Amassing wealth and becoming financially independent is a slow process that takes time. You do small things every day such as cut your expenses, generate extra income, and put the money into brokerage and tax-deferred retirement accounts. With time, it begins to amount to something. As each new opportunity appears, you can react on a larger scale than your previous investments. That's called compounding. It's when the interest, dividends, and capital gains your money has earned begin to generate their own interest, dividends, and capital gains, and on and on in a virtuous cycle. It's how $10,000 can grow to $2,890,000 over 50 years at 12%.
Commentator Larry Kudlow pointed out one of the great truths years ago when he said that profits are nothing more than margins times revenue. The profoundness of that statement is sometimes lost by its simplicity. The only way you can have more money left over at the end of the month is to either increase revenue (your paycheck, business sales, billable hours, or whatever it is that provides funds to cover your bills) or decrease costs. That's it. Write it down. Frame it. It's that remarkable. Your choices are to increase revenue, cut costs, or both.
