How To Be Rich- the one & only principle to be very very very rich!

When I was in secondary school, my chemistry teacher Mr Adekogbe came to class one day and opened my eyes as to how to become very rich. He told us of a certain Bill Gates who just surpassed the Sultan of Brunei as the richest man on earth. He said Bill Gates earned about $1000 per hour through the sale of his Windows software. I was awed. How can someone earn money per hour?

Moreso, my very good friend Ife Oluyemi reinforced the idea when I went to visit him in Ife (OAU) after Glo Telcom introduced per second billing in Nigeria. He said that do you know that Mike Adenuga earns money per second as the owner of Glo? Ife also said and I can remember, “Even when he sleeps, he is earning money.”

So I set out to find out how to earn money per hour and become very rich. I started buying books on success, personal finance, and wealth. I studied rich people, read biographies and autobiographies, dug deep into what the bible had to say about money and becoming rich. I bought shares, traded forex, played for N10 million on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, and I researched all the different ways of making money online.

Surprisingly, I found out that all personal finance blogosphere, all books, and all experts said the same thing. They pointed to just one (1) principle…. And it is not getting a good job. It is not becoming very skillful at your job. It is not starting a billion-dollar business. It is not giving to charity. It is not gambling. It is not winning the lottery. It isn’t even inheriting wealth.

All those are simply offshoots of this one principle of personal finance which is, “No matter what you do, no matter who you are, no matter where you are from, to be rich, you must be paid every hour, every day, every single year of your life, more than you spend!" 

In other words, TO BECOME VERY RICH, YOU MUST EARN MONEY REGULARLY, MORE THAN YOU SPEND!! 

In the simplest of terms, SAVE REGULARLY!!!

And in all my research, I found out that earning money per hour is not just one way to be very very wealthy, it is the ONLY way! Moreover, I also found out that if anyone neglects it, such a person will remain poor. 

But what I found that really gladdened my heart was that anybody, and everybody can earn money per hour, and be rich- all they just needed to do was simply pay themselves.

Robert Kiyosaki’s (Author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad) rich dad says, “The rich save and invest their money, and spend what is left. The poor spend their money and invest what is left.” 

He says that when you receive your salary, before you pay any bill, or settle any creditor, first put aside a percentage of it as your own savings. That’s what he calls Paying Yourself First.

David Bach (Author of The Automatic Millionaire) says, “It is not how much you earn that determines whether or not you will be rich. It is how much you spend.” You should spend less than you earn consistently. And the truth is that the money you save is worth more than the money you can earn. 

The only way to get paid every year for life is to pay yourself annually by spending less than you earn yearly.

There is a famous quote by Mr Micawber in Charles Dicken’s David Copperfield; "Annual income- twenty pounds, annual expenditure- nineteen [pounds] nineteen [shillings] and six [pence], result happiness. Annual income- twenty pounds, annual expenditure- twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

So many of us want to become as rich as Dangote, Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Warren Buffet, C. Ronaldo, Mike Adenuga and many others. We want to earn millions of dollars per hour and be stupendously rich. While it is good to have a big business or career that ensures a profit or salary that equates to earning millions of naira per hour, the surest way to be paid hourly is for you to do it yourself by simply saving as a matter of priority.

When you save first, and then spend what is left, you are ensuring you will not just be wealthy, but also very happy. 

Parkinson ’s Law of money states that as income rises, so also will expenditure. Have you noticed that the amount you spent and survived on as a student is far less than the amount you are spending now? Yet it seems you can’t seem to survive on your present salary. It is Parkinson ’s Law at work. And the only way to be rich is to break that law in your life through a conscious and deliberate effort of saving regularly.

Brian Tracy says, “The first corollary of Parkinson’s Law says: "Financial independence comes from violating Parkinson’s Law.” "The second corollary of Parkinson’s Law is: "If you allow your expenses to increase at a slower rate than your earnings, and you save or invest the difference, you will become financially independent in your working lifetime."

So in summary, if you spend more than you earn hourly, no matter how much you make, you will still be poor! However, regardless of how small your income is, if you diligently pay yourself hourly, you will build wealth and ultimately become very rich.