Your Family Jewels!

This is not a post about diamonds and gold, or anything other "family jewels" you might have in mind. It is about something more important, the source of your real wealth, your talents, your skill set. Your REAL family jewels. Frankly the most valuable investable asset you will ever own.

As our nation began the largest source of wealth was the ownership of land. Land allowed you to provide for your family and grow crops to sell to provide income and accumulation of wealth. The more land, the more wealth. Even now in the South there is a romantic notion of holding land and passing it on to your heirs. But unless this land is in a great location all you are doing is passing on a declining source of real income and expanding source of taxation. Even if your land is in a great location the only way to become wealthy from it is to sell it and save the capital to provide income. But that is only a one time transaction, not a continuing source of accumulating wealth.

As we moved into the mid 1800's land became less important as the industrial revolution began and the ownership of factories that could make things replaced land as the largest source of income and wealth. Now I am using the word "factories" as all inclusive for companies that make things. If you owned a steel mill, a cotton gin, a textile mill, or maybe an oil well etc. you could produce income and could accumulate wealth. Also as opposed to land ownership, factory ownership offered income that could be expanded with the building of more factories Retail stores, such as Sears, Montgomery Ward, and others took the factory model a step further and brought merchandising to the masses. This not only helped factory owners, but retail stores owners joined the industrial revolution with added wealth accumulation. This model of wealth lasted into the late 1970's and early 1980's.

As we moved into the mid 1980's land had all but faded as a source of real wealth and factories began to fade as well due to the cost of making goods. Not the cost of the materials, but the cost of labor. So many factory models that come of age in the industrial revolution either got creative with efficiency or moved overseas where the cost of unskilled labor was cheap. Retail models learned that location of stores and inexpensive goods were more important than just having merchandise in stock. The sources of wealth were changing.

We come to the present and one can find the roots of wealth today in the seeds of companies born in the mid 1980's. It was then that the information revolution began. It was then that the skill set a person brought to the job became more important than ownership of land or factories. Today employers who own growing businesses hire you for your skills not your work time. Having a law or medical degree, having managerial skills, being able to sell something, technical skills. engineering skills, and the list goes on is how real income and wealth accumulation begin. Basically the employee brings to work everyday their talents and skills and takes them home at night. The best paid people are the ones who have skill sets more in demand or the ability to get things done. Think about it this way, Steve Jobs who runs Apple Computer, can locate his great skill set anywhere he wants . If he decided to pick up and move to another location, he could move anywhere he wanted to in the world just by bringing his brain. Apple Computer goes home every night with Mr. Jobs and comes to work each day when he goes to a location with other people who associate with him due to skill sets they bring with them to that location.

Now this can be expanded to most anyone who is accumulating great wealth now, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Larry Ellison, Larry Page, George Soros, and the list goes on. There are some people who still have wealth who accumulated it in the past, but just like any other time in history they have past accumulated wealth that can only provide a income, not current income and wealth accumulating now. All the people today accumulating real wealth have family jewels that make them wealthy, their skill set which is the knowledge and information in their brain.

Here is where your family jewels come in. If you are selling your time, not a skill set, to an employer and nothing else your income potential is limited. There are only so many hours you have to sell in a day, 8, and in a week., 40. Most employers who now buy a person's time are taking their jobs overseas where time cost if considerably less. Unless you are selling a skill set, you will never have any wealth since there are many other people like you out there selling their hours to an employer. You are limited by how much you can charge for your hours and frankly lack of skills. So the only way to rise above this situation is to go to school and learn a skill, even better a rare skill in demand, or be able to learn selling skills or managerial skills on the job. Add to this is the essential need for Life Long Learning or constantly improving and updating your skill set.

You are blessed to live in a country today where in my opinion we have universal opportunity. Unless you are truly disabled mentally or physically there is no reason you can not acquire a skill. With community colleges in almost every county in every state and all of them free or cheap you can go to school and learn a skill that is immediately employable. Hospitals, schools, tech companies, sales organizations, foreign language providers, healthcare providers of all kinds, and engineering firms, etc. are looking skilled employees. You can attend a 4 year university and get even more advanced degrees and yes there is tons of financial options out there to get you through school. Even those without degrees who are willing to learn skills on the job can find employment it you are willing to begin with lower pay and then move up.

In today's information revolution the ability to learn and use information and apply your skills are the path to income and wealth. So if you do not have some family jewels, go get some. When you do get your family jewels do not be afraid to insist to your employer that if those jewels are valuable to their workplace and should be amply rewarded. If you are not being compensated as you believe your should be for your family jewels,, do as Steve Jobs can do, and take them somewhere they are appreciated and compensated correctly. For the first time in history no one needs land or a factory to be wealthy, you need a skill set to sell. You live at a great time in a great place to achieve your dreams.