What does it mean to be Happily Wealthy?

According to the way I see it, there are 2 criteria for being Happily Wealthy:

First, it’s achieving and maintaining an ever increasing level of balance in the 8 Aspects of Well Rounded Living:

• Faith (religion & spirituality)
  
• Fulfillment (of your unique purpose)
  
• Family/Intimate Partner
• Friends/Associates
• Finances
• Fitness (and health)
  
• Fun
• Feathering the nest (home/dwelling)

No one can maintain perfect balance in all 8 aspects all the time, yet it’s a serious goal for the happily wealthy. There’s no point in being rich and having no friends, or having kids that are strung out on drugs or in therapy because of neglect on the part of parents who thought chasing the almighty dollar was a more important endeavor.

To give you a little more background info, here are my thoughts on the 8 Aspects of Well Rounded Living:

1. Developing and sustaining an abiding faith that brings you through the toughest of times. It means knowing there is a Power greater than yourself and calling upon and trusting that Power to act supernaturally on your behalf. It doesn’t quite matter what you call the Higher Power, whether you call Him/Her God, Infinite Intelligence, Love, Life, Jehovah, Buddha, Christ, or any other name.

The important thing is that your faith informs you that you’re supported, guided, loved, taken care of and that well-being and prosperity are natural for you. You probably didn’t have any money problems until you realized that there was such a thing as money.

2. Doing what you love (I call it being on purpose), using the gifts and talents you’ve received to create an extraordinary life that leads to an extraordinary destiny. The ONLY way to experience sublime fulfillment is to be who you were born to be and to do what you were born and purposed to do.

3. Sustaining a family life or relationship with an intimate partner which nourishes your soul. (I once read that most men who are wildly successful have wives–which doesn’t necessarily speak to the quality of the relationship, but does speak to the power of intimate relationships. Married people, according to some studies, actually live longer.) Family serves as the roots that keep us grounded as we grow and stretch skyward.

Val & Hubby Ronnie

4. Maintaining friendships, associates, mastermind groups and mutually beneficial relationships that spur you to higher quality living. You’ll only make as much money as your 5 closest associates. Hold up your right hand. Spread out your 5 fingers. Now count off on each finger your 5 closest friends. Reflect for a moment on what they do. You probably know them well. enough to know how much money they make. Now think of your income, and realize that it probably will never be substantially higher than those 5 closest associates. Sobering, isn’t it?

5. Absolutely knowing prosperity as your only rightful state (and that you were born to live in total well-being and bounty), managing your finances with mastery, excellence and wisdom and being overabundantly generous in giving leads to a rich financial life.

6. When you feel good, things work out well. Keeping a high level of fitness is key to living a well rounded life. Even though wealthy people have access to better health care and increased wellness options, without vibrant health, money won’t do you much good. Being  vibrantly alive and fit in mind and body is the goal, which means healthful eating, exercise, right thinking, hydration and supplementation are in order.

7. What’s life without fun? Laugh. Play. Live. Smile at people for no good reason. Watch funny movies. Be silly (when appropriate). Go to the park and get on the swings with the little kids and throw your head back when you fly high. Tell funny stories. Tickle your kids.  Eat ice cream cones. Do things just for fun, with no other point. Most importantly, laugh at–and with–yourself.

8. How you live is important. Whether you live in a mansion or a box, make it beautiful. Every place I’ve ever lived has always been decorated well. I’ve had some pretty scanty residences, and I’ve had opulent ones too. Either way, feathering the nest is the most revealing way to explore your state of mind. When you walk into a person’s living quarters, you immediately ascertain a wealth of information about them. Your surroundings are vital to your quality of life. (We’ll talk a lot here about feathering the nest and making your environments reflective of what you desire to create.)

Secondly, being Happily Wealthy means being financially independent. What’s financial independence? It means no longer having to work for a living. You’ve set up passive streams of income that happen automatically and permanently, without you needing to lift a finger (or if you do lift a finger, it isn’t work for you). Financial independence means that your automatic streams of passive, residual (and/or leveraged income) exceed your expenses.

Achieving financial independence DOES NOT necessarily mean being a millionaire. For instance, if your monthly expenses, living the life you desire to live, equal $2,000.00 per month, and you receive passive income of $2,500.00 per month, you are financially independent. It’s as simple as that.

Note on financial independence: the passive income streams must be risk-proof. In other words, if you have passive income coming from a stock portfolio that is subject to the vicissitudes of the stock market (which means that your income will increase or decrease along with market fluctuations) you may not have achieved financial independence if it’s possible for your income to dip below your expenses.

Those are the two criteria for being Happily Wealthy:

• Maintaining an ever increasing level of balance in the 8 Aspects of Well Rounded Living and
• Being financially independent

Think you’re up for the challenge? Being Happily Wealthy can be fun, easy and highly rewarding. You simply need to discover how to make that happen for yourself. Then, you can go forth and teach others the same.

Come back often to see the latest strategies, processes, practices and principles for becoming Happily Wealthy.

Until next time, be richly blessed,