What does it take to become successful?

Many people aspire to become successful, wanting the nicest car, the biggest house, the most expensive clothes, going for their dream vacation etc. But how many people are able to acheive all that? Instead, many of the so called rich are in actual fact in debt. On the outside, they have all the cars, houses etc but everything is bought on credit. Once they lose their jobs, they will lose everything. Why do many people fall into this trap of constantly running in the rat race and not able to acheive financial freedom?

I believe there are a few reasons:

1) Lack of financial management skills
Where do we learn the skills to manage our money? In schools, they only teach us the academic subjects like english, maths, science. So, if schools do not teach us those skills, most likely we learn these skills from the people around us. We learn it from our parents and our friends. So ask yourself this question, are the people around you successful? If not, you may have learnt all the wrong things about managing money.

2) Lack of financial education
This is the ability to earn more money, save money, invest money and protect money. There is one saying which goes like this:" It is not how much money you can earn but also how much you can save and what you do with the money you save."
There are 3 groups of people in this world. The first group are those who live from paycheck to paycheck, not saving a single cent. These people are most of the time in debt and even if they get a raise or promotion, they will quickly spend it away. Expenses when not in control will always rise to the level of income. The second group of people are beter than the 1st group. They are able to save a portion of their income but most of the time they put it inside a bank or in low interest rates fixed deposit accounts. These people have enough to live by but they are not able to quit their job as it is their only source of income. The third group of people are the ones with the highest financial education. They save a portion of their income, they watch and read financial news regularly. They know how to pick the right stocks to invest and most of the time they have more than one source of income. They have also built a stable stream of passive income and are able to quit their jobs if they want to. Financial education is very important if you want to live a life of abundance. Learn how to invest and manage your cash flow.