MONEY AND RICHNESS

DOES MONEY MAKE YOU RICH?

The answer is No. Money alone does not make you rich. We all know people who go to work every day, working for money, making more money, but fail to become richer. Ironically, many only grow deeper in debt with each dollar they earn. We have all heard stories of lottery winners, instant millionaires, who are instantly poor again. We have also heard stories of real estate going into foreclosure. Instead of making homeowners richer, more financially se-cure, real estate drives homeowners out of their homes and into the poorhouse.

Many of us know of individuals who have lost money investing in the stock market. Maybe you are one of those individuals. Even investing in gold—the world’s only real money—can cost the investor money.

Gold was my first real investment as a young adult. I began investing in gold before I began investing in real estate. In 1972, at the age of twenty five, I began buying gold coins when gold was approximately $70 an ounce. By 1980, gold was approaching $800 an ounce. The frenzy was on. Greed overtook caution. Rumors were that gold was going to hit $2,500 an ounce. Greedy investors began piling on, buying gold, even though they had never done so before. But instead of selling some of my gold coins and making a small profit, I hung on, also hoping that gold would go higher. About a year later, as gold dropped below $500 an ounce, I finally sold my last coin. From 1980, I watched as gold drifted lower and lower till it finally bottomed out at $250 in 1999.

Although I did not make much money, gold taught me many priceless lessons about money. Once I realized that I could lose money investing in real money, gold, I realized that it was not gold, the asset, that was valuable.

It was the information relative to the asset that ultimately made a person rich or poor. In other words, it is not real estate, stocks, mutual funds, businesses, or money that makes a person rich. It is information, knowledge, wisdom, and know-how, a.k.a. financial intelligence, that makes one wealthy.