You would think it would be easy to get people to admit that they want to be rich and then take action, wouldn't you? But no, people are very worried about firstly admitting they want to be wealthier, and then very fearful of taking action. So, as a Wealth Coach, I usually prefer to talk about Financial Intelligence rather than Wealth Creation.

In order for people to get excited enough to make the leap and join The Money Gym, we have to talk about becoming a millionaire, and the millionaires we have helped create, because most people can't often be bothered for anything less.

Unless there are guaranteed results and they are big and compelling enough, people often don't want to pick up a book turn off the tv, go to workshops and learn anything new, certainly not for anything less than millions. And they want it quick too!

Really, Wealth Creation and Financial Intelligence are very similar animals, but Wealth Creation needs to be underpinned by Financial Intelligence, otherwise the wealth will go the way of the wealth of most lottery or competition winners – up the Swanee, spent on fast cars, big houses, champagne and very unsuitable companions!

Actually I just described my old age, if you add in long holidays in the caribbean, purple velour shell suits, with lurid hair to match, lots of bling and unfeasibly high gold sandals.

However, rather than my frittering away my kids inheritance, my old age will be funded from ever renewing wealth, because I will have finally graduated in Financial Intelligence 101 by then.

I'll come back to the kids inheritance later.

How can you train your brain to think in a Financially Intelligent manner? I like to think of Financial Intelligence as a platform on which you build your wealth. And like any platform, it needs to have a sturdy support, which I think of as....The Four Pillars of Financial Intelligence ©.

PILLAR ONE

Pillar One is "Managing Your Mind" where you discover where you are now financially, your family history with money, where your beliefs, behaviours and attitudes to money have often come from.

Then you must look at your abundance versus your scarcity thinking and learn how to monitor that carefully because that old scarcity thinking will pop up when you least expect it.

Whenever you find yourself thinking "I can't afford it" then you need to beware! You are getting into the wrong mind set and closing yourself off to ideas.

Think instead "how could I afford it?"

PILLAR TWO

Pillar Two is "Managing Your Money" and covers budgeting, cashflow management and projections, credit management and debt busting. Knowing the difference between good debt and bad debt (and if you don't know the difference then you need to read "Rich Dad Poor Dad" by Robert Kiyosaki fast!).

Learning how to pay yourself first rather than paying Starbucks, Vodaphone, your local curry house, Sainsburys, Egg, Total Petrol, and the list goes on……

By the way, paying yourself first does not mean spending your money on yourself rather than paying for food, it means taking the money you save from economising there, and investing it in "income producing assets" and then re-investing some at least of the income from those "income producing assets" into more income producting assets.....you get the picture!

PILLAR THREE

Pillar Three is "Make More Money" and this involves the realisation that you should never just rely on your job (JOB = just over broke remember) for your only source of income. I'm not talking about working in a pub or stacking shelves in Tesco's when I'm encouraging you to create other income sources, there are ways to make more money in less time having more fun than these activities would require. I wouldn't dream of suggesting that you, as a loyal reader of my articles, would think of such a thing.

There are many ways to create extra streams of passive income and the beauty of them is, with many of the ways we teach you in The Money Gym, you do the work once and the money rolls in thereafter, while you move on to setting up the next passive income flow.

And then why, when I suggest initially that people create extra streams of PASSIVE income from things like an internet business, rental property, a part time business or the stockmarket, do they tell me "oh, but isn't that really risky?".

NO !!!!

Relying on just one stream of income that is totally under someone else's control is RISKY! I wish I had £1000 for every time I've been made redundant just because of some whim from the board-room. Some industries are worse than others and you need to look around you at what has been happening in yours recently. Feeling nice and safe? I doubt it…

And relying on just your pension for your income when you retire, when your pension is invested in the stockmarket (a lot of people "in the know" thinks that there's a massive slide coming in the value of shares towards the end of this decade) ....…….that's risky!

PILLAR FOUR

Pillar Four is "Growing Your Money" - learning how to safely and, more importantly, QUICKLY grow your extra income flows to decent sized FURTHER passive streams of income for you. We are not talking about the paltry rates of interest payable by banks and building societies here, oh no. (I laugh out loud when I see the banks launch a 5% interest rate deposit account with such fanfare!)

No, we are talking about investing your money in the "Supermodels" of the Investment World – vehicles that return a minimum of 20% per annum and then on to the "Big Daddy" which is when you get an infinity return on your investment.

How does this one work? This is where you pull your money out again and you still carry on earning passive income streams on the original investment.

Which means that you can put your pot of cash to work for you again and again and again, creating more and more passive income streams for you and you can see the snowball effect this can create. My mates Andy & Greg took a small pot of cash (on a credit card actually) and built a property portfolio of over 270 properties at the last count, worth over £37 million, within just 10 years.

If property is appreciating at an average of 10% per annum (and in our area, historically it's been 14% per annum) you can work out for yourself what passive income THAT portfolio is generating per annum. Well, in my case you can if you have a calculator or a phone!

These are the passive income streams that you will eventually live on, but in the short term they will be re-invested to get the power of compounding – called by Einstein the "Ninth Wonder Of The World" – to work for you instead of against you.

Being able to compare various investments – like for like – and even compare a property investment to a business investment, and a stock market investment to an investment in an internet business, is a crucial skill we will teach you in the Money Gym.

It's actually very easy and this return on investment calculation can be done on the back of a beer mat in a few minutes (although you may, like me, need a tiny calculator or your phone! I only managed Grade 3 CSE Maths, you see) You need to be able to work out what your return on investment – your time as well as your money – will be, in order to work out if an investment is worth getting out of bed for, let alone getting in your car for!

You need to become a Supermodel of the Investment World in fact. Do you like the sound of that? I certainly did when I first realised that it was possible for me.

So if you work on enhancing the Four Pillars of Your Financial Intelligence, then you will build a firm platform for your Wealth Creation activities.

If the Lottery Winners were taught all those things, do you think a few more of them might hang on to their money?

Actually, on that topic, do you know that statistically speaking, you have more chance of an aeroplane landing on you than winning the Lottery? And that the average in the UK is a spend of £15 a week on the Lottery? If you took that £15 for one year, and invested it at 20% per annum, it would DEFINITELY be worth £29,903 in 20 years.

But if you KEPT putting in your £15 a week it would only take you 11 years to make the same money. And only 30 years to make you £1.1 million.

With that thought I will leave you and hope that I've managed to get you excited about enhancing your Financial Intelligence with a view to creating real, lasting wealth in your life and that of your loved ones.

Oh, yes, you ARE allowed to share your wealth! What fun!