and competencies, the easier it will be for you to grow and earn more.
• The moment when you become comfortable in your zone, you cease to grow.
• The more you plan and procrastinate, the longer you will take to grow.
• Invest in your academics in early day. This will facilitate your entire career. A full time course from a renowned institute always adds value. Work hard to crack those premium institutes. You professional prospect will be limitless in those colleges.
• Identify your weaknesses and strength. The sooner you figure that out, the better for you. Work on the weaknesses and try to improve them. Hone your strengths for further improvement. 
• Networking, strong determination and integrity are other three factors which help in overall growth and development. Lastly, a sound financial knowledge is mandatory to earn, save. Invest and thereby grow.
• So once you are aware of the right mix of the above ingredients, you start growing. This growth needs to continue till the time you breathe your last.
• Learning new subjects, language has always been proved beneficial. Upgrading and honing technical skills and competencies need to happen simultaneously with your full time job.
• Massive layoff in IT firms for the past few months is due to obsolescence of the existing skill-sets. Those paid off employees are opting for courses for their career growth or just to bag a job immediately. However in such scenarios, it is always advisable to be pro-active than reactive.
• The day you stop learning and growing, your career will go for a toss. 
• You gather knowledge, experience and skill, the industry will be ready to grab you with the best compensation or you will be ready to come up with a unique idea for entrepreneurship. 
• Be unique and strong in whatever your strength is. That will differentiate you from the rest of the workforce and help you brand yourself to the industry. 
• The concluding advice is don’t run after money, concentrate on your own growth and money will follow.

Everything good in life is either immoral, illegal or fattening ... Nicole Richie

He who wishes become millionaire in a year will get hanged in two years.

My View:

Money is not that difficult to earn. Look at the people who earn money effortlessly by connections and manipulations. Money is only difficult to earn ethically, morally & legally. Compromise in all these three, then money will flood you. God seldom gives riches to good people. Morality is generally incompatible with amassing wealth. Most wealthy people in this world have committed some kind of abuse on society or nature in their path to riches. No good man has ever become rich.