21st Century Academy

In one of the last posts, we talked about the traditional formula for success that most people are following in hopes of becoming wealthy one day. The formula, as you may recall, goes something like this:

· Go to school
· Get a “good” education
· Work approximately 45 years (or more) until you can retire

This is what most people do—we get educated, find a job, and work until around age 65. More likely, as age expectancies continue to climb, you’ll end up working past 65, because you’ll have that many more years to fund beyond retirement.

So let’s see how this success formula works out for us.

Where Will You Be At Age 65?

At age 65, you will fall into one of three categories:

1. Rich. If you are lucky, you will be among the 1% of the population who will be considered “rich.” Odds aren’t with you, though, and really not in your favor at all if you follow the success formula above—that’s not how the rich get here.
2. Financially Independent. The odds are a little better here—you may be one of the small 4% of the population that is able to stop working as planned and maintain a comfortable lifestyle—not a wealthy lifestyle, but you’re able to pay the bills and remain out of the workforce.
3. Dead, Dead Broke, or in Need of Family assistance. These are the options for 96% of the population—the 96 percent who continue to follow the “Formula for Success.” At the age of retirement, the great majority of the population will be either dead, near death (within, say, less than three years), or living on a very fixed income and in need of family assistance.

This all sounds very doomsday, but this is reality. Not as uplifting as most of our posts around here, but this is a stark dose of reality aimed at showing you the path you are heading on, if you continue to follow the traditional route to “wealth.”

Not everyone is following this path, though. Four to five percent of the population has veered off, because they can see where it’s heading. Those are the five percent in the top categories.

Which group do you want to fall into?

To Your Continued Success!
Sean Rasmussen
21st Century Academy
Universal Wealth Creation © 2004 – 2009

When you set off to find answers to the kinds of questions Jamie McIntyre asked—like why some people in wealthy nations are rich but the majority are not, or like the larger question at hand in the first chapter—Why do most people fail?—you start to look for some common ground that might point to a solution. This leads to an interesting thought that Jamie had, which he shares in the book in the opening paragraphs of Chapter 1.

What’s The Difference?

One of the first things to pique Jamie’s curiosity was this—why do some people start with nothing and make it big, and others start with everything but lose it? Does luck have anything to do with this? Education?

None of these things seems to be the answer. Nor does marrying into money or inheriting it. In fact, there seems, at least superficially, to be no rhyme or reason to who becomes wealthy.

• People of all ages become wealthy—in their twenties, thirties, forties, sixties, and at older ages, too.
• People of all education levels become wealthy—and people of all education levels continue to struggle financially; even those with higher degrees who we think might be smarter than us.
• People can gain and lose a fortune in a matter of a year—look at the statistics for lottery winners.

On the surface, it looks like the answers to this question are all over the board. In reality, though, there are common factors here. There are distinct reasons why some people are wealthy and others are not. But the answers are not superficial; they go much deeper than just finding nice categories to fit wealthy people in. This is the purpose of the first chapter of the book—to help you understand why you are not wealthy, but to help you understand the real reasons. That’s the first order of business in wealth creation.

To Your Continued Success!
Sean Rasmussen
21st Century Academy
Universal Wealth Creation © 2004 – 2009

Moving along into Jamie McIntyre’s eBook, and into the first chapters referenced in the wealth vision videos, we start to look at an elemental wealth creation question:

Why Do Most People Fail?

Or, to be more specific as Jamie puts it,

“I live in one of the wealthiest nations on earth—so why am I not rich?”

These are really just two versions of the same question. There is no good reason that more people in such highly successful nations as Australia, the UK, the US, and many others should not be sharing the wealth. If you understand why people do not, then you can begin to figure out which of these reasons applies to your own life and begin to work to overcome them.

The Success Formula

One of the first reasons we look at for popular failure is the formula for success that most people follow. Jamie had identified this as:

• Going to school
• Getting a “good education”
• Working hard for long years until retirement

This is the formula that has been ingrained in us all. It’s true in Australia and it’s true in nations all over the world, from Russia to the United States and points north and south. But if you look at the statistics and the results of following that formula, which we will do in an upcoming post, the formula is flawed.

Finding the flaw in our formula has to be the first order of business if we are to succeed and be wealthy. Much as we’d like to believe that this formula is noble and reliable, the outcome tells another story. Join me back here in the coming days as we explore this simple formula for success further, and work to find out what is really impeding our wealth and success.

Sean Rasmussen
21st Century Academy
Universal Wealth Creation © 2004 – 2009