Financial Planning and Change

Posted On: 2006-01-18
Length: 15:54

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Hi, this is Joan and this is episode 27 of The Prosperity Show. Thanks for stopping by. Today we're going to talk about the chaos of change. But before we get to that, our main site is prosperityplace.com, where you can find lots of information to help you improve your relationship with money and yourself. Also before we get started, a couple of issues. First of all, I've only been doing this show once a week instead of twice a week mostly because of my eye and the computer issues. At some point I might tell you the story of the computer, it's been quite a journey with one of the companies I've been dealing with. And the eye thing, I'm probably going to be seeing properly within about two weeks. So, when everything's back to normal then I'll make a decision as to how often I'm going to do this, and hopefully our quality of the show will be back to where it was before, by the end of this week. And also, one more thing before we start. There was a piece that I saw that just really impacted me. It was a study done, and the results of the study showed that a surprisingly high percentage of Americans think that the most practical way for them to accumulate several hundred thousand dollars is to win the lottery. And it says here, when asked about the most practical way for them to personally accumulate several hundred thousand of dollars, over 55% said "save something each month for many years." A good idea. Yet more than one-fifth, 21%, said "win the lottery." And among the most least affluent and those over 55 years of age, these percentages were much higher, 38% and 31% respectively. When asked about very important wealth building strategies for all Americans, 16% said "win the lottery." Those without high school degrees were much more likely to select this option than those with college degrees, 30% vs. 8%. But even 8%, that worries me that people think that it's a good wealth building strategy to try to win the lottery. The odds against it are so enormous as to make it virtually impossible. And you'd have to be, if you were doing this consciously, you'd have to put yourself in the perfect position to draw that into you. Logically, or I should say, metaphysically, people think that you should be able to do that. But, I don't know a whole lot of metaphysicians who have been winning the lottery. And I know they're trying. I talk to people who are into that stuff. So, if you're into this pie in the sky thing, it's gonna hurt your future. You really need to look at how to create a cushion with something other than the lottery. I know that most of you, I'm sure that most of you don't think that way, but I thought that you'd think that that was an interesting story...