| For the rest of us, the path to financial success is straightforward. Essentially, your earned income is decided by nine factors: - Your educational attainment
- Your chosen profession
- Your years of experience
- Your hours worked
- Your work ethic
- Your social skills
- Your competence and proficiency at what you do
- Your ability to cooperate with, inspire and lead your co-workers
- And your ambition to rise in the organization.
If you want to earn more, the choice is clear: make yourself indispensable to some organization. Yes, some people are born with greater genetic gifts than others. You and I were not born with the looks of Brad Pitt, the physique of LeBron James, or the intellect of Isaac Newton. Too bad for us. Some are dealt better hands than others, with more supportive families or a more affluent household. (Although I'd take the former over the latter any day.) But we each have to play whatever hand we're dealt as skillfully as possible. From an economic standpoint, that means maximizing your education and marketable skills, showing competence, reliability, and integrity at work, and doing whatever you can to rise in the organization. (Or else seek better alternatives elsewhere.) Complaining that "capitalism is broken," "the system is rigged," and "life isn't fair" will not increase your income or net worth one iota. It is, however, guaranteed to make you bitter and unhappy. Beyond income inequality, there is also another form of economic disparity in this country. Some households have a much higher net worth than others. There is a significant wealth gap. Is this unfair? Again, not necessarily. In my 40 years as a money manager, investment strategist, and financial writer, I've learned that wealth accumulation is based on six primary factors: - Your ability to maximize your income
- Your propensity to save
- Your appetite for risk
- Your willingness and ability to let your money compound
- The investment costs you absorb
- And the taxes you pay.
These factors are under your control. And the incentives are right. Capitalism says you can have whatever you want if you just help provide enough other people get what they want. Warren Buffett - someone who knows a thing or two about wealth accumulation - emphasized just this point in an Op-Ed piece in The Wall Street Journal: In recent decades, our country's rising tide has not lifted the boats of the poor. No conspiracy lies behind this depressing fact: The poor are most definitely not poor because the rich are rich. Nor are the rich undeserving. Most of them have contributed brilliant innovations or managerial expertise to America's wellbeing. We all live far better because of Henry Ford, Steve Jobs, Sam Walton and the like. You probably don't have the skills or the access to capital that these geniuses had. But that doesn't matter. There are simple steps you can take to ensure your own financial independence. I'll enumerate those in my next column. Good investing, Alex | 
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