With this one quick trick, you too can become wealthy in just a few short…decades. All humor aside, I’ve started this introductory series with boring definitions and boring tax stuff. Where’s the meat and potatoes on becoming rich? That’s why people read this stuff isn’t it to become rich?

Well, there’s a few tricks to becoming rich and the first one is this: Rich and Poor are how you think. They are the state of your mind. Use Wealth and Poverty if you want to talk about haves and have nots. When you can change your mindset to thinking Richly you rewire your brain to focus on habits that accumulate wealth instead of squandering it.

A few years back Dave Ramsey, a really famous guy in the finance realm, did a massive study of US millionaires. The data was pretty much in line with the book The Millionaire Next Door [Amazon Affiliate I make commissions]

No inheritance, many teachers, and a lot of jobs that make less than $100,000 a year.

So what is this thinking Rich mentality? It starts with 2 key concepts:
1) Live below your means.
2) Invest what you save.

That’s it, but worry not we will dig into the nuances. No one is going to hoard cash and reach a million dollars without making a really large amount of money and keeping spending extraordinarily low. The key is investing. I have several articles on bits and pieces of this, but for this series we want to stick to simple and concise information per article, so more detail on investing will come soon.

Before we can move forward we have to understand the methods we need to use to do this, and the end goals. For most people Financial Independence (FI) is the goal, because it means that work becomes a choice instead of a requirement.

To get the money you need to grow your wealth, you have to spend less than you make. Financial Independence comes down to just that. The speed at which you reach FI depends on the percentage of your income that can go to savings. A 50% savings rate will reach it way ahead of a 10% savings rate.

So how do we know if we are living below our means? First we have to Budget. You have to write down all of your regular occurring expenses and track them. Set a cap on your spending in certain categories. For example we spend $350 a month in groceries feeding a family of 5, we pull out cash each month and use the envelope method (which just means putting cash in an envelope and letting the left over build up over time).

Once you’ve tracked your budget appropriately you should have a number, hopefully positive, related to your remaining unspent cash. This is what can become your savings rate. What many people find themselves needing, through discipline, is to create a bill that is their saving or investing bill. This is a bill you pay to yourself. This bill should be the first bill you pay. It should be the one bill you prioritize over everything, and it could be as simple as $50 a paycheck to start.

This paying yourself bill will become the first part of the ‘Investing Order’ which I will cover later. For now this money will go into a savings account and needs to be called your Emergency Fund.

Emergency Fund. I said it twice in a row because this is for emergencies. Job loss, car engine explodes, whatever it may be. The first step in any Emergency Fund is to get it to $1,000. The next step is to get it to the equivalent of 1 Month’s living expenses.

Since you have been following along and made a Budget, you should know what this number is, in a true emergency such as unemployment I would hope that people would cancel all subscriptions and miscellaneous expenses and buckle down on just the true requirements, such as food, utilities, and housing, but this is your Rich mindset. That means you decide how much is 1 Month’s living expenses.

The end state goal of an Emergency Fund is 3 to 6 months of living expenses. The task of building it and the time that can take along with following the budget will get you into the right mindset for the steps that come after. This means growing the money that you are paying yourself, which will require investing.

But, like everyone on X is always complaining about, what if my budget leaves me with negative money? You have two options. Spend less or make more. There are no other options, and the mindset that thinks nothing works is the ‘Poor’ thinking mentioned at the beginning.

To recap. The way to build wealth is to think ‘Rich’, which involves growing your money. This is achieved by living below your means, and investing your saved money. Set a budget, pay yourself first, complete a 6 month emergency fund. Then we can tackle the Investing Order, combined with Investment Policy Statements.

~~Miniwing~~
Parent, Stoic, Investor

Term	Definition
Financial Independence (FI)	A state where you have enough savings, investments, or passive income to cover your living expenses indefinitely without needing to work for money. It provides the freedom to choose how you spend your time, even if you continue working by choice. Often linked to the FIRE movement (Financial Independence, Retire Early).
Savings Rate	The percentage of your after-tax income that you save rather than spend. Calculated as (savings ÷ disposable income) × 100. A higher savings rate accelerates wealth-building and is a key metric in achieving financial independence.
Envelope Method	A budgeting system where you divide your income into categories (e.g., groceries, entertainment) and allocate a fixed amount of cash (or digital “envelopes”) to each. Once the money in an envelope is gone, spending in that category stops until the next budget period—helping control impulse buys and stick to a plan.
Emergency Fund	A dedicated cash reserve (typically in a high-yield savings account) set aside for unexpected expenses or income disruptions, such as medical bills, car repairs, or job loss. Aim for 3–6 months (or more) of essential living expenses to avoid debt in emergencies.
Investment Policy Statement (IPS)	A written document outlining your investment goals, risk tolerance, time horizon, asset allocation preferences, and guidelines for managing your portfolio. It serves as a roadmap for you (or your advisor) to make disciplined, consistent decisions and avoid emotional reactions during market volatility.