WHAT lessons might we learn from ancient royalty that can have a direct bearing on our future wealth-building activities? In the old days, kings, emperors and sovereign rulers whose empires stretched beyond their home countries demanded — and received — tribute payments from subjugated or vassal states. As a standout example, consider Darius 1. Known as Darius the Great, he ruled the merged empires of Persia and Media from 522 to 486 BC. Historians consider him one of the greatest rulers of the Achaemenid dynasty.
In Book One of Hubert Howe Bancroft’s 1896 10-volume literary opus titled The Book of Wealth, he described how Darius governed his empire 2,500 years ago: “Dividing into satrapies or provinces the vast domain bequeathed him by his predecessors, he gathered from them a yearly tribute estimated... at (US) $22,000,000, of which more than two-thirds was paid in silver and the remainder in gold, this probably for the land tax alone.”
Bancroft published his masterpiece 122 years ago. By my estimation, from 1896 to 2018 inflation would have ballooned that US$22 million in late 19th century dollars to well over half a billion US dollars, in today’s currency. Obviously being royal had its perks back then. Now, however, in our day and age, with the proliferation of republics, there are fewer royal rulers than there were in the past. (Malaysia, with its nine royal households, is the world’s standout exception that proves the rule (pun intended)!
The beginning of increased rights of the common man can probably be linked to King John of England signing the Magna Carta in June 1215. That document started the important process of curtailing feudal payments to the Crown.
In the ensuing centuries the property rights of regular people were steadily deepened and widened across the entire civilised world. Fast forward to today when the most powerful people on our planet are not generally the descendants of ancient royal lineages but owners of business assets and multinational corporations. This means that personal merit (as celebrated in a meritocracy) and not some misplaced sense of genealogical entitlement is the key driver of upward mobility in our time. Quite obviously education plays a big role in equipping people to succeed in life over the long haul but it’s no guarantee that they will definitely do so.
NURTURE YOUR PERSONAL SOVEREIGNTY
Personal internal hunger and an innate drive coupled with useful external guidance can help a university dropout like, oh say, Bill Gates amass more wealth that an entire Ivy League faculty of PhDs. You get my point, I trust. I can’t jump start your internal hunger for economic success. If you don’t have it then you won’t do anything with the guidance I share with you... here. But if you are famished for success, then here’s some information that you can use to nurture your personal sovereignty within your private fiefdom.
Just as Darius the Great collected annual tributes of vast wealth from his vast empire, who or what is there to stop you, in our enlightened day and age of property rights, from collecting income flowing out from a personal savings and investment portfolio?
Toward that end you have a choice to make. You have a path to take. And you have a dream to realise. So here’s my promised external guidance: In the World Wealth Report (WWR) 2018 published in June this year by the French wealth consulting company Capgemini, it was reported that in 2017 the whole world had a HNWI (or high net worth individual) population of 18.1 million.
To gain entry into that elite group comprising roughly 0.25 per cent of our planet’s population(or1in 400 people alive today), we would need to have aggregated investable assets — excluding our main home, collectibles, consumables and so-called consumer durables like our cars, TVs, electronic devices like mobile phones, tablets and personal computers, even washing machines— of US$1million (RM4.1million) or more.
The WWR also says that in early 2018, that elite group chose to divide their investable assets across five asset classes in this manner: Cash (27.2 per cent); fixed income (bonds and bond funds) (15.8 per cent); equities (stocks and stock funds) (30.9 per cent); investment real estate (16.8 per cent); and alternative investments (like commodities, hedge funds, foreign currency and private equity) (9.4 per cent).
MONEY MAKES MONEY
Those various percentages rise and fall with time. Still, they give us, the proverbial little guys, a glimpse into the intriguing ways the world’s richest one-quarter of one per cent recently opted to invest their money. If we exert ourselves to gain access to such savings and investment instruments, we will gradually accumulate for ourselves an inflow of enriching passive income in the form of interest from cash and fixed income instruments, dividends from equities, rental from investment real estate, and distributions from all funds encompassing those four asset classes as well as the fifth asset class of alternative investments.
You know we nurture our personal sovereignty by allocating our capital wisely enough to turn our money into a tireless army of wealth-generating ‘slaves’ because money makes money! We should, therefore, push to succeed at this endeavour because the majority of humanity who don’t make itamajor life goal end up living as slaves to money and not, as it should be, the other way around.
©2018 Rajen Devadason
Read his free articles at www.FreeCoolArticles.com; he may be connected with on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/rajendevadason, or via rajen@RajenDevadason.com. You may follow him on Twitter @RajenDevadason