Welcome to episode #166 of the Own Your Best Life Podcast. Creating wealth seems to be such a hot topic. We want to feel stable, free and most of all – successful. Yet, what is wealth? What is this thing we’re searching for that feels so elusive at times? Today’s podcast on the wealth mindset will help you create your own understanding of wealth so that you can start to live your own version of a wealthy life and have that stability, freedom and success you desire.

Most people associate wealth with money. Lots of it. Not just the kind of money that helps you get by and save some, but so much that you feel like you have options in life. I’ve given a lot of thought to generational wealth because as a first generation American, I’ve seen the benefits of wealth that has passed down through my parents. There are opportunities that I wouldn’t have been afforded if they didn’t exist and do what they did to build wealth. 

Everyone of us has the opportunity to build wealth. To feel wealthy and to be in a financial situation that we feel proud of and to be able to create wealth for ourselves and future generations. Yet, it often feels conflicting and fraught with all kinds of decisions that we have to make to be able to have that kind of wealth.

Do you have to live a life where you have little time for passions or yourself? Do you have to have inherited money from your parents to make it in high-cost-of-living areas? Do you have to have gotten lucky and made some great investments? These are all the questions that run through our heads at any given moment. 

What if I told you that wealth was more than just a financial equation? What if wealth was the feeling of what financial freedom and stability give you – which is a feeling of enough. We often feel like there’s not enough of something in our lives. Either time or money. Sometimes, we feel like we have all the time in the world, but we feel like there’s not enough money. Other times, we’ll find ourselves with lots of money but no time to enjoy the money. Or, we’ll feel like there’s a lack of both time and money.

I remember when I was starting out and working a 9-5 that didn’t feel like a 9-5, because I would work more than those hours. I didn’t have a ton of money or time. Yet, it felt like enough because I was saving at least 20% of my salary. I’d take one big vacation a year – and travel more than that. I’d give lots of gifts. I would buy one beautiful flower a week and put it in a vase in my studio apartment. 

I’d think a ton about money and whether or not I was saving enough of it. I made spreadsheets and tracked my spending. I invested that 20% of my salary early on and it was a good move. It’s fascinating to me how they don’t teach personal finance in school, yet it’s so beneficial to have that awareness and to make decisions that will help you in the long run. 

Even then, there were the decisions of what is enough. What do I value? What do I want to spend my money on? I was making a salary of $48,000 out of school and I wanted to save up $100,000 for business school in 5 years. That’s a pretty large amount to save – and I got pretty close.

Even now, as I spend more money and make more money, I still consider if I spend money on what I value. The answer is yes – but this was and continues to be a practice. The wealth mindset is about practicing and refining how to make money, spend money and feel good about your life outside of money. The time it takes to develop this mindset is worthwhile, especially when you consider the practicality of compound interest as well as developing a skill. Managing your money and your mindset is a skill.

Time is on your side: Get started now

We all know the benefits of compounding interest, where you’re earning interest on both the amount you saved (the principal) and the interest you earn – and how that helps you earn money using the power of time. The key factor here is time is on your side. When we don’t feel like we have a lot of time or money, perhaps we actually have more than we realize. Small amounts add up over long periods of time.

One of the key mindset principles for wealth creation is to get started now. Whether you have an idea or an investment in mind, starting earlier helps you use time to your advantage. You will make mistakes, the same way the market will bear corrections. When time is on your side, you can weather these corrections. 

There’s a rule of 72 that’s helpful as an analogy. Depending on the rate of interest you’re assuming, you can approximate how long it takes for your money that you save to double. So if you assume a 10% annual rate or return, you’d double your money in 7.2 years. If you assume a 6% rate of return, you’d double your money in 12 years.

Either way, it doubles. When we think about how quickly our lives can change when we put forth some consistent effort towards a goal or ideal, it can be as dramatic as the doubling concept. More effort, more consistently leads to more results, more quickly. For practical purposes, this is why investing as much as you can (10-20%) early in a low cost index fund is encouraged for you to have the money you desire when you retire. This is a set-it-and-forget-it type of approach. Not trying to time the market. These are the basics of personal finance.

What about the basics of a wealth mindset? These things like more than just how much money you have. It’s about considering questions like, “how much money do you want to have?” or “how do you want to earn money?” or “what do you think money is for?” or “how much is enough?”

For you to become wealthy, you have to break free from the paradigm that keeps us always feeling stuck. The one of not enough. Yet, there is no magic formula that you have to follow. There is one that you design. You decide, regardless of whatever is around you and who is around you – what matters most. You stick to it and be ruthless in your pursuit of your ideals. This forces you to live out your wealth and to discover if what you think makes you feel free and happy, actually does. I’ve discovered that there is a certain amount of freedom I have in my time that money will never buy. The freedom to be with my kids at certain times or to do the kind of work I want to do. If money was the only motivating factor, I would have chosen other things at so many points in my life.

The reason this matters is because you will at points in your life, choose things that make you feel like you don’t have enough. You will see your income drop. You will see your time drop. You will see your savings drop. I promise you that this will occur. When you’re not sure why it drops, you’ll stop doing what matters and you’ll change your mind. You’ll forget that this is why you chose it – because it matters and you’ll lose commitment. You won’t see the results because you are half in or half out of the decision. 

I did this for myself. When I invested lots of money, I prepared myself for it. When I didn’t prepare myself for it, I saw the income or savings drop as a signal that something was wrong instead of that I was following the plan. Wealth mindset means a mindset of choice. A mindset of decisions. A mindset of following through on what it means to make a decision and to see what happens as a result. 

The wealth you desire to have the body, time and money freedom is born from the seeds you planted yesterday about who you are becoming when you made that decision. About the person who decides that I’m going to find a way to be unreasonably happy, grateful and determined. I’m going to do the unreasonable thing that helps me become who I want to be – and in the process, achieve unreasonable wealth. That level of audacity is the wealth mindset. I wish it for all of you and most importantly, I know it is possible.

If you’re ready to Own Your Best Life, I want to invite you to watch the free training on how to Stand Out and Lead, using spiritual, high-performance strategies. You can access the training at https://may-empson.mykajabi.com/stand-out-and-lead.

You can then apply to join my Spiritual Achiever® program, where you’re going to create your next chapter with spiritual and high-performance strategies to achieve time and financial freedom using my proven method. It’s risk-free. You either start seeing results within your first month or I give you your money back. Schedule your call HERE. We’ll see you inside.

If you like this blend of both practicality and mindset, you will love coaching. You can schedule a consultation at www.mayempson.com/contact to learn more about working together and joining this community of like-minded, open and curious seekers. It is the powerful group and private coaching hybrid experience for achievers who want to expand their vision of what’s possible. Twelve months of support, individualized guidance, community and retreats. We will help you build your confidence, trust your intuition and make decisions that you love.

That’s it for this week. Have an amazing one and I’ll talk to you next time.