You are the General of your money

We can draw many parallels between money management and management of an armed force. To me, the money we have in our hands is like our current troops.

The money that we are earning from active income is the additional troops we are recruiting.

The money that we earn from our money by trading or investing are the Prisoners of War (POWs) our money have captured to join our ranks.

Basically, how rich or how strong you are depends not only on the amount of troops you have, but also on the rate at which you recruit the troops and the rate at which your troops capture more POWs.

This tells us one thing: gaining wealth requires a multi prong approach. It's not just about the initial wealth we have. It's not just about earning more from active sources. It's not just about the rate at we grow our nest egg via prudent investments.

It's a combination of all the above factors!

Now, before we get all excited about it, the key to all these is extremely hard work. Nothing comes free in this world. We have to spend the time to learn how to trade or invest. We have to spend the effort to increase our active income. We have to be proactive on how to improve our productivity. We have to also be proactive in seeking alternative ways to grow our retirement nest.

Similarly, learning to strategise, learning to command troops, spending the effort to recruit more troops, being proactive to improve the efficiency of each soldier, and alternative ways to seek peace and harmony are all part and parcel of being in an armed force. These are hard work too.

Ultimately, the eventual state of our troops, or our wealth, depends largely on us, not others. Just like the armed forces of Country A can never depend largely on Country B for it's own capability and striking power.