Rich vs. Wealthy: An Alternative View

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Just the other day I was speaking to a friend about my affiliate marketing business. She asked me has it made you rich yet.

My quick answer no not quite yet. But I’m well on my way.

Rich vs Wealthy Pinterest Image

But then I thought about it a little bit. certainly on my way to making money and it’s increasing over time as I build my affiliate marketing business.

This is not going to be your typical Rich vs Wealthy type of argument.

This is just my opinion on it and some of my musings on the entire debate. Let’s continue.

Is being rich the main goal that I have?

I had to stop and think about. It is being rich the goal?

Certainly, I’m in this business to make money that is no doubt about that.

But is money really the thing that I am after? It is more likely the thing that I need to get to where I am going.

That’s where this whole Rich vs wealthy idea comes into play in regards to affiliate marketing.

If you have a lot of money then you’re rich.

If you have a lot of time and don’t worry about money then you’re wealthy.

One of the definitions of wealthy is defined as have a lot of an asset(source). In my argument that asset is time. The most valuable asset.

This is what I thought about it. This is what really got me thinking that am I in this marketing business to get rich or am I in it to get wealthy.

It pretty quickly became clear that rich is not the end game here. 

There are plenty of ways to get rich.

You can work a hundred hours a week is an executive at a law firm and be rich Beyond Your Wildest imagination but you are not going to be wealthy.

Why?

Why? Because you were still trading you or time for money.   That’s what I wanted to look at today. I want to look at the difference between being rich and being wealthy.

To be sure there are people who are both and ultimately that would be the greatest of Both Worlds. That is the ultimate goal but not necessarily the most realistic.

But in my opinion, the wealth of having time to do what you want is the ultimate goal.

It’s money versus time, it’s Rich vs wealthy.

So let’s start with money first.


Money Makes You Rich

There’s absolutely no doubt about it and that money makes you rich. It’s what we want when we start a business like this one. Why I got into affiliate marketing. I wanted to make money.

But as you start to really connect the dots it becomes clear that money and riches are not the things that you really want. 

Not when you’re starting an affiliate marketing business. You build an affiliate marketing business so that that money that you are making is passive.

In that is really the big difference, in my opinion, in this whole wealth vs riches debate.  Money is a necessity. We have to have it for a wide variety of things.

And the ultimate goal is to make as much of it as we can in whatever business we have decided to build our career around. How you make the money is just as important.

So it might be a little bit odd to say that money is not the end goal here because it certainly is the driving force behind starting your own business.

In my case, an affiliate marketing business. But money is not the end goal for me. Not really.

The end goal here is to stop trading my time for money. Whether I ever become rich or not is really irrelevant.

If I have to work a hundred hours a week to be rich, that’s not something that I want to do for 40 years of my life.

But if I could make for less money but not trade my time to do so then that is what true wealth is about.

Maybe not in the traditional sense I’m certainly not saying that I’m going to be wealthy as someone like the Rothschilds or some other historical wealthy Family.

But I view wealth as having the time to do what you want and the limited time that you have on this planet.

It might be a little bit morbid but that’s just the fact of as a matter. We have limited time and we spend most of it trading our time for money.

There’s that old saying that time is money. There’s nothing that could be farther from the truth no amount of money, no amount of value that we assign to anything is more valuable than time.

watch on pile of coins
Time Is Far More Valuable Than Money

We decide what a dollar is worth. And at no point in time with that dollar ever be worth minute or 2 it took to earn it.

Because that dollar I can buy a candy bar with it, but those minutes Are the most valuable thing you will ever own.

You can save up all your money you can find whatever get-rich-quick scheme you can and maybe it’ll work for you and maybe you can buy that Lamborghini you want.

But it’s just a thing that we’ve assigned a value to. It’s nice to have. But it’s not worth trading your time for money for years on end just to buy that one thing.

I would rather make $100,000 a year passively and be able to use my time the way I see fit. Then make $1000000 a year working for some boss and some corporate office trudging away for a hundred hours a week.

Sure I’d be rich if I took the corporate job. I have more money if I took a corporate job. And ultimately when I retired I might be able to claim that I’m wealthy.

But that hundred thousand dollars a year passively. 

That is the goal.

That is the whole goal of my affiliate marketing business. And I assume that’s the reason you were looking to get into the affiliate marketing as well.

Because of that passive income.   It’s that passive income that builds wealth. You need to have your money working for you.

Can we start getting that passive income going you take that money you take whatever you have leftover and you invested and you become more passive income? And it just snowballed from there.

A rich man can buy a bunch of neat things. And that’s great and that’s fun.

But none of those things that you can buy are going to replace the time you lost earning all that money to buy them. Unless that money was passably earned.

Time versus money.

stopwatch next to coins
Wealthy Is Deciding What to Do With Your Own Time

 It’s always been like that and is probably always going to be. Personally, I will take time every single step of the way. 

Because we don’t have a lot of it. might seem like you do when you’re young and you can just throw your money around however you want but that’s just a poor mindset.

The wealthy have a completely different mindset from everybody else.  

My goal is to be wealthy. 

I’m certainly going to try to get rich along the way.

Because if you can do both then not only are you wealthy but your children are wealthy and their children of wealthy and you build a legacy that lasts generations.

That’s when you take your riches and your wealth and you can bind them and build something that lasts.

