We feel if we were financially independent we would be able to live where we want, buy what we like and spend our time doing anything we wished. Unfortunately for the biggest percentage of people this stays only a dream and they come to the end of their lives after a lifetime of work and struggle, with a balance sheet that shows just a little over break even.

For the majority, the true value of their wealth you could be put in a skip. If the skip was placed outside their homes and filled with all the stuff they had collected, the second-hand value would be about £1000 in total. Sad but true.

Statistics show that out of every one hundred people, there are only five that do make it to financial independence. - Brian Tracy's Success Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires

Money

In its most basic definition, money is something that we use as a medium of exchange. How you see money and what it means to you will determine how successful you are in every part of your life. We all need money, even those who state money is not important to them, every one of us needs to eat, we all need to be clothed, we all need shelter.

We all don't see money in the same way, some see money in a negative way, it being the root of all evil and anybody having a large amount must be bad or corrupt in some way. Others see money as a positive thing that brings help and happiness into their lives.

The fact is money is negative it is neither good nor bad; it is a tool which we use as a payment for goods and services. What we do and how we use money as individuals determines whether it is good or bad.

Measuring our success in the materialistic world we live in to day, it seems we believe we can measure a mans/woman's wealth by the things they have around them, we look at their postal address to see how affluent the neighbour hood is they live in, what car they drive, what clothes and jewellery they wear and for some obscure reason we believe a man must be wealthy if he is wearing the most up to date mechanical watch on his wrist.

We all seem to be using where we are financially as a gauge as to what level of success or failure we are achieving in life.

If we look at the ever increasing personal debt in the world today with a little commonsense we must come to the conclusion the vast majority of people in the western world, as far as I can see, are losing not winning in the wealth game.

The truth is it doesn't matter where you are from, what your age is, your nationality, what university you went to, how many qualifications you have or letters after your name. If you don't understand how money works, how to make it, protect it, and manage it you are most probably a statistic in the credit bubble and you are not doing very well in the wealth creation game.

So what is it, why do so many fail? The bottom line is most of us acquired our understanding from the people that brought us up. The basics about money, how it works, how to save it and how to make and invest it came from our parents. Don't get me wrong here our parents only educated us in the way they were taught and believed it to be true and right.

We don't do much better from our schools, on how money works, money management or anything relating to financial markets and investing. These subjects are not always included in the school curriculum. The rest we pick up as we go along from the media, newspapers and T.V. so there is no wonder we are totally unequipped to set out into the world and find it incredibly difficult to create any sort of wealth.