False economy What’s in it for me? Understand what makes the

You can only accumulate wealth slowly by 
learning through a process of trial and error.
Many people dream of becoming rich overnight.

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But other than winning the lottery, there is very 
little chance of this happening.
Gaining wealth is a long process made up of 
countless tiny steps forward and often more than 
a few setbacks.
But why is this so? Why does acquiring wealth 
take such a long time?
Quite simply because the world is constantly 
changing, especially financially.
This means that you can never just pick one 
wealth-building strategy, like investing in a 
certain stock, and sit back to watch the money 
come in. The financial system – and life itself – 
is very uncertain, so sooner or later something 
massive will happen, like the stock market 
collapsing. This means you have to adapt to the 
new situation and learn about new wealth-
building strategies, experimenting with them and 
probably failing in a few. And just as you find 
your next winning strategy, something huge will 
happen again.
But through this process of experience and 
adaptation you will increase your overall ability 
to invest wisely as you accumulate more 
knowledge. In fact, this process of trial and error 
is analogous to the way scientific progress is 
made: failed experiments can be just as useful 
as successful ones. So if you make a failed 
investment in, for example, subprime mortgages, 
you might learn so much that you can then make 
successful investments in that same field.
Yet beware of forgetting that by its very nature, 
trial and error involves making mistakes. This 
means you need to ensure these mistakes are 
small, so don’t invest money you can’t afford to 
lose in an area in which you’re not certain.
In the next blinks, you’ll understand the 
difference between making money and attaining 
wealth.