Saturday, December 19, 2020

The Many Paths To Wealth

My profession gives me an opportunity to meet wealthy people and get a ring side view of their journey. Reading about the life stories of these people also gives good insights. Its fascinating to see that each individual’s relationship with their wealth is unique and they use it in the way they best see fit. Understanding how wealth gets created is equally interesting. Some of the many ways are -  

Building and scaling the business

Investing – value, growth, seed and venture

ESOP – stock options of management teams which reward them for the growth of the business

Real Estate

Commodities

Managing other people’s money

Marrying into money

Inheritance

Sale of business

Being at the pinnacle of your profession or unbeatable in your craft

Speculation and Leverage

While building and scaling business is the most common theme, speculation and leverage is extremely rare. Businesses are as varied as they come, some supply to the government and some stay away from them, some are necessities and some luxuries, some are basic and some complicated, some are mature and some evolving, some professionally run and some by families and extended families, most domestic some multinational. Some cyclical and some secular. Some capital intensive and some capital light. Some sell to businesses and some to consumers. Some can’t run without machines and some without people. 

Wealth can also be spiritual, once you have it ,material wealth does not matter so much. There are many ways to material wealth and some rules to stay wealthy – following asset allocation as per your profile, respecting risk and staying within your means. Similarly, there are many ways to heaven but only one way of staying there. Doing good and being good which also happens to be the basic tenet of humanity.

Stay blessed and since the festive season is here, do spread the cheer around :-)

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