Safely Prosperous or Really Rich: Choosing Your Personal Financial Heaven

Chapter 1

Two Tracks, Two Heavens

The two very different roads to Safe Prosperity or Real Riches

When you finally decide to abandon the road to Financial Hell, you have the choice of two distinct and very different financial heavens and a distinct and different route to get to each one. You can choose either Safely Prosperous Heaven or Really Rich Heaven.

SAFELY PROSPEROUS

The road to Safely Prosperous Heaven is risk-free though unexciting, and smoothly paved with old-fashioned virtues. In fact, it's hazard-free, although sometimes downright dull. At the end of the road, you will be debt-free, financially secure, and able to enjoy your golden years without worries about money. Safely Prosperous Heaven is the place where most readers of this book should go, because it is secure and virtuous. It's the place the first half of this book is about. You will have a comfortable retirement with most of the pleasant things we take for granted we are entitled to—a Winnebago, visits with grandchildren, a nice home in a retirement community, an occasional cruise on a nice ship, weekly dinners out at a nice restaurant. It's the American dream, and not to be sneezed at. All it takes is old-fashioned character and a willingness to postpone some gratification. It's the way to get rich slowly but surely.

The operative principle on this road is to be aware of and avoid several common stupid money mistakes made by most Americans.

REALLY RICH

Then there's the road to Really Rich Heaven. It's very ...