Time Makes You Wealthy

Ultimately what really makes you wealthy is time. The time to do what you want when you want with your money.

You still need money to be wealthy. You just don’t need as much of it as you think. You use your money to free up your time. Instead of using your time to earn your money.

That’s the beauty of passive income. That’s my passive income is what wealthy people use to make their money.

Wealth mindset takes the money you have and invests it in ways that earn you more money. Without you having to do anything.

stopwatch on dollars
No Asset Is More Valuable Than Time

Whether you’re doing affiliate marketing, whether you’re doing real estate transactions or any other number of  Investments that you can use to earn money passively.

And then it just snowballs. Because the more money you have the more money you can invest in the more money you can make passively.

And that is where true wealth comes from. You have to be able to make your money work for you while you’re not actively earning it. 

After all most of us can’t put millions of dollars into real estate or into the stock market or into cryptocurrency.

We can certainly put a little bit of money into each of those but when you’re just starting out when you just trying to build that wealth that you need  It can be very tough.

So that’s why something like affiliate marketing becomes really useful in the building of your wealth. Because it is something that we and do very cheaply, to begin with.

 And it certainly takes a lot of time at the start and you’re going to be trading your time for money as you build that affiliate marketing business or that blogging brand or whatever it is you’ve decided to do.

But after a while, once you get the ball rolling it becomes more and more passive and then you can really start to build wealth through these types of Investments.

stacked coins
Rich Is Fleeting. Wealth Lasts Forever.

I started out as an affiliate marketer. But now I’m invested in stocks I’m invested in cryptocurrency.

More cryptocurrency that I never thought I would be able to afford or even that I thought that I needed. But it’s all part of a larger plan stop trading my time for money.

I’m still not there yet. I’m still working every single day on my blog and building content for those blogs. So I got a long way to go.

But it’s not 10 or 15 hours a day like it was when I started. That’s a little overboard but that’s what I was working.

Now it’s down to four hours a day maybe. Write an article or two each day, maybe  Outsource some articles on one of my other sites. 

So I’ve got a long way to go.

But I can see the plan taking shape and it all started with affiliate marketing. My goal of being wealthy being able to do with my time what I choose is really starting to take shape and come into fruition.

You can do the same thing. But the one thing that you have to do Above All Else. And something that took me a while to really just say I’m going to do it.

coin and hourglass
Building Wealth Takes Time. Passive Wealth Is The Goal.

You have to take action. You have to stop procrastinating stop thinking well maybe I can do this or maybe I can’t do that.

You have to take action. Start that Blog start that YouTube channel it doesn’t matter you just need to start working towards your ultimate goal of passive income.

For me, I chose to take action by finding a training program on affiliate marketing and going through it step-by-step to try and get an idea what it would take to really make this business a reality for myself.

And it turns out the first one that I chose wasn’t very good. And I stuck with it for about a year. It was a subscription model service that just was poorly thought-out and the people were a bunch of jerks that were they’re working with their own affiliate marketing businesses.

So I said, you know what, I’m out of here I don’t need this stuff anymore.

That led me to an absolutely fantastic training program that I signed up for and used I continue to use to this day.

It is really one of the only blueprints you are going to need to build a successful passive income business.

puppet with time and money
Trading Time For Money Turns You Into A Puppet For Your Bosses

My Closing Thoughts On Rich vs Wealthy

So that’s where I’m at on the rich vs wealthy debate. I know it’s not what you were probably expecting.

Most of the time when you debate Rich vs wealthy it money now versus money that’s built up over time and legacy money.

Typically wealth is defined as generational. Having so much money that your kids and their kids and their kids are never going to need to actually earn their own money. Because of that money builds on itself passively.

I guess I got into that a little bit.

But the main thing that I want you to take away from this is that time is the most valuable commodity that we will ever have.

The more money that you can earn without investing time directly into earning it  Is going to be the most valuable income source that you are ever going to have.

But don’t get me wrong. None of this is going to be easy. It’s going to take a lot of hard work especially upfront and when you first start.

You were going to have to work your butt off to build that affiliate marketing business with a drop-shipping business whatever passive income business you’ve decided to start working on. You were going to have to work your butt off.

But once you do that once you get the ball rolling you were going to see just how powerful passive income can be.

Just how much potential it is for passive income to make you an incredibly wealthy person.  That is the ultimate goal.

If you are thinking about jumping into affiliate marketing,  then please check out some of my reviews of some great training products that will help you on your way and really help you avoid the pitfalls people who are just starting out in affiliate marketing.

You can read my full review of Savage Affiliates right here.

If you want something that is focused more on niche sites you can check out my review of Project 24 right here.

And if you’re interested in reading a full comparison of both of these great training products going head-to-head in a single review you can check that out right here.

 And finally, if you are an absolute beginner and just want to find something they can really help you out you can check out my Wealthy Affiliate review right here.  

Just one quick note about this I would not expect too much out of this service as it’s not the greatest.

But it is a good place to start and their first month is pretty cheap so there’s a lot of value in the starter membership and the first month’s reduced-price membership.

I’m sure this article probably wasn’t what many people were expecting. And I’m sorry if I rambled a little bit but I just felt like I needed to write this and really get it out there as much for myself as everyone out there reading it.


I do thank you for stopping by and indulging my musings.

Thank you for visiting and have a wonderful day.