If you want to live a happy and successful life, you will need to build and grow your wealth. Some people are born with a silver spoon if they are lucky. But most wealthy people that you see around you built their wealth with talent, brains, and hard work.

There is also a bit of luck involved. When you are in the right place at the right time or know the right people, you can build wealth or grow your fortunes without much hard work. It is rare but possible.

The key thing to remember here is that once you have accumulated some wealth, it is important to go about maintaining or growing your fortunes for long-term success.

In this guide, we examine what is really meant by wealth, why it matters for so many people, and four ways to build and grow your wealth over time.

What Do We Mean By Wealth?

The term ‘wealthy’ can be a bit subjective. If you are a homeless person on the street, someone driving to work in a car can seem like a wealthy person to you. If you have a car or two and a home without a mortgage in your name, your definition of ‘wealthy’ might be someone living in a big mansion with a yacht and tens of millions of dollars invested in businesses.

For this guide, we will assume that being ‘wealthy’ means you no longer have to worry about monthly bills and expenses. You have enough money saved up that you can live comfortably at your current standard of living without doing any actual work. You also have enough money saved up that can meet any unexpected bills that arise in case of an emergency.

Your wealth is also automatically generating more wealth that allows you to live lavishly (or comfortable at least) while your net assets keep growing over time.

Pathways to Wealth

We will look at six ways that grow your wealth without relying on luck. Our methods depend on factors that you CAN control. Yes, winning the lottery is one way to become wealthy quickly, but can you control all the factors in that situation? It is the same as being born in a wealthy family.

Here are six ways that you can build fortunes over time and get to a stage where you can consider yourself wealthy.

Work A 9-to-5 Job

Working a regular 9-to-5 job gets a bad rep these days. It is hard to imagine that only a hundred years ago, it was considered the best and most reliable way to become rich. People used to give bribes to get commissions and even paid prospective employees money to hire them for work.

Getting a regular job is still the safest and lowest risk method to build your wealth, especially when you are young and inexperienced. However, it requires a lot of hard work and effort. The money will also trickle in slowly at first. As you build experience or get appropriate qualifications related to your field of work, your pay will go up.

You have to be proactive when you go this route for building wealth. Most people are in the habit of settling into their role as they become familiar with their workplace environment and routine. They become complacent. The idea of trying to move to a better paying job or searching the market makes them uncomfortable. Don’t fall into this trap.

If you have the skills and experience, don’t be reluctant about asking your boss for a raise. Never sell yourself short with an employer or settle into a role where you aren’t getting paid what you need to get rich. Be proactive, and you will see that a regular job could be the surest and safest way to build your wealth.

Invest in Savings and Regular Income Accounts

Investments and interest-paying loans are the most successful ways invented to become rich. This is why savings and regular income accounts are crucial for building wealth. These accounts will allow you to set aside a part of your income and allow it to generate wealth for you.

When you open a savings account, you are advancing a sort of credit to your bank. The bank uses your savings to run its own operations and pays you fixed profits. Since you don’t have to do any work for earning interest, regular income accounts are the best type of passive income you can earn.

It is important to start saving and investing as early as you can. Most people start in their thirties and forties. If you can start sooner, you will be in a much better position by the time you hit middle age.

Today, it is very easy to open and operate saving accounts. Most saving accounts offered by banks provide around 0.10% to 2% interest on deposits. It isn’t very high, but there is also no minimal investment requirement, so you can start with as low as $50.

Online banks pay higher interest rates than the large or local banks. My favorite that I have used is SOFI. The account is a combined checking and savings account that comes with a debt card. This solves one of the largest issues with online banks which is access to your money. To sign up for an account click here and receive a $25 bonus once you deposit a $100 in the account.

Most saving accounts from reputable banks are FDIC-insured, which means that you can get your money back through the FEDs even if your banker goes bust.

Invest in Stocks and Bonds

Investing in stocks and bonds can be scary for most people but the long-term compounding affects for your wealth can not be beat. A stock and bond portfolio has returned an average of 8% to 10% over the last 100 years. To keep it simple, invest in mutual funds which leaves all the hard work for the fund managers. The thing to watch on mutual funds is the fees they charge. Look for funds with low fees like Vanguard funds. Vanguard has some of the lowest fees and highest returns of all fund managers.

Start a Business

Starting a business is the most difficult but arguably the most rewarding way to build wealth. Look at all of the wealthiest people in the world today. Larry Page, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson – all of them started businesses that became empires, making them the wealthiest people on the planet. These entrepreneurs have created the kind of wealth that most people can only dream about.

Your business does not necessarily need to grow to the same level as Amazon, Apple, and Google. Even a moderately successful business can make you north of $100,000 to $200,000 each year. That sort of income is more than enough to help you create positive cash inflows. Once you have built enough cash-producing assets and businesses, you can hand it over to qualified managers and live the life of your dreams.

Before you start planning your world tour of vacationing, keep in mind that creating a business is the riskiest method of creating wealth. You could lose more than just your time and initial investment. If your liability is not covered and the business is not insured, you could end up losing your other assets, including your home. For every one highly successful business out there, there are ten businesses that failed utterly, and their entrepreneurs possibly had to file for bankruptcy.

The return you can generate through a business is much higher than other types of wealth creation methods.

Summary

Getting a job, investing in securities, and creating a business are all valid ways of creating wealth. Which one you choose depends on your affinity for taking risks, how much work you want to do, how quickly you want to build wealth, and what is your end goal.

The bottom line in all cases is to create positive cash flows where money flows to you without doing any work, and the best way to do this is by building assets.